Coconut Shrimp and Chipotle Mango Sauce

Ok, I realize that a large amount of my recent posts have somehow involved shrimp. Well, there's a simple reason for that. If you buy a huge bag of frozen raw EZ-peel shrimp, you're going to have a convenient and nutritious protein source always at your fingers. So, I'm sure my next several posts will still be about shrimp. And surprisingly, Raquel isn't tired of it. Anyway, tonight was a heavy workout night so we weren't in the mood for anything heavy afterwards. Thus, this dinner could be summed up as Happy Hour (minus the alcohol) at Surfrunner and Raquel's house.

The star of the menu was the Coconut Shrimp and Mango Sauce from Cooking Light. It was so flavorful, crunchy, and relatively healthy that Raquel has added this dish to the list of dishes that she wants me to cook for her parents. That's saying a lot considering Raquel takes days to figure out what restaurants to take her parents to when they visit. The rest of the menu was rounded out by home-made guacamole, home-made hummus, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, and bell pepper sticks. I love finger foods after a tough workout, because I always feel like I get more bang for my buck. Now, if I only could have had a beer....

Home-made Guacamole

-1 lime, juiced

-1 avocado

-1/4 onion (finely minced)

-2 Tb cilantro (chopped)

-Hawaiian Sea Salt, to taste

Throw all ingredients together and mash.

Home-made Hummus

-1 can of garbanzo beans, drained

-about 6 garlic gloves, chopped

-1 lemon, juiced (optional)

-2 Tb Extra Virgin Olive Oil

-Hawaiian Sea Salt, to taste

Put all ingredients into a food processor and blend. Add water as needed to thin it out. You can also add Tahini if you have it, but I didn't.

Modifications to Mango Sauce:

(Note - I didn't have Scotch Bonnet Peppers so I substituted my own)

-Add 2 chopped chipotle peppers in blender at end. (I used the canned chipotles in adobo sauce)

-Add 2 Tb cilantro in blender at end

-Add 1 serrano chile (chopped) in to saute with garlic.