(Belated Again) Chinese New Year Meal #7: Crispy Pan-Fried Noodle Cakes with Seafood

Guess what?  We finally finished our week of Chinese New Year meals!  It only took a couple months...  When I first started posting a week's worth of Chinese New Year meals on the blog I spent hours pouring over recipes trying to represent the different regions and cuisines of China.  I wanted seven meals made from different ingredients, some spicy, some meaty, some vegetarian, some noodles, some dumplings...  It was quite a process.  This year I didn't have a lot of time to plan.  And since I was so behind the ball in getting started I rushed into things a little.  Fuchsia Dunlop is always a good source for a few Chinese New Year meals.  I love all three of her cookbooks.  In the past year or two I have come to rely more and more on Serious Eats for new recipes.  I love that they make up their own recipes in addition testing out cookbooks.  I also love that their recipes run the gamut of different types of Chinese cuisine.  Four out of the seven Chinese New Years meals I made this year (including this one) were from Serious Eats.  There were a few other recipes I found elsewhere, but for one reason or another they didn't make the cut.  Some were a little too fusion-y, others involved ingredients that I couldn't find.  But what tended to happen was that I stumbled across a recipe that I wanted to make more.  This recipe for pan-fried noodles wasn't one that I originally planned on making.  I don't typically make more than one noodle dish, but I really love pan-fried noodles.  But other than the double-up on the noodles, I think we did a pretty good job of diversifying our meals.  We did one Sichuanese dish with beef and another with chicken, one Taiwanese dish with pork belly, one Xinjiang dish with lamb, one Cantonese dish with seafood...  

This dish was surprisingly successful.  I was pretty happy with it.  When we tried to make pan-fried noodles in the past we always ended up with burnt noodles that stuck to the wok, which resulted in burnt noodles and made it far more difficult to transfer the noodles from the wok in order to flip them over and cook the other side.  But these worked out pretty well!  There was some sticking on the first side after we added the water, but the second side worked perfectly.  And the process of parboiling the scallops and blanching the greens worked out really well because both ended up perfectly cooked.  The original recipe on Serious Eats calls for the addition of calamari and fish balls, but the grocery store was out of calamari and I don't really like fish balls so I decided to leave them out.  I really liked the combination of bay scallops and shrimp, but I might try the calamari next time if it was available.

Recipe after the jump!

Tacos de Camaron

There is a restaurant in the East Village called Mercadito that has the best shrimp tacos I have ever tasted.  They also make really good fried fish tacos and guacamole, but it's the shrimp tacos that really stick with me because the shrimp are in this creamy, spicy chipotle sauce that I love.  Yum.  About a month ago I saw a recipe on People.com for those tacos and I got really excited.  We had originally been planning on making a variation on some shrimp tacos that I had at Nada in Cincinnati, but I got all excited when I saw this recipe.  The tacos were good, but I'm not sure how faithful they are to the recipe that the restaurant actually uses.  At the very least, they have to puree the chipotle sauce because the shrimp is bathed in a really creamy, spicy and rich sauce at the restaurant with no discernible chunks.  This version was a lot more rustic (and a lot spicier than I remember), which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The sauce was a lot thinner - I think to replicate the sauce you would have to add some more butter and puree.  It might need a little something to give it some more oomph.  I didn't bother to take a bunch of pictures trying to get a really nice one because the tacos looked like a mess on a tortilla and there's really only so much you can do about that.  So long as you aren't afraid of mess, spice or chipotles, they are very tasty.  These aren't the best shrimp tacos we have ever made, but I would make them again with a few minor tweaks.

Recipe after the jump!

Corn Som Tam with Rock Shrimp

Last June I saw this recipe on Serious Eats for Corn Som Tam and got all excited.  Then life got in the way and before I knew it corn season was over at the farmers' market so I never had the chance to make it.  It was very sad.  But as soon as I saw the fresh corn at the farmers' market this morning I knew we had to make this.  So I spent a little time on my iPhone figuring out exactly what ingredients we needed (the rock shrimp was an impulse buy yesterday afternoon) and we picked up cherry tomatoes, some beautiful haricots verts and corn.  Then I hit the grocery store for more limes and shredded carrots.  It has been a really long time since I have had the time to sit in the kitchen and take my time making a meal from scratch so this was something of a fun zen experience for me.  Most meals of late have been hurriedly thrown together (mostly by Alex, with some fly by assistance from yours truly) in brief breaks between doing work, but I had the whole afternoon to myself today to play in the kitchen.  I made a hell of a mess (and Brady helped by leaving green bean bits all over the floor), but I got to make lunch all by myself!  This might not sound exciting to most of you, but I really miss cooking when work becomes all-consuming.  Don't get me wrong, it's great when Alex cooks dinner because he is a pretty darn good cook, but I miss being able to cook and menu plan at my leisure.  

