It tastes better than it looks!

Spicy Shrimp in Coconut Sauce

It's not often that something I make for dinner gets the honor of a post on the ole blog but this was an exceptional dish! So exceptional that even my red meat loving hubby liked it and gave the go ahead to make again. I try to switch up our dinners so that Jeff definitely gets something he likes everyother night(which I typically like/eat too).

And since this recipe came from a Cooking Light cookbook(Annual Recipes 2006) it was easy to count my calories with it too.

As I've said in the past, I don't typically cook low calorie or low fat recipes. (I just either make them that way myself or have less of it. ) But Cooking Light tends to hit the mark more often than not without absurd substitutions that change the integrity of a dish entirely.

Unfortunately, this particular recipe doesn't photograph well. And I didn't think to photograph it until after we had eaten most of it. Thankfully I have some left for lunch tomorrow.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut milk

1 tablespoon lime juice

1 tsp minced ginger

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp cornstarch

1/2 tsp chile paste(like Sambal Oelek)

1/2 tsp minced garlic

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsps oil

1.5 lbs large shrimp, pieled and deveined

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

Mix the first 9 ingredients in bowl. Set aside. Heat oil in non stick pan over medium high heat. Add shrimp, saute 2 mins. Add red pepper and cook 1 minute. Add coconut milk mixture and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer 1 minute until shrimp are pink. Serve immediately.

Notes on Recipe: Do not go heavy handed on the coconut milk unless you plan to go heavy handed on the rest of the the ingredients. I would suggest adding more conrstarch and making the sauce a bit thicker. The recipe suggest serving 1 cup shrimp mixture with 1/2 cup of jasmine rice for a calories total of 310.

I don't know if you would categorize this as a Thai dish but has quite a bit of Thai influence with the coconut milk and chiles. This recipe has a bit of bite served as written so if you like it not so hot or are serving kids, you may want to tone it down.

So despite a craptacular picture, this was a spectacular dish!