Shrimp with Red Peppers and Daikon Soup

This recipe is from a cookbook I received from my super generous mom. I read about the cookbook on NPR and asked for it as a birthday present. It's an awesome cookbook. The recipes are simple yet flavorful. Each recipe is accompanied by an anecdote about early communism in China. And it's replete with beautiful propaganda drawings. 

Cover of the cookbook

I've had this cookbook for a while...it's been read and looked at but had not been used. My husband decided to make one of the shrimp dishes as he is a shrimp farmer and has access to fresh, delicious shrimp!

The recipe my dear husband decided to make

Whenever my husband or I cook we try to only use ingredients that we already have at hand. In this case the original recipe calls for green peppers and all we had was red peppers so we just kept it homogenous...you feel me?

Shrimp with Red Peppers

• 1lb shrimp, peeled
• 1/2 tsp vinegar (Dan used rice wine)
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1.5 red peppers
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 4 Tbsp vegetable oil

Serve with rice!

Marinate the shrimp with the vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and cornstarch. I believe Dan marinated our shrimp for about an hour. 

Heat your wok WITHOUT oil and stir-fry the red peppers until they are a little soft. About 3 minutes. Remove them before they change color onto a plate.

Let the wok re-heat without oil again and once hot and oil. Once it is smoking slightly, add the garlic and stir-fry briefly...10 seconds. Add the shrimp with the sauce and cook until pink...should be about 1-2 minutes. Add the peppers, mix, and serve. 

Dan finishing the stir-fry

Final product. 

Ok. So. Daikon soup...aka radish soup. It sounds strange and bland but I love this soup. I was first introduced to daikon soup when my husband and I went out to dinner at a local Korean restaurant, Willow Tree. They serve this soup as an appetizer and I LOVE IT! I still haven't perfected the recipe but here's what I've come up with so far.

Daikon and Kim Chi Soup

• 1-2lbs daikon, cubed
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1/4-1/2 cup kim chi (basically to taste)
• 1 tsp beef flavored Better than Bouillon
• 6 cups water

Put the daikon, onion, bouillon and water in a large pot. Boil until the daikon is tender. Add the kim chi and take off the heat. Enjoy!

Daikon I bought at the Kaneohe Farmer's Market. Usually they are much bigger than this.

Daikon, onion boiling in the water. 

Hanauma Bay--Witches Brew

Hanauma Bay is a very popular tourist destination for both snorkeling and SCUBA diving. I have only been diving there a handful of times because the logistics are more complicated than other shore dives. Things to consider before planning a dive here:

• PARKING--there is limited parking in the lot, plan on getting there before 9:30am
• THE MOVIE--Unless you have visited Hanauma Bay within the last year you are required to watch an informational video about the bay. If you must watch it don't forget to sign the sheet at the front of the room before leaving the theatre! Then you are in their system for 1 year. 
• THE HILL--there is a fairly large/steep hill that you must go down and up. You can either be a total bad-ass and trek it with all your gear OR you can pay $3 and get a ride both ways for you and your gear! Work smarter, not harder :)
• TIDE/WAVES/WIND--the conditions are important. There are only two channels between the calm inner reef and the outer reef. If the waves are breaking over the barrier reef it creates "suction" in these channels. This will make it relatively easy to get out but will be very difficult to swim back in. 

Map of my Hanauma Bay dive (approximately).

My dive partners and I were very fortunate and had great weather for our dive. The sun was out, the waves were almost non-existent and the visibility was fairly good.

"Do you see the octopus...he'e?"--Hanauma Bay video

I was really happy with all the organisms we saw during our dive! Above is a Day octopus about to go into a hole in the rocks. My strobe has been mis-behaving recently so this picture isn't as clear as I would like it to be.

Blue Dragon Nudibranch

This was the only species of nudibranch we found during the dive. Between the five of us we probably saw ten individuals. I like this picture because my dive buddy's thumb and index finger make you realize just how small they are!

Triton's Trumpet

My dive buddy, Kevin, with the Triton's Trumpet

Kevin was very excited when we found this Triton's Trumpet. Can you see how big his eyes are?

School of fish

The picture above has one of my favorite Hawaiian fish species, humuhumu 'ele'ele. They have the most amazing pattern and coloration on their faces.

Reef ridge

Just around the peninsula where we had our dive flag there were several of these ridges or fingers. They were very picturesque and it was really fun to swim in the "valleys" between ridges.

If you clicked on the species names I provided you noticed that I kept linking to the same website: Keoki Stender's Flora & Fauna ID Site. Keoki and his wife Yuko are amazing underwater photographers and their website is incredibly useful. I use their website to ID any organism I don't recognize.

