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nourishing the body

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Shrimp with garlic and soba

I love Spanish tapas and one of my favorites is the classic Gambas al ajillo, or shrimp with garlic. I like it really garlicky with lots of crushed red pepper and a bit of lemon to finish it off. It is great on its own but just as nice tossed with soba noodles.
The great thing about this is that it is easy and quick to prepare. I heated up my wok and added butter and olive oil. I threw in a half teaspoon of a nice crushed red pepper in oil. This was an Asian jarred chili in oil that I found in my local market. You could use just dried red pepper flakes too but I find the chili in oil tends to infuse in the cooking oil better. In went the shrimp and lots of chopped garlic. This was tossed in the pan for a minute or two until the shrimp were just cooked and then a couple tablespoons of lemon juice were added. The cooked soba noodles were mixed in and everything was plated up.

Asian Pork Lettuce Wraps

I made these tasty pork wraps and just have to share it with you all. It is really easy to make and is so delicious. Not only that, it’s a nice light and healthy appetizer or meal.

For the pork filling I combined 1 pound of ground pork, half of a red onion, finely chopped, two Thai chilis, finely chopped, a couple tbsp of toasted sesame oil, a couple tbsp of rice vinegar, a couple tbsp of soy sauce and some black pepper. If I had some green onions, those would have gone in too. Oh, I also added a tbsp of minced ginger. This was simply cooked in a sauté pan until cooked through and then served in bibb lettuce leaves.
You can see I accompanied this with some shredded carrots and daikon radish. I also made a cucumber and pickled bamboo shoot salad with a little rice vinegar and mint. I found the pickled bamboo at my local Asian market. They were pickled with some small red chilis which provided more depth of flavor.

Eggplant Curry with Tilapia and Shrimp

Hello dear cooking blog. I have to tell you about an experiment I made tonight that turned out pretty darn good. Oh, certainly there are ways to make this even better and some of them would up the calories and fat, but this was quite satisfying.

You may know that I am trying to cook light and healthy and take off some of this winter blubber. It is possible to cook healthy but still have tons of flavor. I stopped by my local Asian grocery on the way home from work and happened to find some of those small little round purple eggplants. So I grabbed some. All the way home I was trying to figure out how to make a curry without the fat. I came up with this.
For my curry paste, I made a purée of one onion, 6 cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of ginger and a couple of thai chilis. This was simply thrown into a hot pan along with a tbsp of oil, a tbsp of curry powder, salt and pepper.
I cooked the paste down for about 5-6 minutes with constant stirring until most of the water from the onion had been cooked out and it began to brown a bit. This gives great color and flavor. You want to cook out the raw onion bitterness. This paste will help thicken my sauce. If I had thought ahead, I would have also thrown in a couple of the raw shrimp into the purée. This would have added another level of flavor to the overall dish. This is a great trick to do in dishes where you want the flavor of ingredients that you really don’t want to stew for a long time.
Once the paste was cooked out I added a cup of water and 6 small eggplants cut into quarters.

The eggplant and sauce mixture was cooked covered for about 15 minutes until the eggplant became very tender and the sauce thickened a bit. About 3 oz of tilapia and 4 oz of peeled raw shrimp were added to the pan. This was covered and cooked for just a few minutes until the seafood was cooked through.
I think the dish turned out great. You could make this even better if instead of water added to the cooked paste you added a can of coconut milk! I thought about it but I didn’t want the added fat tonight. That would take this dish over the top! If I do this again I would also add some fresh curry leaves when I throw in the eggplant and finish it off with some fresh cilantro leaves and a squeeze of lime. Oh, some Thai basil would be a great last minute addition too.

Wasabi Sesame-Crusted Tuna

Here’s a quick dish I threw together. It’s easy and so tasty. I marinated two 8 oz tuna steaks with a marinade made of a few tablespoons of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil and a teaspoon of prepared wasabi paste. The fish was marinated for 15 minutes. I pressed the tuna steaks into a bowl of sesame seeds and pan seared it for about 2 minutes on a side in a bit of olive oil. It was tasty and delicious! I served it with quinoa and green beans.

Chicken Satay

Finally we come to the end of our New Year’s Eve feast. We’ll finish in Thailand with some chicken satay. I marinated some thinly sliced chicken breast in yogurt seasoned with curry powder, turmeric, garlic and ginger for about 5 hours. The chicken was skewered and cooked in my grill pan. I served it with a Thai peanut sauce made from creamy peanut butter, soy, sesame oil, sriracha chili oil, rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar and some water.