Shrimp and Rice

This is a pretty easy thing to make and fills you up well. On top of the basic Shrimp and Rice (and herbs and spices) I like to add some veggies. You can choose the vegetables you add to it from a wide selection. My personal choice is frozen sweet corn.

Cooking Shrimp

Ingredients:

1 cup	Rice
6 tbsp	Butter
4 cloves	Minced Garlic
1 lb	Shrimp, shelled and deveined
1/4 cup	Parmesan Cheese
3 tbsp	Milk
2 tbsp	Chopped Parsley
To Taste	Salt and Pepper
Garnish	Parmesan Cheese
1/2 lb	Frozen Corn Kernels

Method

Cooking Shrimp

1. Prepare the rice. In my little rice cooker it will usually take about half an hour, so start it about 20 minutes before the rest.
2. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium-heat.
3. Add garlic and cook for 3 minutes, or until lightly browned, stirring very frequently. Do not let the garlic burn !
4. Stir in the shrimp and cook for 2 minutes, or until they turn pink, stirring frequently.
5. Add cooked rice to the skillet and mix until well combined.
6. Add cheese, milk, parsley, corn, salt and pepper; mix and stir for 1 to 2 minutes, or until creamy and heated through.
7. Remove from heat.
8. Garnish with parmesan cheese.
9. Serve.
   

   

   Ready to serve

The Wonder of Chicken!

I follow a blog called French Letters, by  a lady from a town near Nîmes, and a couple of posts ago she described how she'd got addicted to a particular chicken dish. So, I decided to try it out.

I should warn you that while this is really easy,
a. it has peanuts
b. we have pictures, finally. Only about 16 months late !!

Here are all the ingredients for a large batch - 4 peppers (2 red, 2 orange), 2 bunches of spring onions and two small ones of cilantro. 3 medium chicken breasts. This has to feed several people, and wwill easily be enough!

You'll need a large frying pan and an oven pot, such as a Pyrex or Arcopol glass bowl with a flat base and lid (I used an Arcopol 26).
So, to start, there's two parts that come together during the process.
1. The Meat.
2. The Gravy

The Meat
This was chicken. She used thighs, but I used two chicken breasts double cut to make four thin pieces.
Preparation here is simple; heat maybe two or three tablespoons of oil in a large pan and fry the chicken on each side until it's cooked and browned just a bit. The first couple of times you turn it, sprinkle a little salt over the top before the turn, so it heats and melts and flavours the meat as it heats up.
When the chicken pieces are done place them flat in the bottom of your oven-proof dish.
Turn your oven on to 350F.





At this point I started rice in my rice cooker; you have just enough time to do this and have it be ready when the dish emerges from the oven.

The Gravy
The ingredients are these:

Diced Red Bell Pepper	1 tsp Cinnamon
Chopped Cilantro	1 tsp Paprika
Chopped Spring Onions	2 tsp Ginger
Peanut Butter	A little Salt
1 can of Coconut Milk	Pepper to taste.

Prep
For my first attempt I used a bunch of eight small Spring Onions and chopped them completely (excepting the roots and dried tips, of course!). I used a small box of Cilantro from the supermarket and one really large but very firm red Bell Pepper.
When taking the pictures here I used four peppers and two bunches of spring onions, along with two cans of coconut milk.
Method
Using the oil left in the pan after the chicken has been cooked, add the vegetables and fry them for about 3-4 minutes until they begin to wilt. Then add the spices (right-hand column) and stir them in to the frying vegetables. After a minute or so, add two good dollops of peanut butter and then the Coconut milk. Mix all the ingredients well, stirring so that the peanut butter mixes in to the coconut milk.
Pour this mixture over the chicken breasts in the pot.




Cover the pot and cook in the oven for about 25 minutes.

Remove pot from oven, uncover, and let it start to cool.

At this point my rice was cooked, so I could fill plates with beds of rice.

Plate your masterpiece, serve, and bask in the applause from your family and guests.

TTFN