lime juice
Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps with Thai Peanut Sauce
There are certain foods that I can eat every day, and a good Thai lettuce wrap is one of them! The ingredient that always wins me over is the full fat coconut milk. Add a smooth peanut butter and some acid and spices like soy sauce, cider vinegar and red curry paste, and you’ve pretty much checked all the boxes for great flavor! Another ingredient used often in Thai cuisine is ginger. They can be a bit tricky to peel, and the very best way to do that is to take a teaspoon and simply scrape the skin off. You won’t lose a single bit of ginger! Enjoy this light and easy dish for lunch or dinner this week!
Shrimp Spring Roll Bowls with Sweet Garlic Lime Sauce
Now this is my kind of meal! All of the great flavors of an Asian Shrimp Spring Roll made much easier by combining these wonderful ingredients in a bowl rather than a wonton rapper or rice paper. We featured this delicious dish in my Cool Down Dinners cooking class recently and there were many empty bowls and lots of happy tummies!
The Sweet Garlic Lime Sauce is the perfect flavor enhancer and my technique for pre-cooking the shrimp was the added special touch for this memorable meal. If you haven’t cooked shrimp this way, you really should give it a try for flavor that bursts in your mouth. Just add some Old Bay seasoning and the juice of a lemon in a small pot of water. Bring it to a boil and then turn off the heat. Add your shrimp, cover the pot and let the shrimp steep for 5 minutes. That’s it! Drain the shrimp and then add them to all the rest of the great flavors in this bowl and you have a light and savory meal in minutes!
Over the Rainbow Cubed Ahi Tuna Salad
There is the classic Salade Nicoise with its lovely composition of tuna, tomatoes, sliced eggs, olives, potatoes, haricots verts and anchovies–or variations thereof. The tuna is generally canned, and there is very little in the way of lettuce leaves. Then, there is the more updated trend, the Ahi Tuna Salad, with its delicate strips of seared fresh ahi tuna, arranged in overlapping slices and serve on a bed of lettuce often with a wasabi-soy- mustard drizzle or a honey ginger vinaigrette. Combine the best of both salads, add a rainbow of color and crunch, and you have a hearty, healthful main meal dish with the unusual twist of fresh tuna served, not in slices, but rather in cubes to get the sear on all sides. If your New Year’s resolution is to eat healthy and somewhat preservative-free, the Over The Rainbow Cubed Ahi Tuna Salad is your creative and crunchy kick starter in a salad bowl!
