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Shoyu Chicken

When I was browsing through the Aloha Kitchen cookbook, it was such a challenge to pick a protein to go with my mac salad!

Do I go with chashu? Spam? Maybe some mochiko chicken, or beef teriyaki? So many good choices, so little time!

I ended up choosing this shoyu chicken, because it’s got everything I want in a recipe:

  • I already have all the ingredients on hand, and they’re easy to find
  • it’s an easy, mostly hands-off recipe
  • and it looks tasty!

We’ll start by braising the chicken.

As the name suggests, the main sauce ingredient is shoyu, or Japanese soy sauce.

A good bit of water, to thin out the sauce – otherwise it’ll be super salty.

Honey and brown sugar for sweetness.

A bit of sliced ginger.

And a few cloves of garlic. Since they’re just smashed, we’ll use whole fresh cloves this time.

Nestle your bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs into the sauce, and bring it to a boil.

Add in some sweet Maui onion wedges, and green onion pieces.

And it’s time for a hot girl simmer!

Let the chicken simmer for an hour, flipping halfway through.

Then we’ll broil the chicken, just really quick, to get a nice brown on the skin.

While the chicken is broiling, we’ll add a bit of cornstarch to the sauce, and cook it a little longer, to get a nice thick sauce to serve with the chicken.

And there you have it! Serve with white rice, and that mac salad we made last time, and you’ve got a perfect plate lunch.

Shoyu Chicken

from the Aloha Kitchen cookbook

Ingredients
  • 3/4 cup shoyu
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • one 2″ piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 2 or 3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
  • 2 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
  • 1/2 Maui onion, peeled and cut into 3/4″ wedges
  • 2 or 3 green onions, white and green parts, cut into 2″ pieces
  • 1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
  • 3 cups steamed rice, for serving
Cooking Directions
  1. In a heavy Dutch oven or pot, mix the shoyu, water, honey, brown sugar, ginger, and garlic together. Nestle the chicken thighs in the sauce, skin-side up, submerging the meat as much as possible. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. When the sauce comes to a boil, add the Maui onion wedges and green onion pieces and turn the heat to a medium-low. Cover the pot with a lid and let simmer for 30 minutes. Using a pair of kitchen tongs, gently turn all the chicken pieces over. Cover the pot again and simmer for another 30 minutes. Check the tenderness of the meat with a fork; if you can easily insert the fork into the meat, the chicken is done. Remove the cooked thighs from the sauce, reserving it, and place them on a rimmed baking sheet.
  2. Preheat the broiler.
  3. In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch with 1/4 cup of the sauce until smooth, then add the cornstarch mixture back to the pot with the remaining sauce and cook over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Broil the chicken thighs for a minute or two, watching carefully to make sure you do not burn the skin. The goal is to just quickly brown the skin.
  4. Serve the chicken with the thickened sauce and rice.

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Mac Salad

When I did the Aloha Kitchen cookbook redemption a few weeks ago, I had a really difficult time choosing between recipes. Do I do something with spam? Or something sweet? And how could I possibly pass up making a plate lunch?

While I ended up picking the ginger misoyaki butterfish for the redemption, I was still left with a whole list of other recipes I wanted to try from the cookbook – and a plate lunch was at the top of the list!

And what’s the best part of Hawaiian plate lunches? The mac salad, obviously. (Ya grill is a double-mac kinda gal.)

We’ll start with the most vital part of mac salad… the macaroni! Boil it in salted water, until tender – not just al dente. We want the macaroni soft, but not mushy.

Next, the secret to a good mac salad – a little bit of grated onion. If you can get a Maui onion or sweet onion, that would be ideal! But if not, a yellow onion will work fine here.

Once the macaroni has cooled a bit, mix in your grated onion.

Best Foods or Hellmann’s mayonnaise, depending on where you live. No Miracle Whip or Kewpie for this recipe.

Sweet pickle juice and sweet pickle relish for a bit of tang.

And finish it off with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Mix it all together, and then refrigerate. But we’re not done!

When you’re ready to serve the mac salad, mix in more mayonnaise to taste – you don’t want a dry mac salad! – and some grated carrot for texture.

Serve as a side to any sort of meat, fish, or veggie dish, with rice.

And stay tuned for the next recipe, where we’ll be making shoyu chicken to round out our plate lunch!

