Thai Coconut Shrimp
Repurpose with purpose.
by Erin Henderson
This is a recipe that's on high rotation around here. It’s addictively good.
If you're just here for the recipe, and I can not blame you, feel free to scroll below to get it – you will love it. However, if you're also interested in hearing a few personal musings on how global foods become local favourites, read on for my thoughts.
TL;DR
This is a riff from a Thai cooking class I recently took. Kluy Tod, or fried bananas, I was told, is a popular Thai street food which uses semi-ripe, tiny bananas (or yam or taro), dips them in a thick batter of flour and shredded coconut and and deep fries the fruit until crispy.
Nantana, my instructor, who also runs a wildly popular Thai food truck in Toronto, said we could easily swap out the sugar in the dessert batter for a bit of salt and use it to make savoury coconut shrimp. So I did. A few adjustments had to be made, such as flouring the shrimp first to ensure the batter stuck (Nantana did not flour the bananas for the dessert recipe), but after a minor tweak or two, these coconut shrimps are amazing.
And that got me to thinking about authenticity in recipes and adjusting as necessary.
What's necessary might be location. Nantana often mentioned that the ingredients we have in Canada might not be exactly what they would use in Thailand, so minor swaps must be made. (Not surprisingly, Sean, my Indian cooking instructor, said the same thing.)
Honouring personal taste is very much necessary (at least if you want people to eat your food.) A traditional soup recipe we learned in the first class of the Thai course uses coagulated beef and pork blood (Khanom jian naam ngiaw.) I truly believe if you're going to slaughter an animal, you should respect it enough to use the whole thing. However, the steamed blood bobbing in the broth was just a bridge too far for me. Luckily, the soup is just as delicious without it.
During our lesson on green curry, Nantana mentioned that in Thailand curries are much brothier, and other than round, marble- and golf ball-sized eggplants, Thai cooks don't add extra vegetables. Canadians go heavy on coconut milk for a creamier sauce; a decidedly un-Thai recipe. And many Canadian restaurants, Nanatana noticed, bulk up their green curry with cheap vegetables like onions, carrots, and broccoli. Also a no-go in Thailand.
But, as I was recreating the Thai curry – my mind mercifully wandering from the arm numbing act of pounding the ingredients for a paste in an eight-inch, 20 pound pestle and mortar – I thought, but I am Canadian. And I do like creamier curry sauces with lots of vegetables (I often forgo the meat entirely.)
I'm delighted to have learned the authentic, traditional recipe, and if I ever go to Thailand, I will happily slurp up local curries with gastronomic gusto, but while at home, I adjust the authentic for the prefered.
Repurposing and reinventing are the great joys of cooking. It's far from cheating or being lazy – quite the opposite. How many times have you read a review, and someone writes, "I ran out of this, so I used that..." sometimes with astonishing creativity.
Many great dishes from around the globe came to be by accident. A fallen meringue dessert became the classic the Eaton Mess. Chocolate chip cookies were born when intrepid American homemaker, Ruth Wakefield, ran out of nuts. The beloved Tex-Mex chimichanga was supposed to be a burrito that the chef dropped in the deep fryer. Heck, even Champagne was considered a disaster when the monks' wine mysteriously developed bubbles.
It's always interesting to me to hear the frantic screams from foodies battling out whether tomato belongs in Bolognese sauce, or if Taiwanese three-cup chicken can include noodles or should remain steadfast to rice only, or if it's sophisticated to drink cappucino in the afternoon.
Certainly we don't want to lose heritage, history, and culture by bastardizing a traditional recipe beyond recognition, but is there room to recreate recipes with convenience (both in prep and ingredient sourcing) as well as personal taste in mind? I think so.
How many Italian, Indian, German, or Chinese people arrived in North America only to discover the familiar ingredients from home were no where to be found and had to make do with what could be sourced in local grocery stores? I can't imagine how many popular dishes we enjoy now came to be as a result of the lack of the authentic.
By shifting original recipes to what we have on hand, as opposed to foregoing them for something else entirely, we continue the conversation of that culture, and keep its history alive through this food sharing. The updated dishes may only harken back to the bona fide version from the original place, but, I think, these food edits add to the story, not take away from it.
Thai Coconut Shrimp
Don’t be nervous about deep frying with hot oil; it’s a healthy fear, but I urge you to bravely forge on. If you heat your oil slowly (I never go hotter than medium-low, which works well on my stove), remain loyal to your candy thermometer, and give your shrimp plenty of space and time in the oil, you will be justly rewarded for your steely resolve.
A great trick I picked up from my Indian cooking instructor: once the oil cools, add a piece of plain white bread (the more basic, the better) to the pot and allow it to sit overnight. The bread will absorb the odour from the used oil. Then, using a cheesecloth-lined mesh sieve, you can pour your oil back into the container for another use. With care, you should probably get about five uses from the oil before having to discard.
Makes: 16-20 shrimp
Chef level: moderate
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup rice flour
- ¼ cup + 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup unsweetened coconut flakes
- 2 Tbsp white sesame seeds
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 Tbsp Kosher salt
- 1 cup water, divided
- 1 lb shrimp deveined and peeled (I use the extra-large, 16/20 size)
- 5 cups vegetable or canola oil, for frying
How to Make It:
- Pour 1 cup of flour into a bowl.
- Into a second bowl, stir all your dry ingredients (the remaining ¼ cup flour through salt) into a large bowl.
- Add in water, ¼ cup at a time, stirring, until a thick paste forms. You need this thick so it will coat and stick to the shrimp.
- Add the shrimp to the flour, coat well and shake off excess.
- Add the floured shrimp to the batter turning to thickly coat the shrimp.
- Lay each shrimp on a parchment-lined baking tray.
- When all shrimp have been coated, place in the freezer to chill well for 30 minutes.
- Add oil to a large sauce pot and gently heat over medium low until a candy thermometer reaches 300°F. (Do not use high heat! Fires happen and are dangerous. Especially when the cook has been drinking.)
- Test the oil by taking a pea-sized mount of batter and placing it in the oil, if it sizzles, the oil is ready.
- One at a time carefully place each shrimp in the oil. You will have to do this in batches, so the oil temp doesn’t drop to drastically.
- Turn shrimp occasionally for even cooking. When the shrimp are deeply golden and crispy, about 5 minutes, remove and lay on crumpled paper towels to drain.
- Serve with dipping sauce.*
Dipping Sauce
Ingredients:
- 90ml white vinegar
- 60ml white sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 30ml Siracha hot sauce (or to taste)
How to Make It:
- In a small sauce pot over med-low heat, add the vinegar, and dissolve the sugar and salt into it, about 3 minutes.
- Bring to a boil to reduce slightly into a syrupy texture, about 2-3 minutes.
- Remove from heat and cool.
- Stir in hot sauce and serve with coconut shrimp
Wine Pairing:
I love sparkling wines with fried foods. The crisp acidity and bubbles in the wine liven up the dense fat of the batter and oil.
However, if you are using the spicy dipping sauce, and especially if you are a hot-sauce warrior and increase the heat, you need a wine with a bit of sweetness to keep your tongue calm. A dry Riesling, from Germany or Ontario, works beautifully with spice as the fruit offsets the fire, and the lower alcohol also keeps the intensity in check. Riesling's high acid works like bubbly, cutting through the deep-fried fat to offer freshness.