Curried Noodles with Shrimp

Hello to all of you out in bloggerland! I know I've been gone for quite some time and I have some catching up to do, so I'm going to start tonight with curried rice noodles and shrimp! Thanks for waiting and coming back to visit us all in the tiny ass kitchen.

This is a quick fix dinner and can be done in under a half hour, it's great for people like me that come home from work late and don't want to spend their entire time home cooking to only eat later then you really want.



To start this recipe you'll need to dice up a whole pepper. I like the red ones.



Then you need to grate about a cup worth of carrot, if you get some larger chunks it's ok, it's all going to cook down anyway.



In a large skillet you'll need to heat up a little bit of olive oil and throw about a teaspoon of garlic in, you can always put in more or less, to taste. If you have some ginger grate that in, otherwise add a teaspoon of powdered ginger, it works just as good.



Once the garlic is good a toasty you add in all your other veggies and sweat them, you want them to cook up but not brown/caramelize.

Now in a small bowl you add two tablespoons give or take of soy sauce. To this soy sauce you need to add:



2 teaspoons curry powder and a teaspoon of cumin.



a teaspoon of ground coriander...



And a half teaspoon of fenugreek and ground cardamom.



In a pot you're going to warm some water and add in your rice noodles, DO NOT let the water boil, just put the lid on the top and turn off the water - they cook themselves in about 10 minutes.



Now your veggies should be nice and cooked down. What you do next is add you cleaned deveined shrimp.



Next you pour your spice mixture over along with about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of water and let all the shrimp cook till their pink.



What you get is a nice mixture of spice and savory to spoon over those rice noodles which should now be completely cooked. Enjoy and happy cooking!!

Shrimp Pizza

Welcome back to the Tiny Ass Kitchen, I hope you've been having as much fun cooking in this Christmas Season as I have.



If you have been following the blog or have been reading any of my past posts you'll know I made some pizza dough in November and I have finally had time to take some of that dough and do something with it!

To begin this whole thing you'll want to defrost your pizza dough, normally I take it out the night before so it's ready the next night for dinner time. Since it should be defrosted, I'll move past that.



Take a can of chopped tomatoes and drain them out.



You can then add the drained tomatoes to a mini chopper or a large food processers if you don't have a mini one, otherwise I don't have a large one, I don't need it and I don't need all that to do the small things I do with mine. Anyway. In this add not only the tomatoes but about 2 cloves of garlic along with some spices like oregano, basil, salt, pepper and whatever else you feel. Pulse it a few times until you get this nice tomato sauce that ::gasp:: isn't from a jar!



Since that is done clean off your counter top and put down some flour because you're going to press out your dough.



Then you're going to put some flour on both sides of the dough and on your hands. Then you can begin to press it out by using the heel of your hand. Don't do it to rough because then you'll rip the dough. You can use a rolling pin, but my mom has it and I was to lazy to go over there and get it, I also make my dough to thin when I use the pin, and when I need a thicker crust I just use my hands.

Oh and don't kill yourself trying to make a circular pizza, leave that to the professionals (but not to Papa Johns or crap like that)



When you get it to the right thickness, then you need to put it in a greased cookie sheet. (doesn't it look a little like Australia?)



Then you can start spooning on your sauce to the dough and spread it around so it's nice and even in all places.



Gracie and Danny were there to supervise this...



Then you can take some shredded mozzarella cheese and spread it all around the pizza. We like a lot of cheese, so yeah. Also note I have some shrimp defrosting on the stove, you can put whatever you want on this pizza, I like shrimp, but you can do tomatoes, broccoli, roasted red peppers, mushrooms, whatever. Just make it your own and enjoy it.



Then go ahead and add whatever topping you want (notice my husband placing his shrimp - he decided to help that night)



Then you can place the pizza in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.

You can make a side salad in this time too so you can have something additional to your pizza.



When it's done, I have to say, not only does it look good, but it tastes even better. The whole wheat dough is so tasty, it's not gritty and really makes you enjoy the pizza without feeling horribly guilty. The smell in the house is wonderful too, but what's even better is you save lots of money doing it at home so you can enjoy your pizza a little more often.

Happy cooking!

My Fake Fra Diavlo

At times when Danny and I go out to eat he likes to get fra diavlo which is basically a spicy tomato sauce (because I had never known that as I don't eat spicy things). I had some left over tomato sauce in the freezer that I had made and since I rarely make pasta I thought it would be a nice treat and a quick fix for Danny.



I started off with some shrimp that are deveined but still have their shells on. The only reason why I get them like this is because they are cheaper and it's not that much work to shell a shrimp as most people like to think because they are laaaaaazzzzzzyyyyyy.



I take about 1/2 the bag of shrimp and put them in a bowl and fill it with water so they can defrost, it also gives me time to do everything else...



While the shrimp defrost I poured my sauce into a pot, and I do make my own sauce, it took me a long time to figure out because I use to think it was just crushed tomatoes cooked down. And that's it. I've obviously come a long way and I make large pots now and freeze it so I can make fast dinners when I come home later at night.



To make my fake fra diavlo (because I never looked up a recipe for this I just winged it - or is it wung it?) I used this hot pepper flakes I got from Aldi because they just started carrying spices at the one near my house.



I added in about a teaspoon which I have to say translated to a big mistake. Anyway...



At this point I filled a pot with some water and turned it on, I'd be making bow ties that night as that's what Danny chose. You see his roles in cooking in our life are rather small, but picking the pasta is a major deal in this house.



I take some garlic and unpeel it.



And I put it in my brand NEW garlic press.



I pressed about 4 small cloves because I really like garlic. It's my best friend.



At this point the shrimp should be done defrosting. Now I will teach you to PEEL them. You start by pinching the tail of the shrimp and lightly pulling on it.



Then for the body you pinch the little legs and the rest of the shell can come off. After you do this a few times you get faster at it and it doesn't really matter. Do try to run your fingers across the flesh of the shrimp so that way you can make sure nothing got stuck on the shrimp.



Grace likes the smell of the shrimp but she doesn't get anything, so she's a little pissed.



I put all the shrimp in a baking dish and then...



I add all that nice garlic along with some salt and pepper and toss it together. After that I pop it into a 400 degree oven and then I just watch it for a few minutes until they all turn pink.

While all this is going on my pasta is cooking and so is my sauce. It all tends to finish at the same time because I've gotten better at this cooking thing.



This is how you know when the shrimp are done, they'll look like this. I then drain my pasta and do my plating.



This is the finished product. It came out good, and you can see Danny's place has a lot of sauce since he likes alot of spice, however I wasn't to keen on it because it felt like my mouth had the devil dancing in it because it was so damn hot.