Movie Week: Resident Evil: Retribution

For this Movie Week, Mike and I decided on a B-movie – Resident Evil: Retribution.  Recently we’ve been reviewing blockbusters, and felt that we should try something more along the lines of our prior ‘Ghost Rider’ viewing (Mike’s review, my review).  I’ve long had a guilty liking of the Resident Evil series, and there was a new one coming out….

A Movie that is a Game, A Game that is a Movie

For our seventh movie review we decided to go and see the latest installment of the Resident Evil series – Resident Evil: Retribution. I’ll begin by saying that prior to this decision I had never watched any of the movies or seen any of the video games. To prepare we used our most recent beer and a movie to watch the first Resident Evil movie and much to my relief I discovered it was about zombies (mostly). Zombies I can relate to. I’m not going to digress here with a review of the first movie, there are plenty of those out there if you want to read about it, but many of the things I will complain…er..comment about will probably apply to both movies.

I’d have tried to make the Eggplant Boats

Which is proof (if it was needed) that David is smarter than I am.

David made a truly tasty dish from Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook called Eggplant Bayou Teche. For the full details on cooking this dish you can read David’s account.

When he first showed me the recipe (as he was preparing it) I saw that it called for carving out the Eggplant into little canoes or pirogues as they are called on the bayou. I probably would have driven myself crazy trying to carve out the eggplant while David realized he could get the same flavor combination without having to stuff the delicious crab and shrimp meat into an actual eggplant boat. The medallions that he made in place of the pirogues worked great and actually meant you got more of the tasty fried breading on the outside of the eggplant.

I enjoyed this dish immensely and ate a huge second portion to show my appreciation. The sauce for the shrimp didn’t have the heat I was expecting when I heard Cajun, but it had flavor to spare. I think the cream helped to cover up the cayenne and pepper. I am a big fan of Cajun spices and of cream so it worked quite well for me. I will be stealing the recipe from David (without canoes) so I can make this for myself.

My contribution to the meal was a cranberry pecan salad recipe that I found and wanted to try. I am still searching for the secret to a good vinaigrette and this one uses Raspberry Vinegar. I’ve made this salad twice since we had dinner with the Kirkpatrick’s, but the roasted pecans and cranberries sort of steal the show so it is hard to tell if the Raspberry Vinaigrette is the one I am searching for. The recipe is pretty easy and I think made for a memorable side dish to even this great shrimp and crab creation.

Cooking: Cajun Shrimp & Crab, with Fried Eggplant

It was my turn for the cooking week, and I decided that it was time to try something new.  I’d recently found a copy of Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen cookbook, and thought that a Cajun dish might be fun to try.  After looking through the recipes, I settled on a variation of a Shrimp & Crab recipe. I had most of the ingredients on hand and those ingredients weren’t too obnoxious to the pickier eaters in the Donnelly and Kirkpatrick families.