...I'll just have to post about food, meaning yesterday's lunch. Walt planted snow peas — green ones and purple ones — out in the garden a few weeks ago. A couple of days ago, he harvested some. So the garden this year won't have been a total bust, no matter what the future holds.
We drove up to Blois a few weeks ago to shop at the Asian grocery, mostly for shrimp. (Maybe you call them prawns.) They stock good frozen shrimp — frozen raw, and headed — rather than the cooked shrimp you get almost everywhere else in France. And I went to the open-air market and bought some nice mushrooms from the woman who grows them and sells them there — she's a neighbor of ours.
I found a recipe on the web — an idea, really. Where else nowadays? Here it is. Oh, I used less shrimp than called for and added some calamari that we also had in the freezer. I also made shrimp broth by cooking the shrimp shells in boiling water and used that instead of chicken broth.
Stir-fry of shrimp, mushrooms, and snow peas
125 ml (½ cup U.S.) shrimp or chicken broth
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
250 g (½ lb.) sliced mushrooms
250 g (½ lb.) snow peas, strings removed
500 g (1 lb.) medium or large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 small onion, peeled and sliced
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper, optional
Cooked rice or rice noodles for serving, optional
In a small bowl, mix together the broth, soy sauce, ginger and cornstarch.
Warm oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok over medium-high heat until shimmering. Cook mushrooms, stirring, until their liquid has evaporated and they have browned, 6 to 10 minutes.
Add snow peas, garlic, and onion; stir-fry until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Toss in shrimp and cook, stirring, until pink, 3 or 4 minutes.
Stir broth mixture; pour into pan. Stir-fry until shrimp are opaque and sauce has thickened slightly, approximately one minute.
Season with salt and pepper and serve over rice or rice noodles, if desired.
Looks very Oriental and appetizing!
ReplyDeleteC'est plus ou moins chinois comme recetter mais pas du tout gras.
DeleteYummy
ReplyDeleteYes, it was. We ate it all.
DeleteMy thought exactly. Also very inspiring for dinner (whenever we get another warm day).
DeleteI'm so jealous. I just paid €8 a kilo for some mange-tout at the market. Expensive, but worth it. The French name is perfect, not just in the sense that you can eat the whole vegetable but that there will be no leftovers.
ReplyDeleteWe hope to get a lot more pois mangetout (aka pois gourmands) from our planting.
DeleteI always especially love your posts about cooking. This looks wonderful. I hope your garden does well. We're having crazy weather here in Ohio, too. Everyone is late planting a garden. But one lives in hope.
ReplyDeleteNice to read you. Good luck with your garden. Ours is about a month late, and with the weather we're having it's not really growing very fast.
DeleteAdd that our supposedly iconic Australian Paul Hogan called them shrimps when we know them as prawns. It looks like a delicious meal and I've never heard of purple snow peas.
ReplyDeleteIn America, we don't really use the plural "shrimps" -- they are just shrimp. Some people in the U.S. also use the term prawns to mean, I think, "jumbo" shrimp, a classic oxymoron. I know about the Aus. "shrimp on the barbie" -- poor Barbie. What would Ken think?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHehe about Barbie.
DeleteIn the UK, shrimps are little...3/4" long at most...on average 3/16" diameter.
ReplyDeletePrawns are around the size of the first two joints of a little finger....
These magnificent specimens are King Prawn and sold at a premium!!
You will notice that Prawn drops the "s" for King Prawn....
I have no idea why!?
Here's the interesting Wiki article on shrimp and prawns:
DeleteShrimp or prawn?
Yup...yours are King Prawns alright....
DeleteI notice the article referred to the Brown Shrimp...I spent many a holiday ankle-deep in surf... running up and downi beaches with my shrimp net n Cornwall.... getting enough shrimp to cook...with those, the winkles we'd collect from the rock pools and fresh brown bread....not forgetting my Mum's "famous" shrimp sauce for dipping...we were very happy.
Mum's "famous" shrimp sauce....50%/50% Heinz Salad Cream and Heinz Tomato Ketchup....probably ghastly to my tastebuds now....but ambrosia then!!
What you call brown shrimp in the British Isles -- crevettes grises in France, I think -- are not at all what we call brown shrimp in the U.S Southeast. Our brown shrimp are much larger, like French bouquets.
DeleteWhat you call brown shrimp in the British Isles -- crevettes grises in France, I think -- are not at all what we call brown shrimp in the U.S Southeast. Our brown shrimp are much larger, like French bouquets.
DeleteHere is the Wiki article about the American brown shrimp. They grow to be 8 or 9 inches long.
DeleteThe French crevette bouquet is the common prawn in British English. I don't think we have that species in N. America. I don't know wat the king prawn is.
DeleteLook at this: North Carolins shrimp. I'm learning from doing this research.
DeleteKing Prawn aren't native to the North East Atlantic.... They are imported to the UK and whatever they are really called I have no idea.... Findus King Prawn is the original and all are now known as King prawn! Our local Chinese supply store in Leeds always had them in.
DeleteI'm learning too! But as Susan would say, it is the name the taxonomists give the critter that is important, not the common or even trade name.
DeleteYes, that's what the scientific (Latin) names are all about. See this Wiki page about king prawns.
DeleteThe American "brown shrimp" are a completely different genus and species compared to the European shrimp of the same name.
Tiger prawns are farmed...so King Prawn must apply to the Tiger Prawn....unfortunately,no one has created a Wiki page for any of them!
DeleteSure looks great and good for a summer meal!
ReplyDeleteProblem is, Judy, that it isn't summer here yet. We are having March or late October weather at this point. I hope we do end up having some kind of real summer this year.
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