Shrimp 'n' Peanuts

Conveniently enough for the inauguration of this blog, I cooked two dishes tonight to prevent seafood from spoiling.


This recipe comes from Ann's copy of "The Essential Asian Cookbook," which will probably crop up pretty often in here.  It's comically easy to make and calls for sambal oelek in the recipe, which provides a convenient segue to explain my cooking philosophy, shown to the right. Sambal oelek is an Indonesian chili paste and my primary dietary staple. Most of the things I cook are actually just vehicles for eating chili paste.


I had some plethora of shrimp which I didn't carefully measure. The marinade is made from ½ tsp. of ground ginger, ½ tsp. of ground coriander, ¼ tsp. of tumeric, lemon zest, juice of ½ a lemon, and ½ a tsp. of sambal oelek. Since this recipe is actually supposed to contain sambal oelek, I naturally added double this suggested amount. Once the sauce is ready, peel the shrimp.  The recipe says to peel and devein but leave the tails on. 


That is objectively stupid. You can eat shrimp veins, they're just ugly. Shrimp are ugly, removing the vein will not make them attractive. Unlike veins, shrimp tails cannot be eaten. Leaving the tails on shrimp is a chef's way of telling his diners that he hates them. It's chefese for "I hope you choke on this." /rant


I peeled off the shells and tails from the shrimp and mixed them in with the sauce, chopped green onion, and ⅓ cup of peanuts. Then you leave that mixture in the fridge for an hour to marinate.


Cooking is also pretty effortless.  Heat oil in a pan or wok (I usually use canola - less saturated than other oils) and stir fry the whole mixture for ~3 minutes until the shrimp are cooked. Serve over rice or noodles.  

These were delicious and crazy easy.  Next time I'd probably add bell peppers for a Kung Pao Shrimp analogue. I think raisins, craisins, or dates could be good as well. There's not much in the way of sauce at the end though, so if that's your thing you'll probably want to modify it.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

Some shrimp - I probably had ~ 1-1.25 pounds
4 green onions chopped
½ tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. ground coriander
¼ tsp. tumeric
lemon zest
juice of ½ lemon
1 tsp. sambal oelek


Mix ingredients in a large bowl and marinate in the fridge for at least one hour. Stir fry in hot oil for three minutes and serve.

Crab Gazpacho

I've been meaning to do this for a while but I've been too lazy/hungry to take pictures.  All the cool kids have cooking blogs now though, so here goes.


I had a pair of leftover crabs and thought this would be a neat twist on a traditional Maryland Crab soup.  I used this recipe as a guide.  Most recipes called for deseeding (or is it seeding? I can't imagine anyone would want to add seeds to a tomato, so maybe seeding gets the point across?) the tomatoes, so I did that and upped the tomatoes from 4 to 6.  I used only one large bell pepper because that's all I had.  I also added a diced jalapeno because those are good in everything (read: everything).  The recipe also called for a (de)seeded cucumber and an onion.

I used a food processor to coarsely chop all the vegetables and then stirred them around.  The jalapeno I just chopped by hand and added at the end.  {Note: at this point, if you decide gazpacho is stupid, you can abort and have a pretty decent salsa.}  I also didn't have tomato juice, so I found a hillbilly recipe for making it from tomato paste.  I reduced it a bit to one can paste and three cans water because I like thick soups.  Add the 3 cups tomato juice, ¼ cup olive oil, and ¼ cup wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, stir it around, and let it sit in the fridge for a bit to mix flavors and get chilled.

Secret Ingredient - The crabs, not the fruit

Next I had to extract the meat from the crabs, a primitive and barbaric practice taught to all members of the Baltimore tribe at age 3.  The great trouble I've found with using this process for cooking is that I always seem to end with less meat than I expected.  Also I'm usually not as hungry by the end.  It's a delicious mystery.  Once I had all the remaining meat in a bowl, I sprinkled some old bay on top, more or less reflexively.




I googled "crab gazpacho" and read a few entries, all of which suggested topping it with crabmeat prior to eating as opposed to mixing it in, so I did as such.  Behold.  

I should probably take pictures with a better camera than my phone, but blogger/google+ make that pretty convenient, and I don't know where my camera battery is, so that's unlikely to change.


I'm not a particular fan of tomatoes outside of Italian food, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this.  It was not bad, I think Ann liked it more than I did.  Between the tomatoes and vinegar it was fairly acidic, and the onion came through very strong as well.  The cucumber and red pepper were there mostly as a nice crunch, but the crabmeat got totally overpowered and didn't add much.  I sprinkled some sugar in the leftovers to try to mute the acidity, I'll see how that turns out.  Next time I think I'll use less onion and just serve it as a side dish with some bread.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

6 Plum (FYI, also called Roma, that was a fun five minutes in the supermarket) tomatoes, (de)seeded
1 Cucumber (de)seeded
1-2 Red bell peppers (de)seeded
1 Red onion
1 Jalapeno
3 cups tomato juice
¼ cup wine vinegar
¼ cup olive oil


Coarsely chop the vegetables and add to a large bowl.  Stir in liquid ingredients, add salt and pepper to taste, and chill in refrigerator.  I think this is one of those things that gets better as leftovers.  Top with crabmeat if you have nothing better to do with crabmeat (like eat it).

Update:

The sugar and overnight stay definitely helped. It was less acidic and more complex. I'd still call it a side dish though, and leave the crab out of it.