You know I can't really cook - like Bob Ross, I just have happy little accidents in the kitchen from time to time.....
I have a dish I call tomatillo shrimp, which is a southwest style dish. I saw a recipe for a tomatillo salad in a magazine one day, and thought I could morph it into a hot dish, which I did. Never make it the same way twice, but it generally involves tomatillos, tomatoes, onion, garlic, shrimp, lime juice, peppers of one sort or another, cumin, cilantro, tequila, and who knows what else. Sent my son to the grocery store roughly a week ago with a list that included ingredients for tomatillo shrimp.
Fast forward to tonight. Apparently he doesn't know to peel back the "paper" on tomatillos to make sure they're actually good before buying them, so I found I only had 3 usable ones. Tomatoes? Yeah, a whopping two, and they were small Romas. The onion was apparently used in another dish, so nix the onion entirely. Not only that, but apparently he doesn't know how to read labels on shelves, and also doesn't know the difference between fresh cilantro and fresh parsley. Hmmm.....Started diggin in the fridge - just what DO we have? I guess TB would call this "fusion" of some sort....
Slapped some olive oil in a pan, then started tossing veggies in - some leftover mushrooms and red and green bell pepper from the SOTM, the single ripe jalapeno from my garden, and oh, what the heck? Leftover bok choy from I can't even remember what.....
Toss in the tomatillo and tomatoe.... No pic, but after this threw in the green part of the bok choy for a tad, then moved all the veggies to a bowl for a few.
Shrimpers.... Two different kinds bought on two different occassions, threw in some garlic, cumin, sea salt, allspice....
Oh yeah, before I even slapped the veggies into the pan, mixed up a sauce with hot pepper bean paste, fish sauce, ginger juice and ginger syrup... Toss the veggies back in with the shrimps, add more of the same seasonings as on the shrimp plus also dried cilantro and oregano, just a touch of the fresh parsley, some lime juice, and then throw the sauce in...
There ya go, all mixed in together:
Slap that on some rice, cross your fingers, and EAT!
So yeah. In theory, if I knew how to cook, I'd have a pretty good idea if all this stuff would go well together or not. Like does lime juice go well with fish sauce? Gotta admit, I kind of looked at my plate and hesitated for a second, because I hadn't even tried it while in the process of cooking. Just threw in whatever caught my eye ATM..... and managed to forget to add any tequila. Ah well.
Would I make this again?
YES!
Would I change anything? No! This just-start-slapping-things-together approach worked pretty darned well. I'm not normally a huge eater (consider the plating pic is a salad plate), but I went back for seconds. Strangely, though, the taste of it kind of made me think of something from Louisiana.... It's all good!