Mac Salad

from the Aloha Kitchen cookbook

Ingredients
  • 8 oz elbow macaroni
  • 2 tbsp kosher salt
  • 2 tbsp grated Maui or yellow onion (roughly 1/4 whole onion)
  • 1 to 1 1/2 cups Best Foods (or Hellmann’s) mayonnaise
  • 2 tbsp sweet pickle juice
  • 3 tbsp sweet pickle relish
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 cup coarsely grated carrot (1/2 medium carrot)
Cooking Directions
  1. Cook the macaroni, salting the water with the kosher salt, accourding to the instructions on the package, until very tender, not al dente. Drain and transfer to a large bowl. Let cool slightly for 10 minutes, then add the onion, 1/2 cup of the mayonnaise, the pickle juice, relish, and pepper to taste and toss until well coated. Taste and season as needed with salt and pepper. Chill for 1 hour.
  2. When ready to serve, stir in 1/2 cup of the mayonnaise and the carrot; add more mayonnaise if it looks dry. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed. Serve chilled.

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Fig Tarts

I never had fresh figs, growing up. They were just never a part of our dining repertoire. Fig Newtons – of course! But I had never eaten a fresh fig.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s, and happened to receive figs as part of a CSA box, that I tried them for the first time.

CSA means community-supported agriculture, and a CSA box is a box filled with fruits and vegetables that they put together for their subscribers every week or so. A lot of the time, CSA boxes are comprised of whatever the farm happens to have that week – which means you can end up with a lot of produce you might not ordinarily purchase.

Not knowing what to do with figs when they showed up in my CSA box, I turned to the internet – and all the recipes I’d bookmarked from blog posts over the years.

And back then, this fig tart recipe from Sophisticated Gourmet caught my eye.

This time around, I was once again surprised by figs – but this time they came from my brother and sister-in-law’s garden. A whole container of figs showed up at my door, with the instruction to eat them soon so they don’t go bad!

I could eat them raw, but… I’ve got a YouTube channel! And I couldn’t turn down the chance to make something with them!

This recipe is super, super simple.

You start with puff pastry. If you’re fancy and just happen to have homemade puff pastry in the freezer, or want to make some for this, be my guest! But I’m using store-bought. Let it sit out at room temperature for about half an hour, but not much longer – just thaw it enough to unfold it.

Cut the puff pastry into squares – you could do four bigger squares, but I found cutting it into 9 smaller squares resulted in perfectly snack-sized tarts.

Next we’re going to cut the figs. Make sure you wash your figs well – I’ve been told the sap from the trees can cause chemical burns, although I certainly haven’t tested that theory myself. Then remove the stems and quarter them.

Sprinkle your puff pastry squares with a little sugar – if you have vanilla sugar, that would be lovely here.

Then arrange four fig quarters on each square.

Sprinkle the figs with a little brown sugar.

Then bake them at 400F for 15 minutes.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream, and enjoy!

They’re light, flaky, not too sweet, and such an easy way to take advantage of summer produce! You could easily switch these out for just about any type of fruit – berries, stone fruit, apples, bananas, even jackfruit would be great.

Fig tarts

slightly adapted from Sophisticated Gourmet

Ingredients
  • 1 sheet store-bought puff pastry
  • 1 tsp granulated sugar
  • 9 ripe figs, quartered
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
Cooking Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Roll out the pastry and cut into 9 squares, then place onto the lined cookie sheet.
  3. Evenly sprinkle the top of each square with the granulated sugar, and top each square with a quartered fig.
  4. Lightly sprinkle brown sugar over the figs.
  5. Bake 15 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden brown. Let cool.
  6. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired. Enjoy!

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Black Sesame Pudding

Despite being half Japanese, black sesame in desserts did not feature strongly in my childhood. Mochi and anko, white sesame and even shoyu… But it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I had my first black sesame dessert.

Way back in 2012, I started a podcast called Miso Hungry with my friend Rachael – aka La Fuji Mama. She’d spent a lot of time in Japan, and even lived there for a while, and could not stop raving about black sesame desserts.

With that (black sesame) seed planted in my mind, it’s no surprise that a kurogoma purin sitting innocently in a refrigerator case next to the bakery at Marukai caught my eye on the way to Rachael’s house one day – which is how I ended up buying enough for all of us to try.

