Dinner Rush: Shrimp with Mango Sauce and Quinoa Salad
The school year is about to begin! My first day of teacher prep began today, so my casual lifestyle with tons of free time is about to come to an abrupt and unpleasant end. Taking 8 months off from work to take a couple of part time jobs was pretty great. It enabled me to move in to our new house and spend time getting things organized and just like I wanted them, running errands as needed, going to the gym whenever I wanted to, playing with the dog, baking and cooking without time restraints, perusing the Internet at my leisure and blogging whenever I pleased! These days are sadly over. I will miss you, my lazy life.
I must somehow move on to my new life with a positive attitude and a determination to somehow manage a full time job and the rest of the things I need and want to do. Hold on, there are women who have more demanding jobs than I do, AND they have children, AND they’re members of groups and clubs, AND they take care of their house, AND they cook dinner, AND do laundry, AND blog! If they can do it, then measly little me can do it!
I will not allow my new Monday thru Friday, 8-5 (or 6 some days) job keep me from making dinner on the weeknights. I will also not stoop to macaroni and cheese from a box or putting a frozen pizza in the oven. I WILL make real dinner! So, every week I will make, review and blog about quick and easy dinner recipes that can be accomplished by a full time working woman…like I will be as of August 24.
These recipes come from Epicurious Dinner Rush from issues of Gourmet and SELF. They are both quite delicious. The most time consuming thing about them is the chopping and prep. I modified the quinoa recipe quite a bit after speaking with my wiser and younger sister, Sarah, who told me that the preparation of the quinoa in the actual recipe was a bit ridiculous. I hadn’t ever used quinoa before, so I thought the process of washing it 5 times in cold water, cooking for 10 minutes in boiling water and then steaming it in a sieve for 10 minutes above the boiling water was normal! Turns out, all you have to do is cook the quinoa as you would rice. Hooray! That little change made this dish much faster.
There is a recipe for lime and cumin dressing that goes with the salad, but I didn’t use it. Instead of the olive oil based dressing, I simply tossed the salad with lime juice, cumin and some kosher salt. I found the salad to be incredibly light and refreshing. I thought about adding chopped tomatoes, but opted not to this time. It would be delicious, though, so I may try it next time. Here is the original recipe.
Shrimp is always a good choice for a quick meal. Shrimp cooks quickly, just 2-3 per side, in a hot skillet. The mango sauce has a great combination of flavors. Sweet, spicy and perfect with the shrimp. I served the sauce warm, but it would be good chilled also. Here is the recipe from epicurious.
I served this meal with a few warmed corn tortillas, so Ben made shrimp tacos. I liked it better without the tortillas, Ben liked his taco version better. I think he likes when all the components of a meal come together in a nice little package. He likes burritos, sandwiches, pizza, stromboli, lasagna, enchiladas, chimichangas and always seems to mix the food on his plate into a new casserole type dish.
This is a fairly quick recipe, and definitely a good choice for a weeknight dinner.
Bulgogi means “fire meat” in Korean because it is traditionally grilled over an open flame, but can be cooked in a pan. Randy did the grilling. Grilled meat always smells good, but the marinade on the chicken and beef made for an especially wonderful aroma wafting from the grill downstairs to the kitchen window. I always find it funny how men seem to flock to a heated grill. Once the first tray of meat went to the grill every man in the house grabbed a beer and headed outside to help supervise. This attraction of men to a fire will always amaze me.
