shrimp and grits

Butter and chicken stock (homemade) ↓. 

A sauce will go on this polenta. The sauce will be a standard velouté started with butter and flour roux with chicken stock. It could as easily be a Béchamel with cream or a combination of milk and cream. You will notice that butter and homemade chicken stock are mirrored in the polenta and the sauce. The reason for that is because this chicken stock is so good, I should use it. The Béchamel would be the fall back sauce for times when I didn't have any decent chicken stock, or on days when that would be my preference. This sauce will also have celery, baby courgette, more of the mild chile, and a hot chile too because there are a few of those on hand. Otherwise I would use a cayenne powder or habanero flakes, or any number of other specific types of dry powdered chile that are stored in the freezer. Onion but no garlic. The only reason I did not add garlic is because I didn't feel like it. It is little decisions like this that ensure this dish can never come out exactly the same way twice.I am trying to explain how these things come about by a series of small decisions and whims, and not by any sense of loyalty or fealty to established recipe. 

There is a bit of a problem, but nothing that cannot be worked out. The sauce is built up by layering flavors. In the same pot, the vegetables are built up too, as a stir fry, sturdiest first, most tender last. It is easier to judge the liquid to the roux for the sauce when the roux is prepared separately and then vegetables added to the sauce. But that messes two pans and we bachelor types do not like that. Flour added to the pot while the vegetables are in there coats all the vegetables with flour which tends to absorb the liquid that the vegetables release. Essentially, the sauce is started prematurely and with minor clumps. The two processes interfere with each other. The flour must brown to darken the roux, and the vegetables sear best on their own accord with no interference from flour. When the liquid is added, the sauce does not form immediately as it would if the flour was not already coating all the vegetables. When they are cooked together, as these are here, then the sauce forms more slowly. The cook must trust that their ratio of fat to flour to liquid is correct or at least very close because it takes time for the flour to dislodge and for the molecules to unravel and form the matrix that causes the sauce to thicken. The ratio is 1 tablespoon butter + 1 level tablespoon flour + 1 cup liquid, for a reasonably thickened sauce. Adjust as desired. 

All of the vegetables except for the pile of mild green chiles are in the pot in sequence. They are about 1/3 of the way cooked when the flour is added ↑ along with the curry which also benefits from a quick frying before the liquid is added. 

The full amount of liquid is added at once. Nothing happens at first because the flour is still coating the vegetables. ↓ 

The mild green chiles are added, the liquid comes to a complete boil, the sauce is completed. ↓

Following this, the shrimp are added all at once and the heat is cut off immediately before plating. The addition of the shrimp halts the boiling action. It takes a few minutes for the residual heat to cook the shrimp through. If I were serving this to my peers or to my family, and I have, then I would make a point to wrongly overcook the shrimp to suit their bizarre conclusion that shrimp must bounce off the table or else it is insufficiently cooked.

My nephew said, "What? Are you saying I ate grits last night? No way. That couldn't happen 'cause I don't eat no grits." That caused me to reply with all the kindness I could muster, "You're an idiot."