As far as som tams go, I might prefer the version with green papaya for the interplay of texture and sweetness, but this was a nice summery alternative.  I love Thai flavors, fresh corn salads and great summer produce so this recipe combined a number of things that I enjoy.  I think this would make a really nice component of a larger meal but it's pretty light to be the only dish.  If I had been cooking lunch or dinner for 4 (or more) people, I would have made a larb or maybe this Crying Tiger Grilled Steak to go with the som tam.

Recipe after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #2: Kung Pao Shrimp and Smacked Cucumbers with Sesame and Preserved Mustard Greens

The funny thing about this recipe is that I started thinking about kung pao shrimp after Alex pulled down all of our various nuts and complained that we had far too many nuts in the apartment and needed to go ahead and use some of them.  I already had a recipe in mind that required some peanuts but the first thing that came to mind when it came down to using more peanuts was to make kung pao.  And as we have already made kung pao chicken and I was looking for a seafood recipe anyway, kung pao shrimp seemed like a really good alternative.  I can't say that I have ever tried kung pao shrimp before, but since when has that stopped me before?  I briefly considered taking the kung pao chicken recipe we made some time ago and modifying it to use shrimp, but then I decided to try something new and go with a recipe I found online.  I was looking at two recipes - one from Rasamalaysia and another from Appetite for China and I ended up deciding to use the one from Appetite for China because I thought the picture was prettier.  As you can see, I'm not above admitting it when I make a decision for purely shallow reasons.  And rather than deviating from the recipe at all, I decided to make it exactly as written.  I was pretty proud of myself for sticking with it.  And we threw in yet another variation on smacked cucumbers from Fuchsia Dunlop's new cookbook because I wanted some sort of easy veggie to go with our shrimp.

Alex and I are currently in disagreement about which of our two (Belated) Chinese New Year meals we preferred.  I preferred Sunday night's Cold Chicken with Spicy Sichuan Sauce and Stir-Fried Broccoli with Chili and Sichuan Pepper whereas Alex preferred last night's kung pao shrimp and smacked cucumbers.  While the shrimp was perfectly cooked, I thought the flavor balance was off - the sour flavor and numbing sensation of the Sichuan peppercorns overwhelmed the sweet and spicy flavor that I was hoping for.  I love the flavor of Sichuan peppercorns, but my biggest complaint about some of the "Sichuan" restaurants in New York City is that they abandon developing layers of flavor in favor of dumping on a bunch of Sichuan peppercorns or hot chilis.  A lot of these restaurants would do well to cut back on the amount of Sichuan peppercorn in their dishes so that the peppercorns perfume but don't overwhelm the dish.  But enough of that.  If I were to make this dish again I would cut the amount of Sichuan peppercorn by half, or forgo them entirely.  I would probably modify the sauce recipe to leave out the hoisin and perhaps play with the proportions of the other liquids.  As for the cucumbers, I am a total sucker for Chinese cucumber salads of all sorts.  We have made several different variations on smacked cucumbers from Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks and while this one wasn't my favorite, it was different and easy.  It was nice to have a non-spicy version for a change.  I think her new cookbook has another two variations on smacked cucumbers so we will have to give those a try at some point and I'll see which one I like best.

Recipes after the jump!

Tandoori Shrimp Salad

This dish was something I randomly came up with one night a few weeks ago while trying to decide how to use the shrimp I had defrosted.  I started thinking that we hadn't had an entree salad in awhile and then started thinking about what kind of shrimp salad I could make that would be interesting enough to appeal to Alex (who isn't a huge fan of the entree salad genre but goes along with it to humor me).  I started kicking around ideas in my head until I came up with the idea of doing a quasi-Indian tandoori shrimp salad - marinating the shrimp tandoori style, crisping up some garlic naan to use as croutons and rounding out the salad with the cucumber, red onion and radishes we already had in the fridge.  When I hit the grocery store to pick up some salad greens and the naan I decided that baby spinach sounded like the obvious choice.  Then I decided that some grape tomatoes would be another nice addition to the salad.  And then I went home and started wildly throwing stuff together.

