Indian Style Sauteed Shrimp - A Typical CKP Recipe

I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle this weekend, and my Aunt showed me this very quick, and extremely tasty shrimp dish. It's a typical dish from the caste which my family is a part of, CKP, aka Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu.

Indian Style Sauteed Shrimp
Serves three to four people as a main dish

Ingredients
2lb bag of shrimp, peeled, deveined and tail off
3 large onions, finely chopped
2-3 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 large handful of cilantro leaves, chopped
4 teaspoons of canola oil
3 teaspoons crush garlic
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon tamarind
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cloves
1/2 cinnamon stick
salt to taste

Directions
1. Combine shrimp, garlic, turmeric, cayenne pepper, tamarind and one teaspoon of salt and allow the shrimp to marinade for 15-30 minutes
2. In a large, shallow bottomed non-stick pan, heat the canola oil. Once hot, add cloves and cinnamon stick, and wait for about a minute, until they become fragrant.
3. Next, add the onions, and saute for about 5-7 minutes, or until the onions become transluscent. Stir frequently to stop the onions from browning or burning.
4. At this point, add the shrimp, and stir until they all lose their grey color.
5. Add tomatoes, stir, and allow to simmer for approximately 5 minutes, or until the shrimp start to shrink, and the oil starts to visibly separate from the sauce.
5. Add cilantro, taste and add salt if necessary, and cook for a further minute.
6. Serve hot, and enjoy over rice or with a chapathi.

A Traditional (and easy!) Singaporean Noodle Dish: Kway Teow

I asked my Singaporean friend at Le Cordon Bleu, Christine, to teach me a typical Singaporean noodle dish. The next Monday at school, she brought in homemade kway teow and let me have a taste, and I told her I wanted to learn it!



The next Sunday she came over. We went to an Asian grocer, picked out all of the ingredients with her expert guidance, and came home and cooked a delicious, and surprisingly simple dish.



Kway Teow
Makes two servings

Ingredients
400g fresh ho fun (or 200g dry)
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
100g of bean sprouts
20g (5-6 stalks) of Chinese chives, cut into two inch pieces
100g fish cake or shrimp/chicken/beef/tofu/pork
2 tbsp vegetable oil or canola oil
2 eggs
1 ½ tbsp dark soy sauce
1 ½ tbsp sweet soy sauce
1 tbsp sweetish chili sauce (not too sweet!)
1 tbsp regular soy sauce (or more to taste)

First, lets take a look at some of the ingredients... I certainly wasn't familiar with all of them!



Three types of sauce... to the left, the chili sauce, in the middle, the sweet soy sauce, and on the right, dark soy sauce.



Chinese chives aka garlic chives... they are beautiful and mild tasting, and have a hint of garlic taste.



Dry ho fun. Needs to be cooked like pasta until al dente (probably about 5 minutes depending on what variety you get).



Fresh ho fun. Separate them in warm water.



Fish cake. A commonly used ingredient in Asian cooking. Any sort of protein can be used though.





Prepped fish cake, chives and garlic.

Now for the method. Heat the oil until it's extremely hot, even smoking. Add the garlic, and stir in the pan until fragrant (about 30 seconds). Do not let the garlic burn!





Crack the eggs and add them to the pan. Don't stir until they start to look brown around the edge. Then, break the egg up and stir until cooked through.



Add the fish cake, or whatever protein you are using, and cook accordingly.



The next step is to add the noodles. Be gentle stirring so that the noodles do not break. Heat through.



Next, add the dark soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, chili sauce and regular soy sauce. Stir thoroughly. Taste a noodle to check the seasoning, and look at the color. For more color, add more dark soy sauce. For more heat, add more chili sauce. For more sweet/smokey flavor, add more sweet soy sauce. And for more saltiness, add regular soy sauce.



Add the bean sprouts and stir through. Cook them for about one minute. They add crunch and texture to the dish, so don't cook them too much or they will become soft. Finally, add the chives. Turn off the heat, and stir the chives until distributed evenly. Serve piping hot.

Fettucine With Shrimp and Grape Tomatoes

I was really hungry so I wanted to make something really quick. After searching around the kitchen for a minute, I found some grape tomatoes, frozen shrimp, a package of fettucine, garlic, and a lime. I could easily make a fast meal out of these ingredients; the longest part of the meal would be cooking the pasta.

So, I put the water on to boil. Here's the recipe I came up with.



