20 May, 2012 | Comment
Category Archives: Food
16 May, 2012 | 1 Comment
Lemongrass Coconut Shrimp Soup Recipe
We’ve been depending on the foods we have around lately, rather than the foods we want to make.
Yay for budgeting!
Yay for eating out of the pantry!
That said, this has caused some, uh, more interesting food inventions.
Some dishes, like this Lemongrass Coconut Shrimp Soup, were successful.
Some dishes, like the noodly shrimpy rice noodle toss pictured below, were less so.
But we shall learn from my mistakes, and soldier on.
On to a soup that’s lovely for summer,
easy on the waistline and
customizable enough for the rest of us.
Ingredients
1 pound raw shrimp in shells
2 cups water
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons Lemongrass paste or 3 stalks lemongrass, chopped into 2 inch pieces.
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 shallot, chopped fine
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup coconut milk
2 scallions, chopped fine
Minced cilantro and Sriracha sauce to garnish
Directions
Separate shrimp from their shells, save the shells.
Cut larger shrimp in thirds, smaller shrimp in half — set aside.
Rinse the shrimp shells and put them in a large soup pot.
Add 2 cups water and 2 cups of chicken broth.
Heat shrimp shells and water/broth to boiling.
If you’re adding lemongrass stalks, add those now too.
Strain mixture and discard shrimp shells and lemongrass stalks.
Set the broth aside.
In a dutch oven or soup pot, add the peanut oil, heat to medium high.
Add chopped shallot, stir until translucent, about 3 minutes.
If you’re using lemongrass paste, add it to the soup pot now. Stir through.
Add garlic and light brown sugar, stir through for about a minute or until the pot is fragrant and the shallot pieces are starting to goldenify.
Add the strained shrimp broth to the soup pot.
Add fish sauce, soy sauce and coconut milk, heat to boiling.
Add shrimp, turn to low.
Add scallions, stir through.
After shrimp are opaque – about 3 minutes – turn off the heat and serve.
I like to serve it with Siracha and cilantro.
James likes it just the way it is.
If you like these kinds of soups, my Hot and Sour Thai Soup is also a winner. We’ll serve it with Pad Thai or these lettuce wraps (scroll down a bit on the linked page — I made the wraps with ground chicken on this particular night).
Soup win!
High five!
Pantry gold!
13 May, 2012 | 1 Comment
This week.
1 May, 2012 | 1 Comment
Meal plan, this week
17 April, 2012 | 3 Comments
The Spelling Game and my Cole Slaw Recipe
Do you like weird word games? I do.
Do you like cole slaw? I do.
Even more, I like barbecue pork and corn bread.
Add that to some of The Spelling Game, and I can call that a good night.
Each player in The Spelling Game has three lives.
The first player mentions a letter as the beginning of a word.
Each player adds a letter to the word, keeping the word unfinished as long as possible.
When a letter is added, and it makes a complete word, the person who completed it loses a life.
The next player then begins again.
Here’s the trick, every letter added has to be part of a word, and not an odd letter thought of on the spur of the moment.
It’s because at any time, you can challenge the player to give up the word they were thinking about. If the player cannot name the word, they lose a life. If the player CAN give up the word they were anticipating, the challenger loses a life.
Example:
I’m thinking of the word Boobie.
I say the letter “B.”
James thinks of the word “Brogrammer,”
He says the letter “R”
Jared thinks of the word “Brickhouse”
He says the letter “I”
Erin calls Jared on it, “HEY! You didn’t have a word in there!”
And Jared says, “Boom POW, you lost a life, I was thinking of Brickhouse.”
And so on.
It’s funner than it sounds.
Promise.
And during Spelling Game night, if you don’t like sitting in circles and adding letters to things, you can stuff your mouth with Barbecue Pork, Malcom’s Corn Bread and my Cole Slaw.
Helen Jane’s Cole Slaw Recipe
Ingredients
1/2 head of cabbage
1/2 cup of light mayonnaise
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
6 green onions (scallions)
2 shredded carrots (on the grater)
Directions
Slice the cabbage into slender, slender strips.
In a large bowl, gently mix cabbage, mayonnaise, cayenne, cider vinegar, salt, pepper, green onions and carrots with your hands or a large spoon.
Serve with BBQ pork, cornbread and love.
And some letters.