My favorite elements of the salad were the shrimp (even though we overcooked them they had nice flavor) and the whole garlic naan as crouton idea.  Unfortunately, overcooking seemed to be something of a theme because I wandered off and crisped up the naan a little more than I had intended.  Oops.  I also love salads full of herbs and random veggies.  Adding herbs to salads is somewhat new to me (and I only do it occasionally), but ever since I had a salad at The Spotted Pig that included some fresh mint I have been intrigued by the idea of using herbs (in moderation) in salads.  Now that I think about it there was an Asian salad I was obsessed with over the summer at Chop't that also included herbs.  Unfortunately they rotate their menu of salads and that salad is no longer available, but I have high hopes that it will be back next summer.  The dressing was also nice - I liked the interplay between the tang of the Greek yogurt, the hint of sweetness from the honey and the warmth from the spices.  I would definitely try the dressing again and play with the spices until I found the perfect combination (I think the combination we found was a good one and worked really well with the salad, but I'm sure that there are a lot of different variations that would be just as good, if not better).

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp, Pumpkin and Coconut Soup

We made chicken pho last weekend (which I will post about later this week - I promise) and we ended up with a ton of really good leftover Asian chicken stock.  The only logical thing to do when you have 8 cups of leftover homemade chicken stock (and you already have some homemade chicken stock in the freezer) is to go on a soup-making extravaganza.  And given the cool temperatures and rainy weather outside, soup was the ideal meal.  Last night we made this shrimp, pumpkin and coconut soup.  We had a cheese pumpkin and some Thai basil hanging around the apartment that I wanted to use so I started thinking pumpkin soup.  And then I started thinking pumpkin and coconut soup because they work brilliantly together and are fairly common in some Asian cuisines.  So I started paging through our Thai cookbook and stumbled pretty quickly on a recipe for a pumpkin coconut soup (which I have renamed Shrimp, Pumpkin and Coconut soup since it has shrimp in it too).  We adapted it a bit to work with what we had in the apartment and then went for it.  

I thought that the soup was a success in a lot of ways.  It was tasty and fairly easy.  And the flavors were pretty complex.  I think some of the complexity was due to the homemade stock, but some of it was due to the spice paste and the other ingredients.  The soup had a lot of intense flavors without tasting fishy - and given that it had dried shrimp, fish sauce and shrimp in it (and given the smells that filtered out into the hallway as the soup simmered) I was worried it would taste a little fishier.  But the sweetness of the pumpkin, coconut milk and the coconut sugar and the heat of the jalapeno and the Thai chili really balanced it out.  After tasting the soup we decided to add a little squeeze of lime juice at the end and the acid really brought it all together.  Yum.  Hurray for soup.

Recipe after the jump!

Nigel Slaters's Shrimp with Asian Greens

Look - another seafood dish!  Go us!  And this will officially be your last seafood post from us (and potentially your last post) until after Thanksgiving.  Turkey here I come!  I found this recipe during one of my various recipe hunting jaunts.  One day I pulled open my iPad and there it was.  I have no idea when I first found it, but it has been staring at me every time I opened up Safari on my iPad for the past few weeks.  So we finally gave it a go.  I don't have any idea who Nigel Slater is, but given how much we liked this recipe I might have to track down some more of his recipes.  I had this impression that he is the UK equivalent of Mark Bittman (lord only knows where I came up with that idea, but a brief Wiki session seems to substantiate it).  The recipe was simple and came together relatively quickly (once you finished prepping).  And it was more than the sum of its parts - the flavor of the basil and the aromatics (particularly the lemongrass and the ginger) came through really well and it had a lovely balance of sour, sweet, spicy and salty.  I was worried that the fish sauce and lime juice combo would lead to it being kind of one note, but it really worked.  And it was surprisingly spicy given that we only used one serrano chili for 3/4 pound each of baby bok choy and shrimp. I loved serving it with brown rice because I thought the nuttier flavor and chewier texture of the brown rice was a nice complement to the dish.  I know we made a good dish when Alex pours the rest of his shrimp juju over his rice and then cleans his rice bowl.  And he did it this time.  Even though he doesn't really like brown rice.  If my word that the dish was good isn't enough for you, I'm sure that you will find the Alex rice bowl test totally persuasive.  Now if only I had taken a picture of the empty rice bowl...

