Coconut Shrimp with Orange Mustard Dipping Sauce recipe

For a start, let's get the shrimp/prawn thing out of the way. Americans call them Shrimps, English people call them Prawns. I'm calling this recipe Coconut Shrimp because it's my blog and I can use the American words if I want to, dawg.

Prawns, flour (top), egg, Panko and coconut (right)

This recipe is a piece of piss. Get some fat tiger prawns (or any large prawns) and shell them, but leave the tail on. Set up an assembly line of 3 bowls and a plate. First bowl has flour in it, the second has raw whisked egg, and the third has a mixture of 1 part panko* breadcrumbs and 2 parts dessicated coconut. Take a prawn, dip it and cover it in flour, then cover it in egg, and then cover it in the coconut and panko. Fry them for 2 or 3 minutes until they're a nice golden brown colour.

Ideally, you want to serve them with a dipping sauce. Soy sauce would do it, or sweet chilli sauce, but if you're really feeling smart you could try making your own like I did.

This is how BAD ASS is made

Get about 3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons of honey, and 1.5 tablespoons of orange juice and mix it up well. You can even give it a little taste if you want and decide if you want it more mustardy, orangey or...Honey-ey. If you're feeling cheeky, you could add a few chilli flakes. This stuff was BAD ASS. Tangy and spicy, it was perfect with the coconut flavour of the prawns.

Coconut shrimp with orange mustard dipping sauce

I reckon these would be good to serve up as a snack when friends visit for an epic gaming session, or watching a movie. If you're going the whole hog and having people over for dinner, then it's a great starter. The nice thing about making anything that's fried in batter or breadcrumbs is that you can cover pretty much anything in the stuff and fry it. Replace the prawns in this recipe with bits of chicken, or if you're feeling really posh, how about scallops! 

*Panko breadcrumbs are a really crispy and crunchy japanese version of breadcrumbs. They're available from most Asian stores, or in the world food section of your supermarket. 

Chip Shop Curry !!!

I have discovered something amazing! Goldfish brand Chinese Curry Sauce is available from a number of online retailers, and in supermarkets and Asian grocers. Just mix it with a bit of water in a pan, and you can pretty much throw any meat, fish or veg into it and it's tasty as hell with rice. It's savoury rather than spicy, and a little bit sweet.

..And here's the amazing part. IT'S CHIP SHOP CURRY!  Northerners rejoice! Get some chips (or wedges) cooked, and crack open a can of Dandelion and Burdock for that true Northern England chippy experience.

You need this in your life

Also, if you ever happen to see Japanese 'Katsu' curry sauce, that is also pretty similar to chip shop curry sauce. Food snobs would probably tell you otherwise, but as Gordon Ramsay says, "Fuck 'em".

Cioppino - San Francisco Fish Stew (EASY but TASTY recipe)

If this pug can run a hotel, you can make Cioppino

I was lucky enough to visit San Francisco last year. I stayed at a hotel which is run by a pug that has his own facebook page. I also met a homeless man who became world famous for jumping out of a bush. True story.

A signature local dish is a tomato and fish stew called Cioppino (pronounced Chuh-PEE-no). I spent the whole time saying I was going to try it, and didn't get round to it in the few days I was there. I promised myself I would have a go at cooking it back home in England, and it turns out that it's amazingly easy.

Cioppino recipes vary, which is good for me because I never have the attention span to follow recipes to the letter. You can make it as cheap or as fancy as you like depending what seafood you go for. In mine, I've gone for some blue swimmer crab pieces, some mussels, scallops, squid and lots of prawns. It's probably not that cheap for each bowl, but it's a pay-day treat. You can use any combination of fish you want, so for a cheap version you could probably use leftover cuts of fish if you've any in the freezer. Even crabsticks would probably work for a cheap alternative and it would still be delicious.

For an accurate recipe of Cioppino, google it. There's loads of good recipes out there. I googled a few recipes, then forgot what I'd read and just freestyled it as usual.

Essentially, it's 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, 2 tins of chicken and/or fish stock (I just used one of the tomato tins to measure from), and 1 tin of white wine. Use this liquid to make a soup with garlic, onion, parsely, oregano and basil. Then cook it for about half an hour, then throw all your seafood in. When it's cooked thoroughly, eat it with lots of bread.

A borrowed Cioppino picture. Sorry, internet.

I was hungry and got stuck in without taking a picture of it, so here's an 'illustrative' picture of the dish from someone else's website.

