Recipe: Aguacate Relleno con Cóctel de Camarones | Venezuelan Shrimp Avocado Cocktail

Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still feel the sun shining, the sea breeze drying out the salty water drops from my skin, and that distinct scent of ocean and sunscreen. These are some of my most treasured childhood memories.

My grandfather was a member of a beach club located on the coast, close to the international airport in Maiquetía. This is where I would spend many weekends, long weekends, special occasions and long vacations as a child. My grandfather owned an apartment close to the beach club, so the whole family would travel from the capital city to the beach and stay there enjoying the apartment and entry to the club.

The club, Playa Grande Yachting Club, was gated and safe. I remember my cousin and I would roam around from one end of the club to the other without supervision… or permission. We would enjoy the beach, play in the sand, roller blade through the walkways, buy chucherías from the many little stores inside the club, jumping from the diving board in the adult pool and playing games in the kids pool, watching movies in the open-air theater, riding bikes, collecting seashells, water skiing with our uncle, and so much more.

One of the best parts of the club was the food. They had several different restaurants and small food huts all throughout the club. Our parents would send us off to buy a dozen empanadas from the pool hut to bring back and enjoy together on the beach.

One of the restaurants, La Capitanía, was atop of one of the man-made piers, it had the best views of the marina where all the fancy yachts swayed with the waves. It was a bit higher up than the rest of the club, so it had the best views of the sunset as well. It was surrounded with rocky cliffs that we were told many times not to climb, from where stray cats would meow asking for scraps of food. The eating area was open on the sides but covered from the sun, you could feel the sea breeze as you enjoyed the fresh seafood.

One of my most vivid memories is visiting this restaurant with my family one day. I was a very picky eater as a kid, and seafood always looked weird to me. I didn’t want to try any of it. The waiter had brought an appetizer for the table, like everything else, it looked weird to that picky eater. It also looked very fancy, though. It had some pink moon-shaped pieces, on top of a large green soft bowl of sorts, and it was all served in a very large and tall cocktail glass and drizzled with pink sauce. I asked my mom “¿Qué es eso?”, she said it was cóctel de camarones… then I asked what the green stuff was, and she said it was aguacate… then I asked what camarones are, and I didn’t care for the answer because it was seafood. At least I knew what the pink sauce was, and I already knew I liked it. My mom was insistent that I tried it. I refused several times. My family ate it all before I tried it, but it was so good that they ordered a second one. My mom finally convinced me to try it. It was the most delicious thing that picky eater had ever tried. This was the day avocado became one of my favorite things in the world… and it still is. That’s probably why I remember it so vividly. That day I also learned to try everything, at least once.

Throughout all the years we spend visiting the beach club, I developed a few favorites: cóctel de camarones, limonada frappe con granadina, and torta opera. I have had limonada frappe con granadina, and I was thinking about posting the recipe here, too. I have had Opera cake when I found it in an Italian market in South Florida, but I hadn’t eaten that delicious shrimp avocado cocktail, probably since the last time I had it at the club, many, many, many years ago. It was time. While visiting my sister in Illinois we decided to recreate the recipe from memory with a few twists of our own, and now I want to share this recipe with you. If you are lucky enough to live near the beach, serve it outdoors, enjoying the sea breeze.

What you need:
– 1 large avocado
– ½ bag of frozen shrimp (ready to eat)
– 1 or 2 limes
– Extra virgin olive oil
– 1 cup mayo
– 6 tbsp ketchup
– 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
– ¼ tsp salt
– 1/8 tsp white pepper

Preparation:
1. Start by thawing the shrimp. Follow the instructions on the bag. It will depend on the brand, but it usually involves running the shrimp under cold water until completely thawed. I am not really providing measurements of how much shrimp because it will depend on how many servings you wish to make, and how big your avocados are.

2. Mix the mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. This is what we in Venezuela call “Salsa Rosada”, or pink sauce. You can add a few drops of hot sauce if you want to spice things up a bit, but that’s optional.

3. Open up the avocado in half and remove the pit. It is best to have the largest avocadoes you can find. I didn’t find any large ones, so I had to use Hass avocados, but the larger the better. Scoop out some of the avocado to create the “bowl” where you will serve the shrimp. Do not discard the avocado meat you scoop out. Keep it, since we will mix it in later.

4. Once the shrimp is thawed, you can choose to serve whole or remove the shells and chop them up. For this recipe we chose to remove the shells and chop the shrimp, as well as mix the avocado meat we took out with the chopped shrimp.

5. Add a bit of the pink sauce to the mix. If you choose to leave the shrimp whole, you can put the shrimp inside the avocado halves and drizzle the pink sauce on top. We chose to chop the shrimp, add the avocado and then add the pink sauce into the mixture. If you chose to mix everything up, add some lime as well.

6. Serve with additional pink sauce on the side and a wedge of lime. You can also drizzle a bit of olive oil on top.

¡Buen Provecho!

