Recipes Discovered

Shrimp Stir Fry Recipe

Needing a quick dinner the other night, I went to the refrigerator to see what I could find. With all of our traveling, there wasn’t much to choose from, but I did come across some broccoli and frozen shrimp. I figured I could make a quick stir fry out of those two ingredients, so that’s what I ended up having.
First, I sauteed the shrimp with just a little salt and pepper. As soon as they turned pink (it only takes about 3 minutes), I removed them from the pan. I then added scallions, garlic, and grated ginger root to the pan, and stir fried that for a minute before adding the broccoli. I had fresh broccoli, but fresh could be replaced with frozen, although it wouldn’t quite have the same texture. After stir frying the broccoli for a minute, I added chicken stock, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce to the pan, covered it, and let the broccoli steam for about 5 minutes, just until it was crisp tender. I returned the shrimp to the pan, let them heat through, and then served the stir fry over brown rice with a drizzle of sesame oil (a little bit goes a long way!).
For being so simple, this was a really delicious stir fry. The rice vinegar adds a nice background taste, while the sesame oil brings the whole dish to a new level of flavor. I tried the recipe for a simple dinner, but I will definitely be using it again for future dinners.

Cod in a Sack Recipe

Sometimes figuring out what to make for dinner can be a challenge, especially when trying to please more than just yourself. My cousin recently gave me Rachael Ray’s 365: No Repeats Cookbook as a gift, and it’s really a great cookbook. It’s not just a book full of recipe, but it’s recipes for complete meals. It’s also not divided up into categories, so I can flip through and easily look at a variety of meal ideas. There are also ideas for alternative ingredients and substitutions. Plus, since it’s a Rachael Ray cookbook, all of the recipe are easy to follow and are designed to make cooking simple.

The first recipe I tried was titled Cod in a Sack. I love fish, but haven’t really found a lot of creative recipes. This one was a lot of fun, because the meal is built inside parchment paper. I used pieces that were about 18 inches long and then begin to layer the ingredients. First was green beans. I used fresh beans that I had snapped the ends off of, but I didn’t cut them in half. On top of the green beans, I sprinkled minced garlic and then laid a couple large pieces of roasted pepper of top of that. The first was next, which I seasoned with salt and pepper, and then scallions and chopped parsley. I drizzled olive oil and lemon juice over everything and then topped it all with some lemon zest. >> Read more

Key Lime Guava Shrimp Recipe

While I was flipping through a Travelhost magazine, I saw a picture of this shrimp recipe that looked outstanding. The recipe was really simple. The shrimp is just sauteed in butter with a little bit of salt and pepper. For the sauce, I used the blender to mix together guava paste, key lime juice, ginger, soy sauce, and parsley until it was smooth. I served the sauce along side the shrimp with brown rice and broccoli.

The sauce had a very strong, tangy flavor that went really well with the simplicity of the sauteed shrimp. I thought it would be too sweet because of the guava pasta, but the key lime juice balanced the sweetness and the parsley brought a freshness to the sauce. The sauce also paired nicely with the brown rice, giving it a zing of citrus. Strangely enough, my key lime guava shrimp looked absolutely nothing like the picture in the Travelhost magazine, but they still tasted good.

Baked Fish Recipe

Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

Fried fish is really popular and fish ‘n chips is even more popular. It’s also really greasy and not so great for you. I know it’s hard to replace the flavor of fried food when it’s baked, but I had to at least try. So here is my version of Fish ‘N Chips - baked instead of fried.

To add some flavor to the fries, I used sweet potatoes instead of russets. I peeled the potatoes and cut them into large fry shapes, similar to the size of a steak fry. I put them on a foil lined baking sheet and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I put them in a 400 degree oven.

While they baked, I made the batter for my fish. I mixed flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl and in another, I mixed milk and eggs. Then I combined the wet and dry ingredients. The recipe I found for baked fish had some negative reviews. People said the batter didn’t have any flavor and it didn’t really stick to the fish. To fix this, I added a tablespoon of Emeril’s Essence to the batter mixture and also dredged the fillets in a mixture of flour and Emeril’s Essence before coating them in batter. Emeril’s Essence is a combination of paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper, although I omit the cayenne. I like this as a general spice mix, but any spice mix will do. The batter just needs a little something extra. >> Read more

Pad Thai Recipe

Where we used to live, there was an over abundance of Thai restaurants. At our current location, there is one Thai restaurant and it’s possibly the worst place I have ever eaten and I will not go back, no matter how much I crave Pad Thai. I tried finding a recipe so I could make it myself, but most of them require ingredients that I can’t find. After a lot of searching, I finally found a recipe at www.realsimple.com.

The recipe starts with dry rice noodles that are soaked in water for a half hour. The only package of rice noodles I found at my store though said to cook them in boiling water for 5 minutes, so that’s what I did and they turned out very good. I cubed the tofu and then drained it by placing it between a few layers of paper towels and putting a book on top. It only takes about 15 minutes to get a lot of the water out. After that, it’s a basic stir fry so make sure all of the ingredients are ready to go in the skillet. I mixed the fish sauce, vinegar, brown sugar and paprika together in a small dish and then sliced up the scallions and red pepper. >> Read more