Heating Things Up

We’re back with our final recipe from Mozambique today. This one is brought to you by Mr. N. Aside from a little roasting and the skillet work toward the end of the recipe, he pretty much whipped up this meal on his own. It’s simple, it’s quick and oh yes, it’s very, very good. As we were reading about Mozambique foods and recipes we kept coming across dishes with a piri piri sauce. Piri piri is a type of African birds eye chili pepper commonly grown in Mozambique and it’s used as the basis of a spicy sauce for flavoring meats and seafood. I’m sure you can probably guess, we opted to go the seafood route and created our version of Piri Piri Shrimp adapted from an Aida Mollenkamp recipe on The Food Network. 

We began our recipe with Serrano peppers which are a bit less intense than the birds eye chili peppers which we thought would be better for the kids.

We roasted the peppers in the oven set at 500F until they were blackened.

Next we gathered up the remaining ingredients for the piri piri sauce which included garlic, paprika, freshly squeezed lemon juice, red wine vinegar, olive oil, parsley and cilantro.

Mr. N then tossed everything into the blender, including the roasted peppers from which we had removed the stems and seeds, and set it to puree.

You can see he was very serious about his work (and a bit hungry). Once the sauce was good and smooth he poured it over our raw, peeled and deveined shrimp.

This recipe is so simple that Mr. N began to tell jokes as he stirred the sauce with the shrimp. How many seconds are in a year? I’ll let you think about that one mom.

Twelve! January 2nd. February 2nd. March 2nd….Now, what do you get when you cross a Math teacher with an Art teacher?

A paint-by-number! Can you tell someone picked a joke book out at the school library today? It was quite the entertaining evening I tell you. Once the shrimp was thoroughly mixed with the piri piri sauce, we covered it and set in the fridge for an hour. You can marinate this for as little as 20 minutes or as long as 24 hours. Whatever works best.

While the shrimp marinated, we finally dug out the old rice cooker (after reading this post from Kelly over at Inspired Edibles we figured it was time to break this thing out again) and set that to steam our rice for dinner. And as we waited, the jokes kept right on going.

What’s your name?
Kristy.
Can you spell it for me?
K-R-I
Ha! Ha! Nope! You spell it I-T!

I have to admit, he got me on that one. After about an hour we were ready to get dinner on the table, so we heated up the cast iron skillet and tossed in the shrimp with the sauce. We cooked it for about five minutes, until the shrimp were cooked through and pink.

We served the piri piri shrimp over white rice and garnished it with cilantro and lemon wedges. We highly recommend using the lemon wedges as it adds a beautiful, crisp burst of freshness to the dish.

While we ate dinner, I threw Mr. N for a loop with this riddle: A man leaves home and makes a right, then a left, then another left and finally one last left. He returns home and finds two masked men. Who are they?

Mr. N continued to scarf down his shrimp as he thought about this one. In the meantime, Mike and I were raving over this dish. It was delicious. It was just the right amount of heat (read: spicy but not sweat inducing – unless you’re my dad) and full of flavor. The sauce seasoned the rice to perfection and the cilantro and lemon added a freshness to every bite. It was easily a 4 spoon meal for me. Mike thinks he still favors the shrimp Mozamibque (the green shrimp recipe) to this one, but also ended up giving it 4 spoons.

Mr. N was still working out the riddle as he threw out his 3 spoon rating. He thought it was slightly too spicy for his liking, but that it was really good. He even ended up eating Miss A’s as well. It was ultimately just too spicy for her. She did give it a good shot though, so I give her credit. She came in with a 2 spoon vote. She thought it was ok, but just too spicy. Instead she focused most (I say most because this was one of those nights that Miss A spent half of dinner screaming on the floor. This time because daddy set the table.) of her attention on eating an entire mango, a popular fruit in Mozambique by the way. 

Now in case you still haven’t figured out the answer to the riddle…The man comes home to find two masked men who are of course the catcher and the umpire. (Go Cubs!) Mr. N enjoyed that one. And speaking of Mr. N he’s next up for picking a country for our cooking around the world adventures. I’m pretty sure you can bet he’ll be heading back to Asia. He seems to really like the flavors over on that continent. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you early next week with new state night recipe. Cheers!

Print this recipe: Piri Piri Shrimp

45 thoughts on “Heating Things Up”

  1. Pingback: Lemon Thyme Roast Chicken
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  3. Pingback: Piri Piri Shrimp My Way « Kitcheninspirations
    • Kristy says:
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      Hi! Thanks so much for coming over to visit! Debra is just awesome isn’t she?! 🙂 And thank you so much for the kind words. Hope to see you again!

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  9. Nami | Just One Cookbook says:
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    Oh this dish looks so good, especially when shrimp goes on top of rice… but my kids and I can’t take the spice… my hubby will really appreciate this kind of meal out of my kitchen though. =) Looks fabulous!

