Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Curried Shrimp Revelation!

When I was a kid, one of my mom's recipes that I loved the most was Curried Shrimp. So as an adult, I naturally started making this on my own. Sometimes it was spectacular, sometimes not so much.

I've never been good at making my own soups. They always turn out too watery. The other day I had a bunch of celery and searched online for a "Celery Soup" recipe. I found one that looked quite simple and made it. It was amazing, and consisted of just celery and a few other ingredients. One of the keys to its success was its creamy texture. To achieve this, the recipe explained how to make a "roux", which is a paste of sorts created simply from flour & butter and then eventually milk. The result is wonderfully thick sauce.

So I put 2 + 2 together and surmised that I might be able to get a thicker, creamier curried shrimp if I first made a roux, rather than just throwing all the milk directly in the shrimp & vegetable mixture. Boy was I right!

I must say that curried shrimp dinners will never be the same!

1 comment:

dgnyhk said...

You can achieve the same results by cooking off the liquid in the curry (reduction) - in fact better results as you don't have to throw needless carbs into the mix. I find curries taste better then longer you cook them, anyway, so reducing makes sense.

That said, Turmeric has recently been added to the top foods list, so flour or not, keep with the curry! Coconut milk, too, has lots of really really good fats. In fact, if you have to use a roux, you might want to experiment with using the fat off the top of the coconut milk instead...