Manong Ken's Carinderia

Ginataang Hipon Na Walang Gata (Shrimp in Coconut Milk without the Coconut Milk)

I came home a little bit late last night. My roommate was already out and didn’t leave any food for me for dinner. He usually does, but didn’t last night. When this happens, I usually order out, but I didn’t want to as I spent my money on taxi fare in the morning – I was running late for work so I had to take a cab. I didn’t have enough cash on me for a decent take out. What to do, what to do?

I looked inside our freezer and found the bag of shrimps. (We always have a bag of shrimps in the freezer for emergencies such as what I had last night.)

So, ok I will have shrimp for dinner. But how? I didn’t want my default shrimp omelet or the shrimp with peas. I call them my ‘default’ shrimp dishes because if I want a quick and delicious meal with shrimps, I default to these two. I wanted something new that I could post here. .

I scanned my Filipino cookbooks … there was not much there that I liked (for that moment) except the ginataang hipon (shrimp in coconut milk). The problem was, I ran out of coconut milk … no more canned ones, no more frozen ones, not even the coconut milk powder that I used to stash behind the bottles of condiments in the refrigerator door. So what to do, what to do.

So, I improvised.

Instead of coconut milk, I used … full cream milk. That’s right. Milk.

And it turned out like the real thing.

Ingredients:

A medium sized onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
three slivers of fresh ginger

olive oil
cilantro
a cup of milk or cream or full cream milk
salt
pepper

frozen cooked shrimps with the tail on, thawed

Rub salt on thawed shrimp, set aside.

In a pan, saute onion, garlic and ginger until onion turns transparent. Add milk and boil for 5 – 15 minutes to reduce the volume to about half. Once you have reduced the milk, add the shrimps. Simmer for about 2-3 minutes (only a few minutes since the shrimps are already pre-cooked).

Salt and pepper to taste.

Add chopped cilantro before serving.

Serve over steamed rice .. or as a side dish.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 12:01 am. It is filed under Fish and Seafood, Manong Ken's Recipe of the Month, My Own Recipe and tagged with Fish and Seafood, shrimp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.