1/2 medium onion
1 cup baby corn
1/2 small green pepper, sliced
2 cups broccoli flowerets
8 ounces sirloin steak, sliced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
salt and pepper

16 dried red chilies
5 cloves garlic
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons tamarind
4 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon soy sauce

1. Soak tamarind in water while preparing other ingredients.
2. Heat a skillet over medium heat and dry fry the dried chilies until brittle and blackened.
3. Remove them from the heat and allow to cool.
4. Meanwhile, dry fry the whole garlic cloves until the skins and blackened and blistered.
5. Remove the garlic cloves from the heat and allow to cool as well.
6. Remove all seeds from the chilies and the skins from the garlic.
7. Pulse garlic and chilies in a food processor, gradually adding up to half the oil to form a fine paste.
8. Heat the remaining oil in the skillet over medium heat. Add the pureed garlic and chili oil when it is hot enough to cause it to sizzle upon contact.
9. Fry the paste until it has browned, then remove the skillet from the heat and cool.
10. Discard the tamarind and add the residual water and remaining sauce ingredients and set aside.
11. Heat the tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok.
12. Season the steak strips with salt and pepper, then fry until cooked entirely.
13. Separate the rings of the halved onion and add to the wok.
14. Add the broccoli and fry until bright green, then add the corn and the green pepper strips.
15. Serve with the roasted garlic chili oil.

Makes 4 servings

1 cup jasmine rice
14 ounces canned coconut milk
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
salt and crushed red pepper flakes

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.
2. Immediately reduce heat to low, stir and cover.
3. Allow to cook until all of the liquid has absorbed, about 20 minutes.
4. Fluff with a fork, with from the heat and allow to rest for another 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings

1/2 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons hot sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
2. Add shrimp in an even layer in the skillet, turning when the underside is pink.
3. Continue cooking until the whole shrimp is pink, then season with lime juice, hot sauce and salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings

1/2 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 egg, beaten
garlic salt and black pepper

1/2 cup pineapple
1/4 cup ginger ale
3 tablespoons lime juice

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Season the shrimp with garlic salt and black pepper.
3. Place flour, shredded coconut and beaten egg in 3 separate bowls.
4. Batter the shrimp by placing them in the flour, then the egg mixture, and finally coating with the coconut.
5. Bake on a greased baking sheet until golden brown, about 15 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, combine pineapple, ginger ale and lime juice in a food processor until it forms a smooth sauce. Serve shrimp along with sauce.

Makes 4 servings

One of the supermarkets is offering an incredibly cheap steak and shrimp combo as a Valentine's Day promo. For .99 you get an 8 ounce striploin and a pound of shrimp. That's pretty much unbeatable, so we went and picked some up. We've got something else planned for Valentine's Day, but made good use of our purchase.

I've had a block of tamarind sitting in my cupboard completely sealed with no known uses. I'd heard it was good in barbecue sauce (which is likely something I'll try this summer) but until today I've never even opened the package. It smells sweet and has a texture sort of like a Fig Newton center. Upon licking it I discovered it does not really taste much like a fig at all, except maybe a very bitter one. I found a recipe for a Thai chili sauce that looked interesting, if only because I was sure the heat would kill me.

The process of making the sauce was about as time consuming as preparing the rest of the meal, but it was worth it. Surprisingly, roasting the chilies and taking out the seeds did a fair job of taking away from the heat. I'm not going to lie and say that it was mild by any means, but I wouldn't even put half as many chilies into a chili and expect to eat it and I managed to eat a plateful of Stirfry with Roasted Garlic Chili Oil without forming blisters on the inside of my mouth. It has a nice sort of smoky hickory flavor to it. I was definitely not surprised to find out that tamarind is one of the ingredients in Worcestershire sauce by any means.

I was originally going to make a whole batch of Coconut Shrimp but then I quickly realized that a pound of shrimp is a lot more than I'd probably want to eat. I split it up and prepared Lime and Chili Shrimp as well. I accidentally forgot about the coconut shrimp and baked it a little too long so the crisp bite became more of a crunchy one. It tasted good, though! I like coconut and shrimp together. The other dish was approved by Shannon, the hot sauce and lime expert of the household.

Thai Coconut Rice couldn't be any more perfect. The coconut milk gives it a rich, creamy texture like a risotto that takes far less time to prepare and the turmeric gives it a nice pretty color, so it just looks good on the plate. There's a nice hint of ginger in there as well. I found it hard to resist eating several helpings. The whole meal was great, much to my surprise. I've never had much success making the Asian inspired dinners, much less actually enjoying them.