What I can't stress enough is how easy this recipe is to make. It's like you can't get it wrong! If you like tomato soup and seafood, then this is an ideal dish for an amateur chef to make to impress friends. It is really, really tasty. They'll think that you have ritually sacrificed and cooked Jamie Oliver, then eaten his flesh to absorb his internal genius and external punchability.


For reference, this is the recipe I followed the closest.

Frogs legs fit for a President

I bought some frozen frogs legs. One thing that you'll learn about me on this blog is that I'm a rebel. I'm just like James Dean or Marlon Brando. I wear a leather jacket and stick it to the squares. Well, I tend to stray from recipes when I'm cooking. Yeah! That's how I roll. Stick it to the man! Breadcrumbs? Screw you, BBC recipe website, I'm using Panko! Fight the power!

So I've been online and seen a couple of different ways to go about this, and I decided to not go strictly with any one recipe online. Rebellious, eh? I cut the legs in half (two legs stuck together still looks a bit too much like legs) and soak them in milk, which supposedly smooths out the flavour a bit and softens the meat. I then rolled them in flour (with some salt and pepper in there), shallow fried them and put a little pool of garlic butter at one end of the plate.

Incidentally, when I was googling frogs legs, I found this picture:

That's right, it's a picture of Barack Obama eating frogs legs.

I've thought about this image carefully, and decided that I'm pretty sure that Barrack Obama is awesome because:
(A) he's the first black president of America, which is a pretty big deal
(B) if I've got my facts right on this, he single-handedly took down Osama Bin Laden with a swift punch to the throat
(C) he eats frogs legs, which clearly helped him to achieve (A) and (B).
and (D) I think he's sending a clear message out to the French. He's saying "Hey, Frenchy! Next time we go terrorist hunting, you'd better help out or I'll eat your legs while doing a really mean GROWL face!"

Conclusion: Eating frogs legs makes you awesome like Barrack Obama.

So here's the finished thing:

Much to my surprise, my wife got stuck in and gave them a go. I thought that eating frogs might be a step too far for her, but she came away with the same conclusion as me. First time eating frogs, and the verdict is 'They were alright, they're ok, I suppose'. Predictably, in texture and flavour,they are a bit like chicken, and a bit like fish.

I think I went a bit too heavy on the salt that I added to the flour, but they were ok and nothing more. I'd be interested to try them done by a 'proper chef' in a restaurant, and I'd certainly like to try them done as part of an Asian recipe (Frogs legs are popular in places like Vietnam and China).


On a serious note, there are some that say it's really bad to eat frog legs. In the name of balance, I'll leave this link to an article from The Guardian and let you make up your own mind.

Shop : Bradley's Fishmonger

I always like to keep an eye out for places to get interesting ingredients, and browsing the internet brought me to http://www.frozenfishdirect.co.uk , which is also known as Bradleys.

They sell mainly frozen fish for delivery, but I noticed that they're only a few miles away from me in Feltham, England and they've got a factory shop. I paid them a visit today, and I think I'll be going back. It's in the middle of an industrial estate, and I get the impression that quite a few of their customers are local restaurants. 

At one point I was directed towards a large walk-in freezer, and as another customer left, he closed the door on me. Thanks for that, feller, I've seen too many movies where gangsters do away with people by locking them in freezers. I wonder how long a man can survive by sucking the moisture from frozen haddock?

There was loads of interesting stuff for what appears to be decent value (Soft shelled crabs are £18 for 14. This comes to about £1.30 each, which is almost HALF what I was previously paying!)

Here's today's bounty:

A frozen dressed crab, some Mussels, Blue Swimming Crabs, SNAILS, and FROGS LEGS!

I've never had frogs legs before, so I'm going to give them a crack tonight. I'm not sure if my wife will give them a try though.

Get Stuffed!

Welcome to my blog. I've been increasingly interested in cooking and food over the last few years, and I've decided to have a go at blogging about things that I've cooked and then subsequently eaten. It's a pretty simple concept, really.

My name is Russ, I'm 35 and live just outside of West London. I am married to a human female. I am under the command and ever-watchful eye of a cat which I think is trying to destroy me. We call him 'Professor Gizmo Roflcopter, the distinguished cat what just eats lobster'.

Later today I will be going to a shop which I've learnt sells frozen frogs legs. I've never had frogs legs. My wife does not want to eat frogs legs. I'm going to try and get her to eat frogs legs.