Recipe after the jump!

Thai Soup with Shrimp, Cabbage and Mushrooms

I am embarassed to say that I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks - long enough for me to forget the finer points I might have made.  Oops.  But I wrote down a few notes right after we made the soup from Alex, who thought the soup was "pretty good," "wasn't that hard to make" and "had pretty good balance of flavors."  So there you have it.  I agree with Alex that the soup was "pretty good," although I thought the broth itself needed something to give it a little more depth of flavor.  It tasted a little thin for me.  I'm not sure that thin is the right word (although it does describe the consistency), but I just wanted the broth to be a little richer and more flavorful.  The night we made this recipe I really wanted to make this Thai Shrimp and Coconut Soup with Lemongrass by Harold Dieterle, but it required yet another trip to the grocery store for lemongrass, tamarind concentrate (I think I threw the rest of ours out) and Thai chilis.  And I just got too lazy, so we used Thai curry paste and some dried lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves to spice up the broth.  It did give it some heat and flavor, but I just wanted it to be bigger/better.  Next time, I will plan more in advance and go buy the fresh lemongrass, etc. and make the Harold Dieterle soup because it really does sound fantastic. 

Recipe after the jump!

Asian Shrimp Boil with Asian Dipping Sauce

What do you serve when it is entirely too hot outside to cook, but you have raw shell-on shrimp in the fridge?  If you are me, you make a shrimp boil.  If you are Alex, you propose making an Asian shrimp boil.  Then he got a little worried that the Asian shrimp boil wouldn't be Asian enough so he proposed making an Asian dipping sauce to go with our Asian shrimp boil.  At that point, why not?  I figured that an Asian shrimp boil sounded like an interesting proposition and his Asian dipping sauce could be interesting too.  So we went for it.  And it was pretty tasty.  It was also very summery and easy to make.  If you make just the shrimp you won't be wowed by the amount of Asian flavor in the shrimp, but it is tasty nonetheless.  I highly recommend making the shrimp and the sauce if you want the full effect.  If we had only made the shrimp I might have longed for a more traditional shrimp boil with heaps of Old Bay.

Recipe after the jump!

Pumpkin Seed Pesto Two Ways

 

 

This base recipe for Pumpkin Seed Pesto came from our Susan Spicer cookbook.  And then I took it and served it two ways - one as a dip for tortilla chips with some avocado mixed in, and then I tossed some chili-rubbed shrimp in the pesto and served that with additional pesto for dipping.  Of the two variations, I preferred the dip.  It was very interesting.  Given the choice I would prefer guacamole, but I thought the dip had a pleasing blend of flavors and a nice lush, creamy texture.  I think the element that really threw the pesto off for me  was the feta.  Perhaps if we had used cotija cheese it would have worked better?  I just thought the feta added a slightly out of key, discordant flavor to the dip that was more evident in the pesto itself, than it was in the dip.  The pesto also seemed a bit... heavier and greasier.  I'm not sure those are the correct words to use to describe it, but I can't think of any better adjectives.  We made a Pan-Seared Salmon with Pumpkin-Seed Cilantro Pesto that I found more successful overall, if perhaps a little less interesting.  If I had to pick one dish to make again (since they are fairly similar) I would pick the salmon because I thought as an overall dish it was more successful.  I also thought that pesto was just brighter and tastier.

Recipes after the jump!

Shrimp in Spicy Tamarind Sauce

A few days ago Alex made a comment about how long it had been since we made Asian food.  And looking back, it really has been awhile.  We made Negima last month and Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup early last week, but it has been months since we really made Asian food.  Actually, our last little Asian food kick was related to Chinese New Year, which is not surprising.  Now that I am recovering from my salad obsession, we can go back to making more Asian food again.  Exciting, huh?

