Here are another two recipes from Savvy Southwest Cooking. The Gulf of Mexico has some sustainable shrimp options, but make sure you source yours carefully to avoid food colorants, antibiotics, sea lice and other parasites and chemicals. Not to mention the destruction to mangroves and oceans.
Lecture done. That calls for Tequila!
Perfect Pairings
You don’t really taste the Tequila in the peaches after grilling. Or at least I didn’t. Same deal if you toss a little extra Tequila in the shrimp marinade. So you’re probably best off having a margarita with dinner if you want to taste it…
The marinade is mostly lime, garlic, oregano, cumin, ground chipotle and olive oil, and the shrimp just needs a quick 30-60 minute dunk it in to infuse. You’re supposed to set a bit aside before it touches the shrimp, then add some more lime and honey to it to turn it into a sauce for serving with the shrimp.
I really liked the suggestion to use rosemary from your garden…because we happened to have a ton of rosemary in the garden. It grows well in the southwest, after all, and we were in Arizona at the time.
Watermelon, Figs or Peaches
I also liked that you could use watermelon or fresh figs instead of peaches, because peaches weren’t in season. Neither were figs, but we could find watermelon pretty easily, even if it wasn’t that delicious. Grilling made it better. I have a hard time grilling fresh figs anyway, because they’re just so good on their own.
Then you just thread the shrimp, peaches (sprinkled with cane sugar) and vegetables of your choice (crookneck squash, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, onions) onto the rosemary skewers and grill them. I didn’t have a real grill, so I baked them on a grill rack in the oven. Of course they overcooked – ovens are trickier than grills when you have less-than-jumbo shrimp – but no one complained. The sauce didn’t add much since it was so runny. A thicker sauce would have been nicer.
But the lime worked well with the mashed sweet potatoes on the side (boil chunks of sweet potato, then mash them with some diced chipotle chili in adobo sauce, salt and pepper. Add butter or vegan margarine if you want, but it’s not necessary.
The cilantro rice from the book was fine. Just chuck some herbs and spices into it and use vegetable or chicken broth for flavour.
We served this with a mixed salad with cherry tomatoes and toasted pecans with a peach balsamic vinaigrette (peach balsamic vinegar plus olive oil, salt and pepper). All local and southern (the aged Italian balsamic is infused by the Tubac Olive Oil Company.
I tried another version of this recipe with chicken, which needed a longer marinade, but was simple and tasty. It’s really all about the quality of your ingredients. If you have really fresh vegetables and meat/fish, and excellent fruit, you’ll be happy. If you use winter stock, it’s a bit boring. Some people like boring.
The mashed sweet potatoes are good year round. They were the real winner.
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