Can a picky eater overcome a lifelong aversion to "branching out"?

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Spicy Shrimp

It has been awhile since my last update!  But that doesn't mean that I haven't been cooking and trying out new recipes.  It just means that after eating them, I never got around to the part where I sit down and type it up!  But today is a quiet, lazy day so I have the time and headspace to do it!

I don't know if I have made this clear yet, but I don't like seafood.  Sorry.  Reframe.  I struggle with seafood.  I have issues with the textures and I find some seafood vaguely intimidating.  However, the one seafood I have always been generally okay with is shrimp.  Unless it was deep-fried, it has never been something I actively seek out, but it is one of the few types of seafood that I have been willing to eat throughout my life.  (The other one is scallops, provided they are wrapped in bacon and grilled).  I have been wanting to work on eating more shrimp.  It is a food that I am generally good with and it is a good, healthy protein and considering the amount of red meat we consume, it would be really great to switch out every once in a while for some leaner, healthier meats.

So I came across a shrimp recipe and decided to try it out!!  This was another impressive moment in cooking for me.  I read the recipe (Original Here) and I thought it generally sounded good but I had a few issues with it.  One was that I wanted to have it for dinner, not as an appetizer.  The other was that I don't like mayonnaise and I don't have any in the house.  I didn't really want to go out and buy mayo just for this recipe so I tried to figure out how to skip it.  The solutions???  Serve the shrimp over rice and swap out the mayo for greek yogurt and a little olive oil!!  Brilliant.



Instead of cooking the rice with water, I cooked it in some homemade chicken stock to help add a little bit more flavor.  The shrimp was delicious.  I don't think the step about tossing the shrimp in cornstarch really matters that much.  It helps them get brown and crispy on the outside and they look good while you are cooking them, but it doesn't add any flavor and they get so covered in the sauce that you aren't seeing the pretty browning anyways.  It only takes a few seconds, so it isn't a huge hassle to leave it in, but if you are out of cornstarch, I wouldn't sweat skipping the step.  I loved the heat of this meal.  I loved the spices.  It went really well with the rice and green onions.  And on top of it all, it was fast and ludicrously easy.

I am going to end this entry now because the more I type, the hungrier I get and unfortunately, I think we maybe out of shrimp right now.......

1 comment:

  1. It is good to have you blogging some more. Write-on! *smile*

    ReplyDelete