I am very excited to announce that I am part of Kitchen-Play‘s first Progressive Party. The Progressive Party will feature six different courses created by six different bloggers. For the first progressive party we are using six different kitchen tools that are all supplied by Sur la Table. My kitchen tool is the Kuhn Rikon Swiss Chop and I can’t wait to show you what this little chopper can do. Everything has been a surprise and I’m anxious to see who else is participating, what tool they were assigned and what recipe they came up with.
My assigned course was Amuse Bouche. Some restaurants serve an Amuse Bouche at the very beginning of the meal to excite your palette. It’s a small serving of typically something savory and tantalizing, something to get your taste buds ready to eat more. It’s a little tease – a glimpse of what food journey is lying ahead. Living in California, Mexican food is a big part of our cuisine so I wanted to use this chopper to make fresh guacamole. I wanted to pair the guacamole with something sweet and savory. I like that this little bite play on textures and flavors. The crunch from the tortilla chip, the softness of the guacamole and the savory grilled shrimp with the sweet grilled mango makes for a satisfying bite before the meal.
Check this little chopper in action (you pull the handle which spins the blades to chop the ingredients):
Grilled Shrimp, Mango & Guacamole Bites
Prep: 30 mins. Cooking: 10 mins Yields: 24 bites
Cilantro Garlic Grilled Shrimp
Ingredients:
3 cloves of garlic
½ C cilantro
¼ C olive oil
sea salt & fresh ground black pepper
24 shrimp, peeled and deveined
lime juice
Directions:
- Place garlic and cilantro into swiss pull chop bowl. Close lid and pull 20-25 times to chop the ingredients. Put garlic and cilantro into a dish and add olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add shrimp and marinade for at least 30 minutes.
- While the shrimp is marinading, work on guacamole and soak wooden skewers
- Skewer the shrimp and place on grill (medium low heat) Grill for about 2 minutes on each side or until done. Pull off of skewer, remove tails and squeeze a little lime juice over the shrimp and season with salt if needed.
Grilled Mango
Ingredients:
1 mango
Directions:
- Use a vegetable peeler to peel mango. Slice the two wider sides off of the mango to grill (and then eat the rest of the flesh surrounding the seed)
- Place the mango on grill on medium low heat. Grill for about 3-4 minutes on each side. Once mango is cool enough to handle, dice into small chunks. (the grilling process really brings out the sweetness of the mangoes)
Guacamole
Ingredients:
¼ of a red onion
1 jalapeno, quartered and de-seeded
2 large cherry tomatoes, quartered (or 1 Roma tomato)
¼ C cilantro
3 small avocados, quartered
1 lime
sea salt and onion powder, to season
tortilla chips
Directions:
- Place onion and jalapeno into swiss pull chop and pull 7-10 times to coarsely chop the ingredients.
- Add tomatoes and cilantro and pull 7-10 more times to coarsely chop. Pull more if a finer consistency is desired.
- Add avocados, juice of 1 lime, sea salt to season and a couple dashes of onion powder. Pull until you reach desired consistency.
Assemble:
- Place a small spoonful of guacamole onto the tortilla chip (I like the chips with the hint of lime), topped with a grilled shrimp and a few bits of mango. Garnish with cilantro. Serve immediately.
Additional options:
- If you have left over mango and guacamole, you can add the mangoes directly to the guacamole and serve with chips.
- If you want to skip the individual servings, you can coarsely chop the shrimp, dice the mangoes and stir into guacamole and serve.
- Here’s another serving idea: place guacamole on a spoon, tuck a mango chunk into the shrimp and place on the guacamole and garnish with a tortilla chip.
So here’s the fun part…
Sur la Table, one my favorite places to find creative and beautiful kitchen tools and entertaining products, is sponsoring a give away for food bloggers. If you’re a blogger you can try any of the six recipes from this month’s Progressive Party, post about the experience on your blog and provide a link to the post on Kitchen Play to enter to win. Contest rules are on Kitchen Play and the prize for each course is The Swissmar V-Slicer valued at $50 and the Grand Prize is the Le Creuset® Cassis Oval Wide French Oven valued at $250. Good luck!
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What a beautiful dish, love the ingredients, textures and colors! This one is a keeper!!
Great job and wonderful pictures – what a way to kick off Kitchen Play!
This was worth the wait!! yum! great presentation! great tool! I’m sharing! good luck! 🙂
wow,..will sure try the recipe,..:-)
Amazing presentation!!! Im definitely going to try this receipe 🙂
Great job Quyen! Good thing we live in SoCal–the grill’s always there for a quick bite. 🙂
Your amuse bouche looks really tasty, Quyen. I would like to be “amused” by about half a dozen of them right now! Wish we’d had a chance to chat at camp on Saturday. Wasn’t it fabulous!
That is a great “little” dish! You have a beautiful blog, it was nice meeting you last week at Blackmarket Bakery
Renee
http://chef-renee@blogspot.com
Jean: Thank you so much!! I know I wish we had a chance to chat too — I had so much fun and learned a ton. Hope to run into you again soon!!
Chef Renee: Thank you for stopping by!! I had such a great time at Blackmarket Bakery! I still dream of your brown butter pasta with “candied salmon” =) It was sooooo delicious!
Looks fantastic and I know it would excite my palate for more 🙂 And, how exciting that you’re a part of Kitchen-Play. I think I’ll recreate your recipe to enter!
Thank you Priscilla!! Yay – I’m glad you might recreate this recipe for the contest! Good luck! (bring home the French Oven!) =)
Wow! This looks beeee-you-tiful! I might just be tempted to go make some of these over the weekend. If I do, I might as well enter the giveway at Kitchen Play!
[K]
Kim: Thank you!!! Ohhh….you’ll have to let me know if you use produce from your wonderful garden! If you end up making it soon you’ll definitely have to enter the giveaway. Good luck!! 🙂
thank u for all wonderful food