Wonderful friend that she is, when she saw how much I adored that black sesame pudding she decided she was going to develop a kurogoma purin recipe for me… and that’s how this recipe came to be.

A few weeks ago, when we were filming the furikake nori, the scent of blended black sesame made me crave black sesame desserts.

And whenever I’m craving black sesame desserts, this is the one I turn to – but I’m trying something a little different this time.

Did you know gelatin isn’t vegetarian? It’s actually derived from collagen from animal parts – which means our vegan and vegetarian friends can’t eat it.

Instead, I wanted to try using agar agar, which is derived from seaweed and works similarly to gelatin.

Obviously I had to make a batch of both, for a true comparison, right? This definitely wasn’t just an excuse to make more pudding.

Step one – if you’re using powdered gelatin, you need to hydrate it before you use it in your pudding, otherwise it will clump and not gel correctly. Sprinkle it over some cold water. I made the mistake of using a small bowl – it would be better to use a wider bowl or plate with more surface area, so you can make sure all of the gelatin comes into contact with the water.

If you’re using agar agar, skip this step – we’ll add the agar agar later on.

Next, prepare your kurogoma – black sesame seeds. You could use a coffee or spice grinder for this, but we’re using a food processor today. Grind your black sesame seeds with a little sugar – the sugar helps the sesame seeds grind evenly, much like adding salt when you grind something using a mortar and pestle.

Once that’s all evenly ground, it’s time to make our pudding. Transfer your ground black sesame seeds to a pot. Then add milk and more sugar. Bring it to a boil, continuously stirring to prevent burning.

Once it boils, add your softened gelatin, and stir until thoroughly combined.

If you’re using agar instead, this is when you should stir in your agar agar powder, making sure it’s all mixed in.

Remove the saucepan from the heat, and stir in the heavy cream.

At this point, you want your pudding to cool to room temperature. You can put it in an ice bath, but make sure not to get any water in it!

Once the pudding has cooled, you can optionally whip it a bit to make the pudding lighter. If you used agar, it may have already started gelling by now, because agar agar gels at a much higher temperature than gelatin, so whipping it a bit will make it easier to transfer.

Ladle the pudding into containers, and refrigerate for at least four hours.

If you’d like, you can serve with a little whipped cream – and enjoy!

We loved the pudding both ways – the agar is a little firmer, and since it thickens faster, the black sesame powder is suspended in the pudding, rather than sinking to the bottom as it does in the gelatin pudding.

The gelatin version is creamy and soft, like you would expect from pudding. Black sesame gives it a nutty, earthy flavor, and it’s not too sweet.

The agar agar version is firm, moreso than jello would be. But it would be a great add-in for a boba-type drink, similar to other jellies that are often used.

We can’t decide which is our favorite – we keep flipflopping between versions, because they’re both tasty! Which do you think you would prefer?

Black sesame pudding

slightly adapted from La Fuji Mama

Ingredients
  • 1 packet (.25 ounces) powdered gelatin
  • 1 1/2 tbsp cold water

or

  • 2 tsp powdered agar agar
  • 1/3 cup toasted black sesame seeds
  • 1 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 2 1/2 cups milk
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup whipping cream
Cooking Directions
  1. If using gelatin, put the cold water in a bowl with a wide base, and sprinkle the powdered gelatin over the top of the water. Set aside to soften.
  2. Place the sesame seeds and 1 tbsp sugar in a blender or food processor and grind until sandy.
  3. In a medium-sized saucepan, mix the ground sesame, milk, and 1/2 cup sugar together. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent the milk from burning. As soon as the mixture comes to a boil, add the softened gelatin OR powdered agar agar and stir to melt and combine. Remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the cream.
  4. Fill a large bowl halfway with ice, then cover the ice with cold water. Pour the pudding into a slightly smaller bowl, and carefully place the bowl into the ice water, taking care not to spill any water into the pudding. Whisk the pudding briefly, then leave to cool for 5 minutes.
  5. Set out clean containers to pour the pudding into. I used 12 1/3-cup containers, but you may use fewer containers depending on the size.
  6. After cooling, optionally whip the pudding for about 5 minutes (this whisking will produce a lighter pudding), then equally divide the pudding between the prepared containers. Cover the containers and place in the refrigerator to set up for a minimum of 4 hours, or until firm. Serve cold, topped with a bit of whipped cream if desired.

