It was raining today, for me I know it might sound selfish towards people who catch a sudden rain but it ‘s quite nice to sitting indoors eating good food, enjoying wine while rain is tapping gently on your big windows.  One thing I love about apartments and houses in the Netherlands is they have huge transparent windows, which makes me feel closer to the sun, the wind and it looks pretty.

Shrimps were on sale a last week so I bought immediately 2kilograms, which pretty much partly cool down my constant craze for seafood. After a few days of steaming shrimps with simple lemongrass, ginger and lime leaves, I added some beer today to change the taste a bit and also made another type of shrimp dish with lots of things to spice them up. To me shrimps are delicious on their own and way too quick to prepare but the dish can be much improved and even more tempting when they were added with different herbs.

I’m from Vietnam (or at least Hanoi) where eating seafood on the streets is really popular, we have so many streets that are known for selling all kind of shrimps, snails, clams, sun-dried calamari and so forth. Among them, I love shrimps, blood clams and snails the most… there are many methods to prepare them but for shrimps the most typical method is to steam, char grill, fry, stir fry or braise. I love steaming or grilling the most since the sweetness of shrimps to me are more original. For Vietnamese, lemongrass, lime leaves and ginger enhance and give shrimps the best flavor and fragrance. Besides, ginger is hot will balance the cool nature of shrimps (?)

Beer steamed Shrimps (side dish)

500gram shrimps

10 lime leaves

1/2 tsp garlic power

10g ginger peeled and sliced

3 lemongrass chopped

1/4tsp salt

1/3 or 1/4 cup beer

Cook for 3 or 4 minutes.

Garlic Shrimps  (can be served as main dish as it goes great with white rice)

500g shrimps peeled, de-veined

2 lemongrass finely chopped

5 cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp salt (to your taste)

1 or 2 tbsp olive oil

7g butter

1/2tsp freshly crushed pepper (or more to your taste)

2tbsp ketchup

1tsp parsley (half to season, half to marinade)

2tbsp dry white wine

Method:

Marinade your shrimps with 2 crushed garlic cloves, white wine, garlic powder, parsley, salt, ketchup and pepper. Marinade a few hours or just 30 minutes is okay but it tastes better if it is marinaded long enough.

Heat olive oil and butter on medium high heat, stir in minced lemongrass, stir for a minute, add in minced garlic, stir until you see the surrounding of the garlic turns yellow brown or you can smell the great smell from your pan.

Increase the heat to high, add in the shrimps and all the marinade water. Stir quickly in the pan for about 2-3 minutes. Stop right when the shrimps turn red and ready.

Add more pepper at this point if you prefer.

Serve hot with white rice, please remember to eat with the shrimp sauce it’s amazingly delicious.

Dessert:

Half of the banana flan yesterday after a day chilled in the fridge seems improved in texture and taste. Wow!!!