This shrimp recipe was a great way to break our homecooked Asian embargo.  It was delicious.  I might even go so far as to say that it is one of my favorite shrimp dishes we have ever made on the blog and certainly it is one of the best recipes we have made from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors.  All of the recipes from that particular cookbook are good, but this shrimp was just really high up there for me.  The sauce was a wonderful balance of tartness from the tamarind, spicyness from the Sriracha and sweetness from the shallots and the sugar.  It all just worked so well.  Alex liked the sauce so much that he saved his rice until after he finished his shrimp so he could dump his rice into the sauce and eat it doused in spicy tamarind sauce.  I like my rice to stay separate and distinct from any sauce, but even I considered doing it.  As a bonus, the recipe was totally easy to make!  If I were in the habit of grading recipes I would totally give this one an A+.  I'm not in the habit but I am going to give it an A+ anyway!


Recipe after the jump!

Madhur Jaffrey's Shrimp Biryani

I have been wanting to make Indian food for a few weeks now.  But something always got in the way.  Tonight we finally had the opportunity to make some biryani.  Biryani is a dish that I have enjoyed at restaurants in the past (although I typically eat chicken biryani rather than shrimp biryani), but I have never attempted to make it at home before.  Madhur Jaffrey is my go-to Indian chef so I decided that I had to use one of her recipes for my first attempt at biryani.  One of our Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks contains a recipe for lamb biryani, but I found this recipe online at Serious Eats.  Since we had shrimp in the freezer and shrimp is healthier than lamb, I decided to go with the shrimp biryani, rather than the lamb.  Another benefit of making shrimp biryani rather than chicken or lamb biryani is that a biryani with meat takes far longer to cook.

Alex and I are agreed that the biryani was good, but not our favorite Indian dish that we have made.  The shrimp had nice flavor, but the rice was less flavorful than Alex had hoped.  We added a little more lemon juice to the shrimp, which I think was a nice touch, but I wish we had added a little more cilantro to the rice as well.  It also occurred to me after the fact that we could have added some mango pickle (like they do at the biryani cart near my office) or something else to the dish to give it some kick.  Maybe next time?

Recipe after the jump!

Hugh Acheson's Pickled Shrimp

Once again I have to thank someone else for finding this recipe.  Alex decided that he wanted to make pickled shrimp so I tasked him with finding a recipe.  We tried pickled shrimp once before (Ashley's Pickled Shrimp and Bayona Caesar Salad) and I thought the shrimp was good, but not great.  So I wasn't totally on board with the pickled shrimp idea until he dug up this recipe from Hugh Acheson.  For those of you who watch Top Chef, Hugh was one of the judges this past season.  Specifically, he was the one with the unibrow (or as Alex called it, the monobrow).  Anyway, he says the most amazing and irreverent things.  For the record, I'm a big fan of him as a judge.  And after this pickled shrimp, I am a big fan of his food.  The shrimp were fresh and juicy - I really liked the combination of lemon juice and evoo.  Alex said that he wished they were a little more pickled (as in he wishes there had been some vinegar in the pickling liquid), but I liked them just the way they were.  We served the shrimp with some crusty bread and an arugula salad and it was a very fresh, light meal that still had a lot of flavor.  By the end of the meal I was mopping up the pool of pickling liquid with my bread.  And if we hadn't run out of bread I would have continued doing so.  I would totally make these again for a picnic or on any hot summer night when the last thing you want to do is turn on the oven or slave away in the kitchen.  The cooking time on these shrimp is totally minimal - 2 minutes and then they marinate in the fridge overnight.  The dish is incredibly simple and tasty, and it lends itself to a really nice summery meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #5 - Fragrant-and-Hot Tiger Prawns with Stir-Fried Yu Choy with Oyster Sauce