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Spinach and Chickpeas

Spinach and chickpeas. Sounds like kind of a boring dish, right? But the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

This used to be my favorite after-workout, quick, easy, healthy, tasty, satisfying meal. I’d come home from a late aerial or pole class, pop this in the toaster oven (thank goodness for auto-off timers!), take a quick shower, and by the time I was out it would be done.

I’d have a meal that’s filling enough to be satisfying, healthy and filled with (vegetarian) protein, yet not so heavy that it would keep me up with heartburn or a bloated belly.

It starts with two cans of chickpeas. Drain them – but save that liquid! It’s called aquafaba, and it’s an excellent vegan egg replacement for baked goods.

Drain and rinse your chickpeas, then pop them in a baking dish. I use an 8×8″ glass dish.

Then top it with a couple of big handfuls of spinach. Just pack as much as you can in there, because you know how spinach shrinks.

Drizzle that with olive oil, and sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

Bake at 425F for 15 minutes, and it’s done!

Depending on how hungry you are, you can optionally top it with a fried egg. I do that when I eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning.

NOT optional is the dried radish kimchi (but you can totally sub that with other kimchi or sriracha or something). You need that kick of flavor and spice to really take this dish to the next level.

For us, this is about 4 servings – Son and I will eat half the night I make it, and then split the rest (with fried eggs) the next morning for breakfast.

I know it sounds too simple to be true… but with that dried radish kimchi we made last time, I really really adore this dish!

Spinach and Chickpeas

adapted from What’s Cooking Good Looking

Ingredients
  • 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
  • 6 – 8 oz spinach
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • pepper
  • fried eggs (optional)
  • dried radish kimchi
Cooking Directions
  1. Preheat the oven to 425F.
  2. Drain and rinse the chickpeas (freeze the aquafaba for another use). Pour them into an 8×8″ baking dish.
  3. Top the chickpeas with the spinach. Drizzle with olive oil, and then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes. Top with fried eggs and the dried radish kimchi. Enjoy!

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Dried Radish Kimchi

We were first introduced to this specific type of kimchi at Market World – a Korean grocery store that we’ve been frequenting for the last few years.

We used to go there often, and stock up on all sorts of kimchi and other banchan. At the time we were busy with a lot of client work and didn’t have much chance to cook, so this was a super easy way to put together tasty, healthy meals.

This kimchi was one that we bought again and again… and finally I decided it was time to try making it myself.

First you rinse and soak the dried radish strips, to rehydrate them.

Then, squeeze the liquid out of them and saute them in a little olive oil for a minute to dry them out.

This soaking and drying process may seem unintuitive, but it takes leathery dried radish strips, and makes them crunchy and pleasant to eat.

Next, make the sauce! Garlic, green onions, gochugaru, sesame seeds, fish sauce, and rice syrup all come together to make a sweet, spicy, ever so satisfyingly umami flavor.

Mix it all together, and your dried radish kimchi is ready to eat!

Dried Radish Kimchi

from Maangchi

Ingredients
Cooking Directions
  1. Wash and drain the dried radish strips in cold water a few times. Soak in cold water for 7-8 minutes.
  2. Strain and squeeze out excess water.
  3. Heat a pan over medium high heat and sauté the dried radish strips with 1 tsp vegetable oil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and set aside.
  4. Combine garlic, green onion, gochugaru, sesame seeds, fish sauce, and rice syrup in a mixing bowl and mix well.
  5. Add the dried radish strips and mix well by hand.
  6. Serve as a side dish with rice. The dried radish kimchi can be stored in the fridge for up to 1 month.

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Golden Egg Curry

Golden egg curry… sounds like something straight out of a fable, right?

This recipe is from the Burma cookbook, at the request of another one of our community members – TheBardVyune!

You start with the most important ingredient – the eggs!

Hard boil them, then stick ’em in an ice bath to cool. Once they’re cool enough to handle, peel the eggs.

So far, these are just plain old white hard-boiled eggs. But what makes them golden?

The next step is frying the hard-boiled eggs, so they get browned and bubbly on the outside. But to make them even more golden, you add turmeric to the oil.

Once your eggs are fully golden – make sure to get the tips too! – set them aside, and drain off half of the oil.

Now it’s time for the curry portion of the dish!

Start with some diced shallots and minced garlic.

Once those are transparent but not browning too much, add in some diced tomatoes and chili powder.

