Linden's coconut shrimp

I made coconut shrimp.




Because my kitchen is really really not equipped to handle deep frying (and thus, alas, no spring rolls this summer!) I baked them in the oven instead of the traditional deep frying. They were delicious, and they would have been more delicious if England had anything other than dessicated coconut. Nevertheless! Delicious.

You may be thinking, "Linden, this is a sure Xan smackdown! He loves coconut shrimp and has never posted about the on the blog (although who knows, maybe once you post this, he'll dig up five instances of when he did it and have a little maniacal laugh in the corner, because he's not as nice as he fools everyone into thinking, and enjoys crowing like a crow. Why don't you sound more happy?"

It's because I'm going to link the recipe so that he can make them for himself, because I am a loving and devoted little sister.


Also, as requested in the comments, the link to the banana bread cobbler: that's the basic recipe, but I play pretty fast and loose. I think in the filling I subbed in 1/4C rum for 1/4 of milk, and used oil instead of butter. I think I left the topping as it is.

Linden's Papa's cilantro garlic shrimp

So I had some coriander to use up. It's been sitting in my fridge for just over a week, getting progressively yellower. And I thought to myself, coriander has never been my favorite herb, and aside from Papa's grilled coriander chicken which I, alas, cannot make as I do not have a grill and am not male (we stick to traditional gender roles in Linden's kitchen), there is only one dish that overloads on coriander that I like, and that dish is his coriander-garlic shrimp.

Now outside of the kitchen I do not adhere to gender roles as strictly, and occasionally refuse to ask for directions. I thought to myself, it cannot be that hard, there aren't that many ways to combine these things. So I took some shrimp, and made a little marinade of a teensy bit of oil, a fair amount of garlic (although not the handfuls that Papa apparently uses), a handful of chopped coriander, and lemon juice, and let it sit for a few hours. Then I put some spaghetti on to boil, dumped the shrimp and marinade (it was pretty dry, mostly just enough to coat the shrimp) in a pan and sauteed it on high heat for a few minutes until the shrimp was hot and the garlic browned. Then I dumped my spaghetti in, stirred it around a bit to coat it with the juices and remaining marinade, and dished up. (It turns out Papa does this very differently, by the way. There is precooking of garlic, cilantro is added right at the very very end, etc etc. Mine was very good, and I think had less of the icky cilantro bite, so I am judging it a success.)

Now you may notice that this is not all I'm eating. Indeed, that would be a very astute observation! I filled my fridge with green things this week (tempted shamefully by the sale on asparagus) and now have to use them all up, which means every meal is required to have greenery. (Terrible!) So here's my delicious asparagus tip: cook them in a pan with just a tiny bit of oil, and throw in some chopped walnuts halfway through. They taste super delicious together (I suspect a little grated parmesan on top wouldn't hurt, but I know some consumers of this blog are not consumers of cheeeese.)  and is still arguably healthy.

I also bought store-made bread in a moment of weakness, but the ingredients seemed innocent. So this was my lunch yesterday! Eaten outside my house in the grassy courtyard in the sun.