Keffir Lime Shrimp

Why do I start things and don’t finish them? This goes for a lot of things. I started a painting of my dog roughly a year ago, so far on the canvas there is just charcoal outline of my fur baby. Sometimes I start cleaning and I just get distracted or annoyed so I half clean (it drives my boyfriend crazy; I think he might have clinical OCD with cleaning). This occasional half ass’ed-ness also goes right into the kitchen, into the vegetable crisper to be precise. I don’t know what it is, when I go to the grocery store (my favorite being T&T) I look at all the fruits and vegetables and they remind me of the precious jewels at Tiffany boutiques, delicately encased in protective cellophane and lit up in all their magnificent colourful glory. It just looks so damn tantalizing, it doesn’t matter what it is called or what weird plant it may have come from, I will try to eat it to the best of my abilities. My affinity for vegetables came, no doubt, from my parents and my heritage.

 I am a Bengali; my family is from west Bengal in India. We are primarily pescatarian and vegetarian. Meat was an afterthought as we mostly ate a crazy amount of various fish and vegetables and I just assumed this is how everyone eats. Well, then we moved to Canada where I soon realized people LOVE their meat here. It felt to me that if it had aerobic respiration and lived on land North Americans would eat it! Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy the occasional steak cooked mid rare (incidentally, I have only truly ever been satisfied with the steak at Auberge Du Pommier. All other steak places just don’t taste that great.) But what my body craves are my mother’s magical lightly spiced vegetable medleys and her fish curries.

When I started writing this blog I was just on ramble about how I don’t finish things and how currently there are vegetables in my fridge yearning to be eaten.

Currently I have water spinach, half a pound of Brussels sprouts, a head of cauliflower tons of potatoes and one lonely daikon. I could probably make my mom’s “chorchori” which is a Bengali vegetable medley mildly spiced and flavored with cracked mustard seeds. It’s my comfort food, my equivalent of a meat loaf or shepherd’s pie.  However I decided to go with something I know the Russian would love equally as much.

He’s a huge fan of Asian foods specially curries with Kefir lime flavours. so I set off on a journey to make some kind of a curry with kefir leaves.

500 grams shrimp

1 red onion brunoised

One lemon grass stick smashed

4 kefir lime leaves

Pint of brussels sprouts halved

2 garlic cloves

½ tbs of shrimp paste

¼ cup water 

¼ greek yogurt

1 star anise

1 inch ginger

4 cardamoms

Salt and pepper to your likings

Brunoise the onion, which basically means super small square cuts of onions. Almost like it’s been pulverized but not quite. Do the same with the garlic.

Wash and halve the sprouts, take off any wilty or weird looking outer leaves

Peel and devein the shrimp if they are not already done. In case you didn’t know the vein in the shrimp isn’t used for circulating vital body fluids, rather it’s the garbage chute.

In a pan temper the spices in hot oil, be quick on this because if you let it temper too long it will burn and everything will taste like it had grated charcoal on it.

After a quick tempering, toss in the onion julienned ginger, garlic, kefir leaves and lemon grass and sauté it off so the raw flavour is no longer with us.

While most of the pan is still fairly dry toss in the sprouts and let them caramelize and make friends with the flavours, this helps reduce the odd flavour sometimes associated with these baby cabbages.

After 5-10 minutes of this add in the shrimp and ¼ cup of water so that the water can steam and cook the shrimp cover and let it steam itself done. Also, don’t forget to salt it to taste.

Off the heat add the yogurt and stir until you achieve a nice creamy texture. I added a bit too much water so my curry turned soupy. 

I served it with rice but if the sauce is thicker I assume itd be great with noodles.

That’s my rambling on lonely vegetables living in the bowls of my fridge waiting to be eaten. Eat your vegetables!