Familiar food is good, but I find it's more fun to try new, exciting recipes and dishes. We had decently good success rate last summer, but George and I had pretty low standards (it being our first time out), and George was pretty handy with the frying pan. On the other hand, Leland is actually familiar with non-Chinese cooking and eats Italian food regularly at home, so we get a different touch.
Another boon is that this year, we've found time to go to Safeway before midnight. This means we can get fresh meat and seafood from the dude and not just the freezer. Because it was on sale, we got some shrimp, figuring the recipe would come. Lee had the idea of combining it with a peanut sauce for a little Thai influence, and we found a recipe that we could mostly make.
Cooking with peanut butter has always given me trouble, and I thought we would get it this time. Once we started making the sauce, though, the liquid evaporated fairly quickly, and although the recipe said the sauce would be thick, I still thought it looked a little dense.
But it was too late to turn back. On a side note, we lost a little out the side of the pan, and it got stuck beneath the coil. Thankfully, we got a fixit request in a couple days before, so our now operational fan kept the smoke detector calm.
After the sauce goes in the shrimp, then the carrots and red bell peppers (we didn't have any snow peas). We tried to water the sauce down some, but it continued to evaporate quickly, leaving us with this:
I promise it looks scarier than it was. My camera phone seems to have developed a red tint beyond what the red bell peppers should've contributed. Anyways, we dumped the pasta in then served it up for dinner.
On a scale of week-old roadkill to filet mignon-infused gel in a delicately cured banana leaf, I'd give it a 6. It was more good than bad, if not exactly what we were expecting. We thought it was going to be Thai-ish, but it actually tasted somewhat originless. Even so, peanuts, shrimp, and a little kick make a nice combination.
So how would I changed things? Given a second chance, I would've gotten all the ingredients.
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