Spicy Grilled Veggies and Orzo Bake

I found this recipe on Pinterest and it sounded really good! Grilled eggplant is just amazing. The original recipe is from Veggie num num. She has some great vegetarian recipes if anyone is interested! I forgot to mention a few key aspects to my goals: I have 6 room mates that I like to cook for and I am on a budget. Soooo....yeah. I never follow a recipe to the "T" unless it makes a lot and is inexpensive. I had to tweak the Spicy Eggplant and Risoni Bake to my budget and supplies

First thing you will notice in the original recipe is that it calls for 3 cups passata and about 1 tsp harissa paste. If you are like me your first thought was "Whaaaaa?". Second thought, "MEH. I'll use tomato paste, canned diced tomatoes, and red pepper flakes". I'm sure harissa and passata would make this dish absolutely spectacular but I can say with 100% certainty that I don't have time to make either of those from scratch and there is no way that I am going to find either of those products here in Hawai'i. No way. I also had orzo in my pantry and figured it looks like risoni so hopefully it will cook like it too! Below is my version of this dish.

Spicy Grilled Veggies and Orzo Bake

• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups orzo
• 3 cups water + 2-3 Tbsp Better Than Bouillon
• 2 cans diced tomatoes with juice
• 1 can tomato paste
• 4 Japanese eggplants, cut lengthwise and about 1/4-1/2" thick
• 2 zucchini, cut lengthwise and about 1/2" thick
• 1 red bell pepper, but into 6 pieces 
• 1 onion, cut into rings
• Olive oil
• Grape tomatoes, cut in half (as many as you want!)
• Red pepper flakes (to taste, I like things spicy so I added quite a bit)
• Fresh ground pepper
• Fresh oregano
• Fresh basil

The longest part of this process was slicing the veggies and grilling. I didn't start cooking until after 5 pm so the dish didn't get out of the oven and on to the table until 8pm....and I'm obsessed with chopping so I did all the work myself. And I made myself a rum and coke. All of these things will slow you down. 

So...grill the veggies!

 

Grilled eggplant is so freaking tasty. I made a TON extra because it is so good. Probably why it took me so long, I had to do several batches on the grill! 

Grilled zucchini! Not as good as eggplant but still really good. I didn't take any pics of the red bell pepper or the onion because the sun had set and it was too dark :(

Don't forget to have a grill buddy to keep you company! My grill buddy is sad because I didn't drop anything. Poor Gizmo!

After you are done grilling all the veggies, preheat the oven to 350F and heat oil in a sauce pan (one big enough to hold the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, 3 cups chicken stock, orzo). Sautee the garlic for a minute or so. I added a dash of cooking sherry to the garlic because my oil was really hot and it browned them a little too much. Then add the tomato paste and diced tomatoes with the juice! Stir that up with ground pepper, red pepper flakes and some of the basil and oregano (reserve some of the fresh herbs to put on top of finished product). Add the chicken stock and the orzo. I didn't cook the orzo completely, I think it was only 5 minutes. Then put this sauce into a casserole dish. There will be a lot of liquid at this point, don't worry it will get absorbed. 

Grape tomatoes from the Kaneohe Farmer's Market! These are so tasty! I buy a bag of these every week!

Now the fun part! On top of the sauce, layer your grilled veggies and grape tomatoes. I put the grilled onions on first, then grape tomatoes, followed by a layer of zucchini, eggplant, and red bell pepper. Bake for about 40 minutes or until liquid has been cooked off. 

Final product....

This dish was really tasty, healthy, and VEGETARIAN! Well, mostly. Chicken stock. What are you going to do. Apparently my beloved Better Than Bouillon comes in many flavors though, not just chicken! You could easily make this a totally veggie dish. 

What it's all about :)

I love SCUBA diving and I also love to cook delicious food! I'm using this blog to chronicle my diving and cooking adventures. Hopefully this blog will encourage me to try new recipes (maybe come up with a few of my own??) and help me record my dives.

DIVING 
I am a NAUI Masterdiver and have been certified since 2005. I try to go diving at least one day every weekend but sometimes the waves have other ideas. For the frequent diver, boat dives are expensive! So I do shore dives almost exclusively. My husband, friends, and I started exploring shore dive sites around O'ahu and have found some great spots! My plan for the diving aspect of this blog is to map out the dives I do and to showcase some of the organisms I see. Diving new sites is one of the most thrilling parts of diving! You don't know what kinds of fish, algae, coral, and other invertebrates you will see!

   Scrambled Egg nudibranch, Taken by Claire L. at Ni'ihau 

COOKING
I am not a chef, I am a marine biologist that happens to love food. LOVE IT. If I had to describe my cooking abilities I would say average. I normally have a set "menu" which I cook from. You know, the standards that you always fall back to. Frozen veggie stir frys, spaghetti, pizza...you get the idea. Boring. So I would like to change that. I am going to try at least one new recipe every week and discuss how successful it was or why it flopped. This will help me become a better cook and maybe help you avoid making my mistakes :)

   Hahaha. Only example of my cooking that I have right now. 

              Sunny side up eggs (eyes), cornbread (nose), and bacon (smile).