Saturday, August 7, 2010

Shrimp Curry - Calling All Curry Experts


My teenagers looooove curry, both green and yellow curry that they've had from some local restaurants. So, I went online and looked up curry recipes. It was overwhelming. There are so many!! As I weeded through them, just looking for the basics, I realized that I wouldn't be able to find a lot of the ingredients. Living in a small town means there aren't a lot of specialty food stores, and the selections at Wal-Mart, Smith's, or Albertson's in a town this small are going to be skimpy. I knew I had curry powder on my pantry shelf, but the rest would have to be bought at the store. I took what seemed to be common ingredients, wrote them down, and went to Wal-Mart. No exotic ingredients were available. All I had was the curry powder at home. So, here's what I came up with:

Saute:

1 tablespoon Smart Balance Light spread
2 cups finely diced onion (one online recipe made this the base of a curry paste)
2 sweet green bell peppers, chopped
3 teaspoons of minced garlic, I use the bottled kind for convenience

Add:

1 14oz. can petite diced tomatoes, use the juice also
zest of three limes
juice of those three limes
1/2 tsp. ground ginger (I forgot to buy fresh, which would be preferrable)
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1-1/2 tablespoons honey

Simmer for a few minutes to let the flavors combine. Then add:

1 16 oz. tub of Naturally Yours Fat-Free sour cream
14 oz. bag of medium cooked shrimp from Wal-Mart (first remove the tails after thawing in water)

Serve on top of rice. I've started eating brown rice, which has more fiber and I like the texture, but that's just me. White rice is just fine. This recipe, as is, makes 6-1/4 1-cup servings, 181 calories each serving.

Conclusion: It was okay, not bad, but Dani and Gil seemed to think something was missing. Following the example from one online recipe, I'd substituted the fat-free sour cream for the 14 oz can of coconut milk, thinking I would be saving on calories and fat grams. And I added the honey because it seemed to be lacking something. Frankly, I think it was the fat from the coconut milk that was missing. Using the coconut milk would only have added 76 calories per 1 cup serving, and maybe that would have been the icing on the cake, so to speak, and it might have been worth the extra calories and fat grams. Oh, and Dani thought there should have been less green peppers.

Any suggestions from those who have cooked curry before?

4 comments:

  1. LOVE CURRY.

    Sometimes you just can't cut some ingredients out of a recipe without really compromising the outcome, throw the coconut milk back in!

    You're doing great Becky, wow 19 pounds that's terrific. It's taken me over 5 months to lose 20 pounds.

    You might check Cooking Light for a curry recipe with fewer calories.

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  2. Agreed. Put the coconut milk back in. Depending on what else is in it you can find a low fat coconut milk but if you're trying to thicken the sauce it won't work.

    I'm going to check out my recipes because we love curry in this family.

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