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  10. Charles says:
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    Haha, I used to like doing these kinda jokes when I was younger – actually, I still do. It’s always fun to annoy other people with this kind of word-play. Gorgeous looking shrimps – sounds like something I’d love for sure – great work by Mr. N!

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  11. ceciliag says:
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    I can’t believe you got caught on Can You Spell IT! MAN! gorgeous food today.. piri piri sauce, i am going to make it just so I can say it rolling my R’s.. c

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  12. Caroline says:
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    What a gorgeous plate of food!! This sounds so delicious. I love how concentrated Mr. N is in the photos. Job well done to him though, looks like this shrimp was a huge success. 🙂

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  13. Norma Chang says:
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    It is such a joy to read your post, you must be a very calm and collected person who never raises her voice. It is so delightful to see you and your children working together in the kitchen.

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  14. Sawsan@ Chef in disguise says:
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    Go Mr N! I loved the serious moment with the blender 🙂
    This will probably be too spicy for me, I am not one for heat but loved the jokes and riddles. My daughter does that sometimes, comes home with a list of jokes and I get to enjoy an hour of none stop jokes lol

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  15. Mary says:
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    I was really excited to make this but then I realized there were no measurements for the ingredients in the piri piri sauce. From the picture it looks like half a cup each of the parsley and cilantro, a tbsp full of paprika, but how much red wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic are you using?

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    • Kristy says:
      Reply

      Hi Mary! Thanks for visiting. You can see all of the measurements if you click on the link for printing the recipe, or go to the recipe page. I hope that helps. 🙂

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  18. Courtney says:
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    You can’t go wrong with a comedy night combined with dinner. I can just see my oldest checking out a joke book next year and sharing all his treasured jokes! Now, as for this dish… wow, it looks absolutely wonderful, Kristy! (And did you get the kids to peel your shrimp again?)

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  20. Just A Smidgen says:
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    I’m in awe of how your kids are becoming such masterful chefs! And I love Mr. N’s expression when he laughs at his joke! Love it all, including the look of this recipe, it’s my idea of a perfect dinner.. I love spicy dishes! I was a bit worried you’d use the Piri Piri pepper and I wouldn’t know where to find those!!

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    • nrhatch says:
      Reply

      Hi Greg . . . I was just about to head round to tell you and Katharine about Eat, Play, Love. Silly me. Of course you made it to the table before me. 😀

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  25. hotlyspiced says:
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    I love piri piri sauce but I have never made my own, only bought it and I didn’t know it was a recipe from Mozambique. I love how you have presented this and I love the colour of the prawns. xx

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  27. Aimee@clevermuffin says:
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    Go Mr N! What an awesome effort, he is the next Jamie Oliver in training I tell you. I love your writing style here, and the honesty that Miss A was on the floor for half the dinner. I was almost thinking ‘these kids are too well behaved’ until I read that and went ‘ah, see, this is why I like my blogger friends, they tell it as it is’. The jokes made me laugh too 🙂

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  28. Eva Taylor says:
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    As luck would have it Kristy, I have everything to make this dish; but I’ll put it on greens instead of rice, to keep my carbs down. I love the little heat you’ve got in it and roasting the hot peppers is a great way to intensify the flavours. I can hardly wait to try it!
    I love the way the kids are so involved helping you in the kitchen!
    Eva http://kitcheninspirations.wordress.com

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  29. Three Well Beings says:
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    I love Serrano peppers! This just sounds wonderful. I love food with good heat, cut a bit by the taste of the white rice. I eat a lot of brown rice, and every now and then just want plain old white…This sounds so good, Kristy! I pinned it to my Pinterest board…Debra

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  31. eclectic faerie says:
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    looks yummy! ~ i remember some of those jokes, do they ever get old?

    funny about the rice cooker, i just watched a sara moulton/ming tsai show and he said his ancestors would roll in their graves if sara didn’t use a rice cooker… coming from him i’m sold

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  32. Kelly @ Inspired Edibles says:
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    Oh, this looks so good Kristy and I’m all in for the heat!! Love that you can make the sauce in the blender too – that’s my kind of practicality ;-). Were you happy to revive your rice cooker? Haha, thanks for the mention! You know how much we use ours – it’s constantly cycling in this house…

    Loved all the jokes Mr. N – you’re a natural! I must share some of those with my boys. And great job with this recipe – really enjoyed viewing.

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  33. Karen says:
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    I like spicy and it sounds like it was very good. I can see why the kids might think it was too hot…serranos can sometimes be really hot. Mr. N did a great job.

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  34. ChgoJohn says:
    Reply

    This does sound good, Kristy, though I may find myself in Miss A’s camp. No, not about the table but about the heat! 🙂 I will try it with Serranos and can always switch to jalapeños if too spicy.

    Yes, GO CUBS! I’ve been to Wrigley already twice this season and saw 2 victories. Considering their lackluster record, seeing 2 victories is nearly miraculous!

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