My one pet peeve with this recipe (and with a lot of Chinese cooking) is the amount of peanut oil that you end up using.  So much Chinese cooking requires large amounts of peanut oil or vegetable oil to "pass through" (aka deep-fry briefly).  I try to cut down on the amount of oil whenever possible, but there is only so much you can do with some recipes.  While I dislike disposing of this much oil, I have to admit that briefly deep-frying the shrimp in their shells gave the dish great flavor and texture.  The shrimp were succulent and juicy.  And the other ingredients in the stir-fry gave the shrimp a slightly spicy, finger-licking good shrimpy flavor.  Alex thinks these prawns rank right in the middle of our Chinese New Year meals thus far - #1 was the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings, then the Ants Climbing a Tree, Fragrant-and-Hot Numbing Tiger Prawns, Xinjiang Lamb Kebobs and his least favorite meal was Peng's Home-Style Bean Curd.  I'm not sure exactly where I would rank the shrimp, but they would definitely be in the top 3.  I think I would rank the Ants Climbing a Tree above the dumplings and I might rank tonight's prawns above the dumplings.  The daikon slivers were by far my favorite side that I have made thus far (followed by the naan and sauteed watercress), but if we are just judging the meals based on the entrees themselves, I would probably rank the dishes in that order (followed by the lamb and then the tofu).

We served our shrimp with some white rice and some sauteed yu choy.  It was a very nice meal.  I think we are going to take the next few days off from our Chinese New Year mission, but stay tuned later this week or this weekend for another installment!

Recipes after the jump! 

Greek-Spiced Baked Shrimp

I know that I periodically say that we need to make more Mediterranean food.  I'm not sure why we don't, but when I am menu planning my default is generally Asian, followed by American.  After that I probably start thinking about Italian.  Those defaults are reflected in our cookbook collection.  We have a ton of Asian cookbooks, a decent number of American and Italian cookbooks, and then a smattering of Indian, seafood, etc.  We don't own a single Mediterranean cookbook (if you don't include Italian as Mediterranean).  I guess I should start looking around for a good Mediterranean cookbook to add to our collection.  If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.

This recipe was one I found online awhile ago.  I believe it was around the time I posted my last resolution to cook Mediterranean food more often.  What I liked best about the dish was the tomato sauce.  It had good flavor and sweetness from the spices and the onions, but wasn't cloying at all.  I really liked the addition of cinnamon and allspice, which gave the sauce a warmth/richness.  We don't typically use cinnamon and allspice in savory dishes (except for say beef rendang), but this dish might inspire me to do it more often.  What I liked least about the dish was that the shrimp itself didn't pick up a huge amount of flavor from the tomato sace - maybe that's why all of the reviews on Epicurious said to marinate the shrimp first.  Oops.  We didn't have time.  When you had bites of shrimp with the tomato sauce on top it was really nice, but when you just had the shrimp by itself it was kind of boring.  We served the shrimp with salad, warm pita and crusty bread (I ate the pita and Alex ate the crusty bread).  I loved dipping the bread through the tomato sauce, so you are definitely going to want to serve something carb-laden on the side to soak up the sauce.

Recipe after the jump!

Mint-Marinated Shrimp with Tabbouleh, Tomatoes and Feta

Somehow this week has turned into a Mediterranean fiesta.  Can you even say that?  Who knows.  I am saying it anyway.  But thus far this week I have posted Grilled Branzino with Ladolemono and Lamb Souvlaki Sandwiches with Tzatziki Sauce.  Including this dish, this is more Mediterranean food than I think we have ever made in such a short span.  Look at us mixing things up!  I'm fairly proud of myself - make that ourselves since Alex helped me cook the souvlaki and the branzino.  But I get to take most of the credit for picking out/making up the recipes.  This recipe was one that I stumbled across last week while looking for some new shrimp recipes.  We make a lot of shrimp (we probably cook almost as much shrimp as we do chicken) and I am always interested in finding new healthy, shrimp recipes.  This particular recipe appealed to me because it was a different flavor profile from our usual dishes and involved a new ingredient that I had never cooked with before - bulgur.  I know that bulgur is traditionally used for tabbouleh (or tabouli or however you spell it), but when I have made tabbouleh in the past we have used other grains like quinoa.  But it's always fun to try new things.  And now that I have bulgur I have to figure out other uses for it, which is even more fun!

Alex particularly enjoyed this dish.  I thought it was nice and fresh.  I particularly liked the tabbouleh salad, although I thought the shrimp didn't absorb quite as much lemon flavor as I would have liked.  That might be due to the fact that we only marinated the shrimp for 15 minutes, rather than the 30 that the recipe specified, but I just don't know if marinating the pre-cooked shrimp for an extra 15 minutes would really have resulted in much additional flavor.  But roasting the shrimp definitely intensified the flavors of the shrimp themselves, which I think is a good thing.  Actually, I think it would be a fabulous cold picnic dish.  I feel like I say that fairly often, but this dish really would be.  It would be just as good served cold as it would room temperature and it's a wonderful alternative to pasta salad or chicken salad.

