I had so much fun bumming around at my parents’ house, eating mom’s cooking, watching TV with dad, shopping with mom.
But I was stoked to get back to my own kitchen and whip up a yummy dinner.
Except for the heat.
I love summer, but oh my goodness is it hot in the city! I had zero desire to turn on my oven today.
So a no-cook dinner it had to be.
I remembered something in Alex Guarnaschelli’s cookbook, Old School Comfort Food, that I had been waiting for the right night to try out. Tonight, fellow city dwellers melting in the heat, was the perfect night for Alex’s shrimp, avocado and cucumber salad. I tweaked the recipe a bit to fit the ingredients I had on hand.
I also bought pre-cooked shrimp and just defrosted them, because, like I said, it’s way too hot to cook. Anything.
So here’s a no-cook, one bowl dinner, to help you beat the heat in your itty bitty city kitchen.
You will need
- 2 avocados
- 1 cucumber
- shrimp (I got like 3/4 pound for the two of us)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- juice of 1 lime
- black pepper
Chop up the cucumber and the avocado and toss them into the bowl. Remove the tails from the shrimp and either toss in the bowl whole or chop in half. I chopped mine so everything would be relatively the same size.
Add the olive oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, lime juice and black pepper and toss the shrimp and vegetable to coat. You can adjust the amounts depending in which flavors you want to come through more.
Cover with plastic wrap and pop in the fridge for an hour.
A delicious, refreshing, cooling dinner. You can serve over brown rice if you like.
We grabbed some from the Chinese restaurant again.
I went light on the rice because I had overindulged a little this weekend. This salad is great to help get you back on track. It’s also great for a Sunday night because it’s so easy and takes so little time that you can make the most of the last hours before the work week starts again.
And it means you can watch Michael Symon battle Jose Garces on Iron Chef!