Coconut Shrimp

I love hot cooked shrimp.  Cold cocktail shrimp, not so much.  Since I started eating gluten-free (GF), lots of batters are on my no-no list.  This means that my shrimp has been either grilled, sauted or baked, but with only some seasoning or marinated in a GF sauce.  That's not a bad thing, but battered shrimp, fried is so good and I was missing it.

Recently, I searched for a Coconut Shrimp recipe that was GF and sort of healthy.  I found one. Googling is a great thing!  I found one that is baked, not fried and I substituted with some GF breading mix and it came out delicious!  I would love to share it with you so here are the details:

This recipe can be found at About.com.  It is under the Thai food category.

Easy Baked Coconut Shrimp

Yields: 18-24 Coconut Shrimps

• 18-24 medium to large shrimp, butterflied (may leave tails on)
• I did not butterfly them and left the tails on; they still came out great
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut (kind used for baking)
• 2-3 eggs

Coating Mix

• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (dried, refined crumbs, such as Panko)
• Substituted with GF Panko Breadcrumbs.  Can make own by processing GF crackers.
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or dried crushed chili
• 1 tsp sugar
• pinch white pepper
• I used regular black pepper, no difference

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Cover a cookie sheet with parchmanet paper or spray with non-stick cooking oil.
2. Stir the Coating Mixers in a bowl and set aside.
3. Get 2 more bowls:  the first of these bowls, beat 2 eggs and in the second bowl, place the shredded coconut.  Keep the ingredients out, you may need to prepare more in the bowls as you go.  
1. I set-up an assembly line of the bowls to make it easier.
4. Grab a shrimp and dip it in the egg mix, then in the Panko breadcrumbs, coating the shrimp.  Then dip the same shrimp in the egg mixture again and then roll in the coconut.  Place on baking sheet.
5. Repeat the dipping for each shrimp.  Your fingers will get caked with the breadcrumbs and coconut, but keep going, putting a light coat on each shrimp.
6. Bake on the middle rack in the oven until they are lightly toasted.  Total time should be about 15 minutes, turning half-way through.
7. Can be served with Thai sweet chili sauce.

In the above pic, are the bowls set-up and the ingredients still out.  I had to keep adding more to each bowl.

I used frozen shrimp and I did not butterfly them.

I coated each shrimp, which was a pain in the butt, but it was so worth it.

The shrimp, uncooked, ready to go on the backing sheet.  The parchment paper worked like a charm.  No mess to clean-up.  This was an easy recipe, healthier than fried coconut shrimp from your local Chinese or Thai restaurant.

Go ahead and try it and let me know!!

Strawberry Bread

I love trying new recipes, especially the sweet kind!  I tried this new recipe last weekend and it was delicious plain, with butter, with cream cheese and even with ice cream!

The recipe is Strawberry Bread from the Everyday Food magazine, July/August 2004 issue.  

Pic from Martha's website

This recipe can be found at Martha Stewart's website, but I have also included here:

Strawberry Bread

Yields: 1 loaf that serves 8

Calories: 276 per slice

• 5 tbs plus 1 tsp unsalted butter @ room temperature (plus more for greasing the pan)
• 1 pint strawberries, rinsed, hulled & quartered
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (can alternately use gluten free flour blend)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup water (might not be needed, see ** note at end of recipe)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8 x 4 inch loaf pan; set aside.
2. Using a fork, mash the strawberries until they are soft.
3. In a small saucepan, place the mashed strawberries and bring to a boil over med-high heat.  Cook, stirring for 1 min.  Take off heat and set aside.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder & salt; set aside.
5. In a separate large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. *
6. Add flour mixture alternately with 1/3 cup water **, beginning and ending with the flour.
7. Fold in the cooked strawberries.
8. Pour/scrape batter into prepared loaf pan, smoothing the top if necessary.
9. Bake until toothpick in center comes out clean, about 45-60 min.  If it needs longer than 45 min, lightly tent aluminum foil over pan to prevent the bread from browning too much.
10. Remove from oven and place pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 min.
11. Run a knife around the edges to loosen, then invert on the rack.  Flip back over and cool completely.

Note *:  I had brought all ingredients to room temperature prior to starting and my creamed butter mix was not light and fluffy but a well blended slurry.

Note**: Since my butter blend was like a slurry and my strawberries contained some liquid too, I only added a scant amount of water.  Once the flour mix was added, it was still quite liquidy and not that batter-like.

Based on the Notes above, I really did not think this bread was going to work out.  I had also used a gluten free flour blend for one and normal flour for my second one and they both had the same liquidy consistency, but after 45 min, they were both done and came out great!

The white pan is the gluten-free version (bread did not rise) and the clear pan is the normal version: perfect.

When I flipped the gluten-free one over, there was a concentrated corner of strawberries, so the corner broke off.  I did not mind, that was my excuse to try it before it was cooled!  Yummy!

I ate this bread with ice cream one night in a brownie sundae fashion and it was so good.  I shared this with another gluten-free pal at work and she loved it too.

Let me know how you like it!  Bon Appetit!

Blueberry Oatcakes

Happy Easter!

For Easter breakfast, we made up some healthy oatcakes.  Now, oatcakes are not the first thing that comes to mind when you think Easter, but it was a recipe that I wanted to try out.

Vince's daughter gave me a few old Self magazines from last year and while I was thumbing through one of them, I came across a few yummy, albeit healthy, recipes.  I don't mind healthy recipes, but I feel bad subjecting others to it (only sometimes, some recipes are so good that you can't tell they are healthy).

I will share the recipe, so everyone can eat healthy in the morning, too!  

Yummy!  (Really!!)

The recipe is from the September 2011 issue.  They are called Blueberry Oatcakes.  This is a gluten-free recipe, and they were really good.  Here it is:

Blueberry Oatcakes

Yields: 4 oatcakes

Calories: 341 for all 4 

(does not include the optional ingredients)

• 4 egg whites
• 1/2 cup rolled oats (old fashioned oats)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp water
• 1/3 cup blueberries (or more, if you like)
• 1 tbsp sliced almonds
• 1/4 cup fat-free greek yogurt (optional)
• 1 tsp maple syrup (optional)

1. In a bowl, combine the egg whites, oats, cinnamon and water; whisk for 1 min.
2. Stir in the blueberries and almonds.
3. Heat a skillet to medium heat.  Spray skillet with cooking spray.
4. Spoon the batter onto hot skillet and cook until the egg is set on the bottom (~2 min).
5. Flip the oatcakes over and cook for another min.
6. Optional: Spread the greek yogurt over the oatcakes and top with the syrup.

At first I did not think the yogurt would be very good on these, but it actually was.  The syrup is needed, but everyone uses a different amount, so I did not include that ingredient in the calorie total.  I just put the syrup in a small cup and dipped my cut up pieces in it.  The oatcakes soak up the syrup like crazy, so this way you control the amount of syrup to a decent portion size.

Really, these were good!  The recipe makes about 3-4 oatcakes, and this really is one serving size.  But because it has oats and almonds, it will keep you going in the morning.

You can always substitute any diced up fruit in these oatcakes.   

If you don't have time in during the week to whip these up, try them on the weekend.  Let me know what you think!! 

Thank you Self magazine, I never would have come up with this recipe!