Recipe after the jump!

Smoky Shrimp, Hominy and Tortilla Soup

I have had many bowls of chicken tortilla soup over the years, but I have never come across shrimp tortilla soup.  So when I saw this recipe for Shrimp, Hominy and Tortilla Soup I was intrigued.  I love tortilla soup and I love making soups with hominy in them.  Whenever I make chicken chili or chicken tortilla soup I throw in a can of hominy for kicks.  The hominy gives the soup body without feeling quite as heavy or starchy as potatoes or as dense as beans.  If you haven't noticed before, I am not a huge fan of beans.  I try to eat them and enjoy them because they are so healthy, but for the most part I don't want them anywhere near my food.  I do like white beans and every once in awhile I surprise myself by liking black beans.

This recipe had a really great flavor to it and a nice balance of ingredients.  It's also really nice because it can be made with staples in your pantry.  Most people might not consider hominy or chipotles to be pantry staples, but we almost always have them in the pantry.  Sometimes we run out and forget to restock, but we keep them on hand in most normal circumstances.  The same goes for shrimp, cilantro and tortillas.  Using homemade chicken stock would obviously be awesome if I had some, but boxed stock still gives the soup a lot of flavor.  Don't forget to squeeze in the lime juice and the tortilla strips to the soup, because they make all the difference in terms of flavor and texture.  Actually, the tortilla strips were the only thing in the dish that really disappointed me.  Air drying them like that was super easy and you ended up with fairly crispy tortilla strips, but the tortilla strips lacked any real flavor.  I would prefer to fry them up like we did with our Mache and Avocado Salad with Tortilla Strips for the same (or slightly better) crunch and more flavor.  I say slightly better crunch because by frying the tortilla strips you get the real crispness of a chip, whereas by air drying them they feel crispy, but a little stale.  Even with the slightly disappointing tortilla strips, I thought the soup overall was very successful.  I would definitely make it again and I might try using almost the same recipe with rotisserie chicken instead of shrimp for a variation on the recipe.

Recipe after the jump!

Wonton Noodle Soup (Wonton Mee)

Up until middle school my Chinese grandmother (popo) lived with us.  And I always got excited when my other non-Chinese grandmother came to visit because popo would then make us all homemade wonton soup.  And I loved her wonton soup.  It was amazing.  I wouldn't eat wonton soup at any restaurant, except for one restaurant in Wheaton, MD called Full Kee, because I thought it just didn't compare.  Years later my mom told me that the secret to her wonton soup was the jar of MSG she kept in the pantry.  Whatever her secret was, those wontons were delicious.  And now that popo is no longer with us, I have had to resort to wonton soup or wonton noodle soup (aka "wonton mee") from restaurants for years.  I have found a few decent bowls of wonton mee here in the city, including the one at Great NY Noodletown, but none that are as good at popo's wonton soup or even as good as Full Kee's.  And I can't tell you how many mediocre bowls I have had throughout the years.  But it is still my go-to soup at Chinese restaurants.  It's also a benchmark by which I judge all Cantonese restaurants, although I only order the noodles when I am confident that I am in a true Cantonese restaurant.

