Suit and Thai Event
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.