Dinner tonight: Pan-Fried Shrimp with Green Curry Cashew Sauce and Sesame Carrot Salad

I cooked a lot this weekend for Mr. Fritz (and will try to post the additional recipes as the week goes along), capping off my time in the kitchen with this excellent meal: Pan-Fried Shrimp with Green Curry Cashew Sauce from the Everyday Food Cookbook. It came together quickly -- the toughest part, really, was cleaning the food processor after the curry prep was finished.


To prepare the curry, you blend roasted, salted cashews with ginger in a food processor until smooth, then add some plain low-fat yogurt (I used Greek yogurt, which may have led to a thicker end result than would have been otherwise), cilantro, curry powder and salt and process some more. Once it's nicely pureed, divide between serving cups and set aside.

The preparation for the shrimp is super easy: heat some olive oil over medium high heat, add shrimp, salt and pepper and pan fry 2-3 minutes per side. Serve with the curry sauce and enjoy! Mr. Fritz and I really liked the the taste of the curry sauce. I was a little wary of it because as a general rule I don't like cashews, but I found that when they were blended with the rest of the ingredients, I couldn't even pick out the flavor of the nuts -- or at least it didn't impact the taste negatively.

I also made a sesame carrot salad to go along with the shrimp and curry. For this, I shredded a few carrots with a peeler, then mixed them with a dressing of rice vinegar, ginger, sesame seeds and toasted sesame oil. The carrot salad (which is paired with the curried shrimp in the cookbook) added a nice light, crispy element to the meal.

I will definitely make this meal again -- I was reminded yet again that it is often so much more satisfying to try a new dish at home than it is to go out to eat and spend tons of cash on something that likely will not be as tasty as what I can whip up in my tiny kitchen. Yay!