Recipe: PawPaw's Creole Eggplant Sauce with Shrimp

This summer, a special recipe came to us from our customer Kerry, a Creole Eggplant Sauce with shrimp. Kerry created this recipe at home by purchasing eggplant, peppers, okra, tomatoes and Sea Pearl shrimp in the G&G Grocery section. As we got to learn more about Kerry & the origin of this recipe, we learned that it was passed down from her PawPaw, aka Cajun Paul. 

PawPaw, whose given name was Christopher Paul Schultz, was born in June 1922 and lived in Louisiana. When he was young, he would frequent the French Market in New Orleans with his mother, where she would swap recipes with her Cajun and Creole friends. Oftentimes these were written on pieces of scrap paper or paper bags - whatever they could find. PawPaw’s love for Cajun and Creole food began here and he learned to cook at a young age. 

Decades later, he passed these recipes on to his granddaughter, Kerry. In 2019, a year before he passed, PawPaw created a cookbook for Kerry with all of his favorite Cajun and Creole recipes. We hope you enjoy PawPaw’s Creole Eggplant Sauce recipe! 

Creole Eggplant Sauce - 4 servings

Ingredients: 

2 Tbsp oil (olive or canola or veggie)

1/2 cup onion, diced

1/2 cup green bell pepper, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

1 cup eggplant, diced

1 cup okra, sliced crosswise

1 tomato, diced

Creole seasoning

1 tsp garlic powder

1 Tbsp paprika

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp white pepper

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

Hot sauce to your liking – I like more than most

1/4 cup canned crushed tomatoes

1/4 cup water 

 Instructions:

• Sauté onion, pepper, garlic, eggplant, and okra in 2 Tbsp oil until softened
• Add diced tomato and stir together for 1 min
• Add spices, salt, crushed tomatoes and hot sauce
• Simmer low for 20 min, add a little water if it starts to stick – you want it to be saucy, not soupy
• Pair with white rice
• Garnish with sliced scallion

If serving with shrimp, you can add raw shrimp (1 lb) to the pot about 2 minutes before the 20 minute simmer is up. 

*Would also be good paired with a white flaky broiled fish like grouper or haddock.

If you’d like to be featured, send us your favorite recipe using ingredients from the G&G grocery section to marketing@garnishandgather.com