Fettucine with Shrimp and Grape Tomatoes
Makes 3 servings

Ingredients
3/4 package fettucine (I used Barilla)
Approximately 100 ounces of grape tomatoes (or cherry tomatoes), halved
2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 lb of raw, deveined shrimp
Juice of one lime (or lemon)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp chili flakes
salt to taste
Parmesan cheese to garnish

Heat the olive oil in a large bottomed pan or wok. Saute garlic until very lightly golden brown, approximately 2 minutes.



Add the grape tomatoes. Saute for about two minutes, until it starts to look like the tomatoes are softening and breaking down a little.



Next, add the shrimp. Cook the shrimp until it turns pink. If the pan is nice and hot, this will only take a couple of minutes.



Add the chili flakes, salt, pepper, and lime juice.



Finally, add the pasta. Leave a little bit of pasta water to add to the mixture. The starch in the water will help the pasta to bind to the sauce. Stir well.





Serve hot, and sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top.

Shrimp Burrito Bowl

Try my Chicken Burrito Bowl with shrimp! It's great! Just take about half a pound of raw, deveined and peeled shrimp, and cut them into bite size pieces (or keep them whole if you prefer). Use the marinade that was meant for the chicken and put it on the shrimp instead.

Cook the shrimp by stir-frying it in a hot pan with about one tablespoon of olive oil. It only takes about 1-2 minutes to cook the shrimp; as soon as the all the shrimp becomes opaque (from grey, to white/pink) it's cooked!

Heat up the black beans in the pan you cooked the shrimp in; the beans will soak up all the flavor that is left in the pan from the shrimp.

Enjoy with pico de gallo, cheese, etc. Basically, anything you like!

Pot Stickers

My family really likes dumplings, pot stickers, gyoza... anything of that sort. So when we had some leftover meat after making wonton soup, my Mom suggested that we try making pot stickers.

I was a little nervous about trying to make pot stickers with the wonton skins because they are so thin, but it worked beautifully. Follow my Wonton Soup recipe up until the step where you fold the wonton wrappers in half to form a triangle, and then follow the easy instructions below. Keep in mind that for pot stickers, no stock is necessary!

Pot Stickers
Makes 80-90 pot stickers

Ingredients
1 Wonton Soup recipe up until the point when you fold the wontons in half to a triangle shape
3/4 cup water (per batch of pot stickers that will fit into the pan)
1 tbsp of canola oil
1 large heavy bottomed pan, at least 2 inches deep and with a lid

This is very simple to do. First, heat the oil in the pan. Place the pot stickers into the pan. They can be very close together. Brown for 3-4 minutes.



Next, add the water into the pan. Bring to a boil, cover with the lid, and simmer for 5-7 minutes. This steams the pot stickers and ensures that the meat inside is cooked.

Uncover the lid and let the water evaporate. Continue to brown until golden and crunchy on the underside. Remove the pot stickers from the pan carefully so as not to break them apart. Serve immediately. I used Kikkoman Ponzu sauce as the dipping sauce.

Wonton Soup

This recipe is amazing! It's the best wonton soup I've ever eaten - better than even the best Chinese restaurant. The greatest part is, it's even easier to make than I would have imagined.



Wonton Soup
Makes approximately 80-90 wontons

Ingredients
12 ounces of ground pork
4 ounces raw shelled shrimp, chopped into small pieces
2-3 ounces bamboo shoots chopped very small
6 scallions, chopped into thin rounds
1 egg yolk
1 egg white, lightly beaten
6-8 leaves lettuce or blanched chinese cabbage
1 1/2 quarts of chicken stock
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp thin soy sauce
1 tsp thick soy sauce
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp Shaohsing wine or medium-dry sherry
1 tsp cornstarch
3 tbsp water
2 teaspoons sesame oil

In a large bowl, mix the shrimp and pork with the cornstarch, sugar, soy sauces, pepper and wine. Then stir in the water one tablespoon at a time. Next it's time to take out some aggression. Take the entire meat mixture, pick it up, and throw it back into the bowl. Repeat this about 100 times.

Next, add the bamboo shoots and the white parts of the scallions to the meat mixture and marinate for about 30 minutes. Then blend in the sesame oil. Right before wrapping the mixture in the wontons, add the egg yolk to the mixture.



Now comes the fun part! I used Nasoya wonton wrappers and they worked well. It would have better if they were cut into perfect squares, but they were certainly sufficient for the task.



