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.
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| The vanilla bean |
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| 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:
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| Why is the coconut milk separating? |
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)
Hmmm... that seems odd. It doesn't strike me as gross right off the bat, like it did you, though!
ReplyDeleteThey are freakin' expensive, I have a post to write soon that uses them :-)