If any of my readers watch Top Chef, you may remember an episode, I think a couple years back in the year that Stephanie Izard won, in which a chef served a shrimp that was mealy-textured. Tom Colicchio asked if they cooked badly or shopped badly, and the chef's answer was that they shopped badly, meaning that no matter what they did in the kitchen, the shrimp was destined to end up sub-par on the plate.
I shopped badly also, and the shrimp I brought home (frozen, in a bag) were also mealy. I noticed it as soon as I started shelling them. But I didn't think it was such a bad problem as to discard them and re-plan the entire meal, and it was not. It didn't turn out badly, but it could have been better.
Aside from the mealy shrimp, my fiddling with the recipe could have led to some of its less-than-superbness. I got the recipe from Epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Thai-Shrimp-Curry-109161. I didn't realize until I was into it already that I had no Thai Green Curry Paste. The one I had was Red. So I used the red (about a tablespoon and a half of it, emptying the small jar) and added green to my grocery list. I liked the broth. In addition to the poor texture on the shrimp, I wondered if the addition I made of some shredded Napa cabbage (to up its vegetable quotient) might have led to some bitterness. I did like the crunch the cabbage added however. I also added about a half cup of julienned yellow bell pepper.
For dessert, we had a few crunchy oatmeal-cinnamon chip cookies I made yesterday.
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