This soup was a pretty decent first attempt at homemade wonton soup.  I think the broth needed more depth of flavor (I wish we had added some pork so it wasn't just a chicken stock), but since we made the broth separately that's a whole separate critique.  The next time I make this soup I will whip up another batch of stock with a heartier flavor.  I also wish I had some veggies to throw in the soup because a lot of the time wonton mee has random wilted greens (sometimes baby bok choy) floating in the broth.  But the wontons were pretty darn good for our first attempt.  I was fairly impressed with us.  I did look at Asian Dumplings: Mastering Spring Rolls, Samosas and More for some guidance, but the recipe there was for pure shrimp wontons and I was in the mood for mixed pork and shrimp.  So I decided to just wing it.  I had some trouble deciding on the proportions of shrimp and pork, but decided that 50-50 sounded safe.  And I remembered my popo's wontons tasting like sesame oil and white pepper so I added a decent amount to the wontons themselves and also to the soup.  I can't remember if she used scallions in her dumplings, but I happen to like scallions in my dumplings so I threw those in too.  The soup was a bit labor intensive, but it was comforting and very satisfying.  And for me, it was more than a little nostalgic.  Alex and I both enjoyed it.  If I made it again I would make a few tweaks here and there - making a better stock being the most important one, and potentially blanching the wontons and the noodles in a separate pot of boiling water like they do in most restaurants before adding them to the broth so as to not dilute/muddy the flavors of the broth.  If you cook the noodles in the broth they release starch into the broth, which makes it a little starchy and changes the flavor a bit.  It also makes the broth a little cloudy.  I just have to decide whether the purity of flavor of the stock is really worth using (and cleaning) another pot...

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Seared Shrimp

Every once in awhile my mom will enjoy a recipe enough to pass it along to me.  This was a recipe that she gave me years ago and I never made because at the time I didn't have turmeric in the kitchen.  And then I just forgot about it and shoved it into a cookbook as a bookmark.  The other day I was going through some of the cookbooks that I haven't used in awhile and this recipe fell out.  Seeing as it was probably lost in that cookbook for 1-2 years I figured it was past time that I finally made it.  My mom knows what I like and we have similar tastes so when she recommends a recipe I generally trust her.  In the past month she sent me a cornbread recipe and a salmon recipe, both of which I plan to try soon. 

We served this shrimp as shrimp tacos with corn tortillas with some thinly sliced avocado, but I think t would work just as well (if not better) served on a bed of yellow or basmati rice to soak up all of the marinade.  It didn't occur to me at the time to serve it that way, but I kind of wish I had.  It would have been delicious.  As it was, the shrimp made for some pretty tasty tacos.  It's not really a Mexican flavor profile, but I'm not sure that I found it to be an Indian or Middle Eastern flavor profile either (which is what the addition of turmeric suggests to me).  Actually, with the garlic, cilantro, lemon juice and turmeric I guess it is a fairly Indian flavor profile, but not so much that it really screams Indian cuisine.  Considering how easy this dish was to make and how quick it all came together I would be happy to make it again sometime.  And now that the recipe is on the blog I can't lose it again and forget to make it for years.

Recipe after the jump!

Rice Noodles with Chinese Chives, Shrimp and Pork

When we got home yesterday after our shopping expedition to Chinatown I realized that we had far too many noodles in the apartment.  And 2 lbs worth of Chinese chives.  So I had to come up with a recipe to use up some of both.  Luckily, our Vietnamese cookbook had a recipe that used both rice noodles and Chinese chives.  We did have to run to the regular grocery store to buy some ground pork and shrimp, but Fairway is nearby so it was no big deal.  Let's be honest.  I trek all over the city for some of my more esoteric groceries.  By comparison a trip to Fairway is nothing.  I consider the effort well worth it when we get a delicious dish out of it.

These noodles kind of reminded me of Ming Tsai's My Crazy Chicken (Turkey) Rice Noodle Stir-Fry, except that Ming's noodles skew a little more Thai/Malaysian while these noodles are more Vietnamese.  I really loved the Chinese chives in this dish.  They are crazy aromatic and delicious.  Chinese chives have a garlicky flavor rather than an oniony flavor.  And they smell amazing.  I really enjoy them, but I generally don't buy them because they come in huge bundles and I don't have that many uses for them.  Sometimes I roll them in with my Vietnamese summer rolls.  Other times I have thrown it into shrimp and pork stir-fries.  If it had occurred to me I would have served these noodles with some sriracha.  Or we could have taken a page from Ming's recipe and mixed some sambal in with the noodles as they stir-fried.  But I forgot all about it until after I finished eating.  Alex wanted some more nuoc cham to go with the noodles but I was worried that it would obscure the delicate flavors of the Chinese chives and the flavor of the shrimp and pork.  Alex liked the Ming Tsai noodles better because their flavors are a little more assertive - more spice, more lime, just more.  But I really liked the subtler flavors here.  In the end, I think it's a toss up for me.  Both recipes are good, but for different reasons and different moods.

Recipe after the jump!