Beyond

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder. If that makes me naive, then so be it.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

daring kitchen, july

This month's challenge was a fun one and once again had me trying something new: nut butter. Yes, there is in fact more out there than Skippy.

"The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online."

I started this one early (and posted this entry late, thanks to travels).

I made cashew butter in the food processor - a loud process but it made a nice butter with a more subtle flavor than peanut butter. This was then added to all sorts of goodies - soy sauce, raw garlic and ginger, sesame oil, and rice vinegar - to make a sauce that was simply AMAZING. The smell of it literally drew my family into the kitchen to taste it. This brought rave reviews and the requirement of chasing them back out so there would be less sampling and enough sauce for the noodle salad.

making cashew butter.
and yes that's duct tape on the food processor thanks to a drop a year ago. oops.

Some rice noodles boiled and rinsed (first time using those, and very good), peppers, basil, a bit of lime juice, scallions, and some sauteed shrimp were tossed with the dark brown sauce to finish the dish.

ta-dah!

And, in a word, WOW. We loved it! Me, D, and all three girls cleaned our plates and wanted more. The sauce was so good and savory, the shrimp just barely cooked to be tender and flavorful. Definitely a make-again!

I would like to try it again with roasted cashews versus the raw ones I used. I also played with pecan butter later (yum!) in the month to make a sauce with port wine for venison. That had a nice flavor but was almost too much with just the meat - that deserves another go with a stroganoff-type serving, methinks.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

yours looks better than mine...

barb said...

I had help - Meeka got right into the presentation and setting up the photos. She's becoming something of a stylist. Hmmm...