Thai Coconut Shrimp with Brown Rice Pasta

Thai Coconut Shrimp with Brown Rice Pasta - July 31st, 2012

Niall was successful in obtaining a can of coconut milk for me today. After relaxing abit once I got home from work, I resumed chef duties and began making supper.

Thai Coconut Shrimp with Brown Rice Pasta - page 53

"Thai cuisine is beloved for its pungent flavors and fiery curries. In this noodle bowl, we've used the sweet creaminess of light coconut milk and the good-for-you monounsaturated fat of natural peanut butter to balance the sharper tastes of garlic, ginger and spicy red pepper."

I really loved this recipe. I was a little hesitant when I originally read over the ingredients and saw peanut butter on the list. A few months ago we had a very bad encounter with a peanut butter involved recipe that I found on Pinterest. Niall referred to it as an "atrocity"...he wasn't far off. It was terrible. We could not eat it. We felt very ill afterwards.

While I think Niall still has nightmares about that previous meal, he still wasn't in love with this one. I think he will be forever turned off of peanut butter in anything savory. I found the peanut butter element in this meal so much better. To me, it wasn't the most predominant flavour (unlike the last one where the ONLY thing you could taste was PB). I'm quite looking forward to my leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I would have loved the ginger flavour to be a little stronger. Next time, I'd use grate 'fresh' frozen ginger into the dish instead for extra impact.

I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but I made one little mistake. I was in such a rush to get the shrimp thawed and into the skillet, that I failed to notice that the shells were still on. LOL. I knew I wanted the tails still on, but didn't realize that the bag I bought was 'shell-on'. At least they were already deveined. It was a little messy peeling them when they were covered in sauce, but not the end of the world.

I was a little frustrated with the pasta though. The package said to boil them for 13-15 minutes, I wanted slight al-dente noodles, so I drained them at 12 minutes. They were pretty soft. When I mixed them into the shrimp, veggies & sauce, they started to break into pieces. Bah.... Still tasted like noodles though.

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