Let those stew for ten minutes or so, until the tomatoes are nice and broken down.

Next, fish sauce for that hit of umami, and a bit of salt.

Sliced peppers, for a bit of floral fruitiness and heat – the recipe calls for green cayenne peppers, so if you can get that and you like heat, then go for it! We were only able to buy poblano peppers, which are hardly spicy at all – but still quite delicious.

Lastly – slice the golden eggs in half, and nestle them cut-side-down among the veggies. Let that cook just a little more, and then your golden egg curry is ready to eat!

Serve with rice, and chili garlic sauce if you have it.

The eggs were really tasty, but in our opinion the real winner of this dish was the veggie portion.

In fact, since we loved it so much AND I just happened to have a bunch of all the ingredients leftover, I made an extra triple batch of the veggies after I finished cooking the original recipe!

It’s earthy and umami and so incredibly flavorful. I LOVED the poblanos that I used since we couldn’t get cayenne peppers, especially because it was all the flavor with none of the spice.

But if you can get cayenne peppers (or even jalapenos), and you like spice, then definitely go for that!

Golden Egg Curry

from Burma: Rivers of Flavor

Ingredients
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup peanut oil or unroasted sesame oil
  • 1/8 tsp turmeric
  • 2 small shallots, minced
  • 2 tsp minced garlic
  • 1/4 tsp red chile powder
  • 2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp fish sauce
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 or 3 green cayenne chiles, seeded and sliced lengthwise into 3 or 4 strips each
Cooking Directions
  1. Place the eggs in a saucepan, add cold water to cover, bring to a boil, and cook at medium boil for 8 minutes. Drain the eggs and cool in cold water. When the eggs are cool enough to handle, peel them.
  2. Heat the oil in a wide heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the turmeric and stir to dissolve it. When the oil is hot enough to sizzle when a drop of water is dropped into it, add the peeled eggs and fry until golden and a little blistered all over; cook on each side in turn, then try to balance the eggs on their ends to cook the tips. With a slotted spoon, lift the eggs out of the hot oil and onto a plate. Cut them lengthwise in half and set aside.
  3. Pour off all but 2 to 3 tbsp of the oil. Heat the oil remaining in the pan over medium heat, add the shallots and garlic, and fry briefly, until translucent. Add the chile powder and tomatoes and, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, cook at a strong simmer until the tomatoes have broken down into a softened mass, about 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in the fish sauce and salt, then taste and adjust the seasoning if you wish. Raise the heat to medium-high, add the chile strips, and stir. Place the eggs cut side down in the sauce and cook until the oil sizzles, about 3 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature.

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Bacon-wrapped shrimp with a honey-mustard dipping sauce

Today we are cooking from Matt Armendariz’s cookbook, On A Stick, at the request of a viewer from our Twitch community, busdriv3r!

A lot of times, I think the assumption with a cookbook like this is that it would be a bit gimmicky. But he’s got a ton of amazing-sounding recipes – from Japanese tofu dango, to chicken and waffles, and even bo la lot, which is a Vietnamese dish Son and I love!

The recipe I chose from On A Stick is Matt’s bacon-wrapped shrimp with a honey mustard dipping sauce.

Because you can’t go wrong with

bacon

shrimp

or honey mustard.

drools

First thing first, soak your cocktail picks. Toothpicks work fine if you don’t have cocktail picks, especially if your shrimp are on the smaller side.

Next, start the honey mustard sauce. This will need to rest in the fridge for an hour, so it can hang out while you make the shrimp.

The base of the sauce is mayonnaise. I always loved honey mustard sauce at restaurants, but could never get it right at home – because I always tried to mix just honey and mustard! The mayonnaise is what makes the sauce.

Next we’re adding some spicy brown mustard. It gives it a little kick, and adds the right flavors to the honey mustard sauce.

Of course, we’ve got to have the honey – wouldn’t be honey mustard without it!

And then a dash of cayenne for spice, a pinch of kosher salt, and a little fluff of white pepper, for a less-spicy, more earthy flavor than black pepper.

Mix it all together, and let it sit in the fridge while you prepare the shrimp.

Matt’s recipe calls for tiger shrimp, but I’m using some 40-50 shrimp I happened to have in the freezer. Make sure they’re mostly defrosted.

Zest a lime, making sure not to get too much of the bitter white pith.

