Thursday, August 16, 2012

Vanilla coconut shrimp (p. 388)

Okay, so Vanilla coconut shrimp (p. 388) just sounded horrible but I was optimistic that, with an open mind, it would be surprisingly good.  Also, I can't believe I'm over a year behind on blog posts--that will be rectified and will never happen again!

I sauteed some shallots in olive oil.  Quite a bit of olive oil, actually.  I added white wine and a vanilla bean with the guts scraped out (the guts of the vanilla bean are the little dots you see in vanilla bean ice cream).  I really hoped this was going to be an amazing recipe because vanilla beans are expensive.

The vanilla bean

Shallots, wine, and the bean

Once that concoction was reduced by half, I added chicken stock, coconut milk, fresh ginger, salt, and pepper:


This simmered until it was reduced by half again.  At this point I added the shrimp:


Hmmmm....not looking so delicious:

Why is the coconut milk separating?
 I added some chopped basil to the top and ate it over rice:


Just as horrifying as I expected it to be.  The coconut milk and shrimp are a delicious tried and true combination but the vanilla bean just added a horrible, desserty flavor that I detested.  A total waste of a delicious vanilla bean, although the recipe was ultra-easy.    


Random facts:
  • Vanilla comes from a type of orchid (Wikipedia)
  • It wasn't until a 12 year old slave figured out how to hand-pollinate the vanilla flower than the spice could be globally cultivated (Wikipedia)
  • The word "vanilla" comes from the word vaina from the Latin "vagina".  Yes, that's right.  Now you have a great piece of trivia to dazzle your friends (Wikipedia)

1 comment:

  1. Hmmm... that seems odd. It doesn't strike me as gross right off the bat, like it did you, though!
    They are freakin' expensive, I have a post to write soon that uses them :-)

    ReplyDelete

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