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

Recipe: Pan de Jamón | Venezuelan Christmas Dinner Ham Bread

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. One thing I didn’t have in this blog is Venezuelan Christmas Recipes… until now. I have a very informative post about Venezuelan Christmas celebrations, traditions, dinner and gifts, but I did not have any actual Christmas recipes until now. I wanted to wait until I had a couple of them, so the recipes I will post this month will be all part of the Venezuelan Christmas Dinner Recipe collection, but I have been working on them since 2012. It was hard for me to cook all the recipes at once by myself, so I had to wait for guests like my sister who visited from Venezuela back in 2012, and my grandmother and even my great grandmother to help create and compile all the recipes.
This recipe is for the #2 most important Venezuelan Christmas Dinner component; Pan de Jamón. The first component is obviously the Hallaca, I am hoping to be able to cook some hallacas with the help of the rest of the family this year to be able to add a recipe for them to this collection. It is believed that the production of pan de jamón began in the 1900’s, and has gradually been incorporated in to the Christmas dinner traditions ever since. It is said that it was originally created in a Panadería (a Venezuelan Bakery/Deli/Café) in the capital city, Caracas. First, it was only made with ham filling, then some other fillings where added including walnuts, almonds and even capers, until it became the version that we know today.
The pan de jamón is usually bought at the panadería, however, there are some families who make them at home. So now I am sharing this recipe with you, so you can make it at home yourself, like I did with my sister. I would like to give her a special thank you for her help with this recipe and blog post back in Christmas 2012.

Ingredients for Pan de Jamón

What you need:
For the Dough
– 2 Cups Milk (Room Temperature)
– 1 Teaspoon Sugar
– 1½ Tablespoon Yeast
– 8 Cups of All Purpose Flour
– 1 Stick of Butter (Soft but not melted)
– 1 Tablespoon Salt
– 3 Tablespoons Sugar
– 3 Eggs
For the Filling
– 2.2 lbs. of Boiled Ham (Sliced)
– ¼ Cup Raisins
– ½ Cup Pitted Green Olives
For the Glaze
– 2 Egg Yolks
– 2 Tablespoons Water
– 1 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation:
1. In a large enough mixing bowl, add the milk. Then, dissolve the teaspoon of sugar in the milk and then add the yeast but don’t stir it in. Cover with a kitchen towel and let it rest for about 20 minutes in an area with little to no airflow.

Mix Milk, Sugar and Yeast

2. After the 20 minutes, add only 4 cups of the flour and mix it very well using your fingers.
3. Make a ball with the dough and leave it in the bowl, cover it with cling wrap and put a kitchen towel on top. Let it sit in an area with no airflow for about 2 hours, or until it doubles in size.

Knead dough and cover

4. After 2 hours, add the rest of the flour and continue to mix it in very well with your fingers, kneading the dough with both hands.

Kneading

5. If your dough is dry, you can add two tablespoons of cold milk and knead it in. If on the contrary, your dough is too wet, you can sprinkle more dough on top and continue to knead the dough until it is uniform and consistent.
6. Cover again, as before, and let it sit for another 4 hours.
7. Take the dough out of the fridge and sprinkle some more flour on your working table. Add the soft butter, the salt, the rest of the sugar and the eggs (one by one). Knead the dough with all the ingredients very well. Until you have a very well worked dough that is uniform and without clumps. At the end you can lift it up from the table as high as you can, and let it fall on the table repeatedly until the dough easily lifts of the table and doesn’t stick to your hands.

The dough is ready

8. Divide the ball of dough in three equal parts. You can cut one small piece and set aside for decorations if you wish. Grab one part and extend it as a rectangle over your working table (be sure to sprinkle your working surface with more flour). Extend the dough using a rolling pin until the dough is about ¼ to ½ an inch.

Divide in 3 equal portions

One portion

Extend dough with rolling pin

9. Now its time to add the fillings. Begin with a layer of the ham. Add the raisins and olives. Make sure that they are well distributed. Remember to divide the olives and raisins in three equal parts for each bread. Be sure to leave an empty space of about ½ and inch border from the edge of your rectangle without any filling.

Adding the ham

10. Grab one end of your dough rectangle and begin to roll the entire thing from one end to the other.

Rolling the bread

11. Close the ends with your fingertips. At this point you can use that little bit of dough for any decorations.

Close off the ends

12. Grease a baking sheet with butter and place the bread on the sheet. Cover the bread with a kitchen towel and let it sit for another hour.
13. Preheat your oven to 400°F.
14. Place the bread in the oven (one at a time) for 30 minutes.
15. Take the bread out of the oven and using a brush, cover the top of the bread with the glaze mixture (mix all the glaze ingredients in a bowl).

Glaze

16. Place the bread back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Recipe: Pan de Jamón | Venezuelan Christmas Dinner Ham Bread

Recipe: Pan de Jamón | Venezuelan Christmas Dinner Ham Bread

¡Buen Provecho!