And then squeeze the lime juice into your shrimp.

Chili powder for spice.

A pinch of salt, and black pepper this time.

And then a bit of olive oil to bring it all together.

Mix all that, and let the shrimp marinate in the fridge for 15 minutes or so.

Cut 6 strips of bacon in half (or, in my case, 12 – I made a double-batch). Once your shrimp is done marinating, wrap each piece of shrimp in a half-slice of bacon, and secure with one of your soaked cocktail picks.

Lay the wrapped shrimp on a pan that’s been lined with aluminum foil and then sprayed with cooking oil. At this point, take your honey mustard sauce out of the fridge so it’s not too cold when you eat it.

Bake at 375F for 20 minutes, flipping your shrimp halfway through. Mine released a bunch of liquid, so I drained the pan at the 10 minute mark before flipping my shrimp, so they had a better chance of crisping up.

At the end of your baking time, broil for 5 minutes to get the bacon nice and crispy.

Serve hot, with that honey mustard dipping sauce!

I’m SO happy with the honey mustard sauce. My absolute favorite honey mustard is the one from KFC, and this tastes SO similar. I’ve been searching my whole life for this!

The shrimp? Oh my gosh. I would never in a million years have thought that honey mustard would go well with bacon-wrapped shrimp, but we couldn’t get enough. The lime zest adds a bright pop of flavor, and the chili powder adds complexity without too much spice.

This is such a flavorful, morish dish, and it would be such a perfect party appetizer. It’s rather easy to make (and you could totally make the sauce ahead of time), and absolutely the kind of thing that your guests wouldn’t be able to get enough of. (It’s a good thing I doubled the recipe, because otherwise we wouldn’t have had any left for the video!)

And since I know we all want to have parties again, and soon! – then let’s all wear our masks, be safe, social distance as much as you possibly can, and beat that damn virus! And then once the virus is beaten, we can all have parties again and serve these shrimp, and tell me (and Matt!) how much all your friends loved them. Deal? Deal.

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp

from On A Stick by Matt Armendariz

Ingredients
  • 12 wooden cocktail picks
  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 3 tbsp spicy brown mustard
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • pinch of cayenne pepper
  • salt and white pepper, to taste
  • 12 tiger shrimp, peeled and cleaned, with tails intact
  • zest and juice of 1 lime
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • pinch each salt and pepper
  • 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • 6 strips thinly sliced applewood-smoked bacon, halved crosswise
Cooking Directions
  1. Soak cocktail picks in water 30 minutes.
  2. Make the sauce: Whisk the mayonnaise, mustard, honey, cayenne, salt, and white pepper in a small mixing bowl until blended. Cover and chill at least 1 hour. Before serving, let sauce rest at room temperature 20 minutes to allow flavors to meld.
  3. Preheat oven to 375F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat lightly with nonstick oil spray; set aside.
  4. Place shrimp, lime zest and juice, chili powder, salt, pepper, and oil in a bowl and toss gently. Cover and refrigerate at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour. Remove cocktail picks from water.
  5. Wrap each shrimp with half a slice of bacon and secure with a cocktail pick. Place skewers on prepared baking sheet and bake 20 minutes, turning skewers after 10 minutes. Broil 5 minutes. Serve hot.

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Frozen Yogurt Pie

It’s summer… and in this household, it means it’s time to make frozen yogurt pie!

This is one of my favorite things, because it’s so tasty but also so simple to make.

A few single-serving containers of strawberry yogurt, for the fruity tang.

Mix that with cool whip for a fluffy lightness.

Dump it in a graham cracker crust to add a deep sweetness.

Freeze it, and voila – frozen yogurt pie!

Seriously the easiest thing you will ever make.

And it’s so good!

Frozen Yogurt Pie

Ingredients
  • ~16oz strawberry yogurt (2-3 single serving containers)
  • 1 8oz tub cool whip, defrosted
  • 1 10″ graham cracker pie crust
Cooking Directions
  1. Mix yogurt and cool whip thoroughly. (If desired, you can set aside a third of the cool whip for topping.)
  2. Pour the yogurt mixture into the pie crust. Top with the reserved cool whip. Spread into an even layer.
  3. Freeze several hours, or until completely solid.
  4. To serve, let sit for 10 minutes to soften before slicing. Garnish with strawberries, if desired.

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