Its really easy to fold a wonton! First, put about a tsp of the mixture onto the middle of the square.



Second, use a brush and paint two edges of the wrapper and fold the noodle in half to form a triangle. Press the edges gently together.



Finally, put a little egg white on one tip, and fold the two tips together, joining them with the egg white you put on.



Here are a bunch of beautiful wontons, all waiting to be cooked! In one pan, gently heat the stock, and in another pan, heat water to a boil. When the water comes to a boil, place about 20 wontons in the pan. It will only take about 3 minutes to cook the wontons. When they are done, they float. Remove them carefully and place them in the stock. Repeat until all of the wontons are cooked.

Serve by garnishing with some finely shredded lettuce and scallions on top.

Asian Style Shrimp with Citrus Soy Sauce

Everyone LOVES this dish. I saw a similar recipe on a British TV morning show and made this version up. It's pretty healthy, and very tasty. Be careful if you have high cholesterol though; did you know that shrimp are fairly high in cholesterol?

Asian Style Shrimp with Citrus Soy Sauce
Makes four servings

Ingredients
2 lbs of raw shrimp (peeled and de-veined)
1/2 cup of finely chopped cilantro
1 tsp of red pepper flakes
5-6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 bunch of spring onions chopped
1/2 cup of soy sauce (you can use reduced sodium soy sauce as well)
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp of olive oil
juice of one lemon
1 tsp of sesame oil (optional)

Toss the raw shrimp with the cilantro, red pepper flakes and garlic and marinade the shrimp for at least 20 minutes.

If you have a wok, add the two tablespoons of olive oil to it and heat it up. Otherwise, use a pan with a large surface area. Stir frying is a method in which you cook your food quickly. The more surface area your pan has and the hotter it is, the faster your food will cook.

When the wok is hot, add the shrimp to the pan, stirring continually. When the shrimp start to lose their gray color, add the spring onions and continue to stir. As soon as all the shrimp have lost their gray color, take the contents of the pan out with a slotted spoon (you want to leave the juices in the pan for the sauce).

Leave the shrimp in a covered dish so that they stay warm. In the wok, add the remaining ingredients to the juices that are left in the pan; the soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and sesame oil. Bring to a boil, and cook for a minute or two. If desired, reduce the sauce.

Serve the shrimp over white rice (I use basmati rice but any variety that you like would work). Pour some sauce on top of the shrimp and rice and enjoy.

Indian Fish Fry

Frying fish the Indian way brings back a lot of good memories from my childhood. I remember watching my dad wash and season the fish. My job was always to cover the fish in rice flour right before it went into the fry pan. When I got a little older, I wondered how he actually made his fish. Turns out it's incredibly easy.

Indian Style Fish Fry
Serves 2-3 people

Ingredients
1 lb of flounder fillets (or another mild, white fish)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 tsp of turmeric
2 tsp of garlic powder
1 tsp of cayenne powder
Salt to taste
1/2 cup of canola oil
Rice Flour

This dish works well with a mild fish; the flavors of the spices are delicious and it's nice not to ruin that. I like flounder, it's very thin. The thinner the fish is, the more flavored with the spices it will be and the crispier it will get when you fry it.

Start by making sure your fish is thoroughly washed and fairly dry. If your fish is giving off that fishy odour, a good trick is to soak it in some milk. Let it sit in a milk bath for about 20-30 minutes and then rinse. Doing this should help bring back the freshness of the fish.

Fresh fish does not give off a fishy odor, so if you go to buy fish and it has a strong smell, it might be best to pass on it and try another store or another day of the week when a fresh shipment may have arrived. Once, in China, I was taken to a fish market, and there literally was no odor, flies etc. The fish had all been caught that morning (many of them were still alive) and were being butchered on the spot. Too bad it can't always be done like that!

Once your fish has been cleaned, combine all the ingredients with the fish. Make sure the spices cover each piece of fish evenly. You can let this marinade for a while, but it really isn't necessary. If you do decide to let it marinade, make sure it goes back into the fridge. It's a good idea to keep seafood on ice as well.

When you are ready to fry your fish, put about a cup of rice flour on to a large plate. Dip your fish pieces into the flour and make sure coat evenly. Heat your oil up to a fairly hot temperature. Once hot, place fish in the pan. Do not crowd the pan. It only takes about a minute on each side for very thin fish, longer if your fish is thicker. Drain on paper towels. It's great to serve right away if possible, so you can enjoy it while it's nice and hot.