Shrimp Taco Wraps

You don’t need any tortillas for this taco.

I’m always looking for something new to try on friends. Wednesday night is my “girl’s night out” night. Sometimes we do “movie night” (my favorite), sometimes we go out to eat at a local restaurant or occasionally we do dinner and one of our houses.

I love fish tacos and I know I’ve been doing a lot of shrimp recipes lately but I couldn’t resist trying out a recipe for shrimp tacos using lettuce leaves in place of the tortillas; so is it a taco or lettuce wrap or a little bit of both? Doesn’t that mean you can eat twice as much since that lettuce has almost zero calories. I like doing anything with shrimp because as long as there is a bag in your freezer you can come up with something yummy on a moments notice. I have 15 shrimp recipes in my “entree” section here and 14 recipes for appetizers (hot and cold). So, that goes to show you, there’s a lot you can do with that curved little crustacean.

Hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, with pasta, with rice, taco it, skewer it, wrap it, pizza it, wonton it, bun it, you name it, you can come up with a new recipe just by throwing a bunch of things together.

I’m sure by now you are thinking maybe I should change the name of this blog to Rosemary and the Shrimp; well that’s probably not going to happen. You always see a million and one ways to prepare chicken but not nearly as many recipes using shrimp and fish; so I’m just trying to give you a few more to add to your recipe folders. Those are my pickled yellow beets in the picture above.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: One of my favorite shrimp recipes would have to be Bang Bang Shrimp which I’ve had at Bonefish Grill and similar at PF Changs. You can serve this as an appetizer or put it on top of a bowl of rice for an entree.

Sprinkle your seasoning on both sides of the shrimp.

Prepare all your vegetable toppings. I julienned the cucumber, carrot and jicama and sliced the jalapeño very thinly. Peel and slice the avocado and then run avocado slices under cool water to help prevent browning.

Grill the shrimp for 4-5 minutes, turning half way through cooking then give a squeeze of lime juice.

Remove the shrimp to a serving dish and get ready to put your wraps together.

I used a julienne tool to make long threads of carrot. You can buy carrots already cut into matchsticks if you want to make things go a little a little quicker but they won’t be as finely cut as using this tool.

Here’s the spiralized cucumbers, the julienned jicama and carrots, sliced jalapeño, and lettuce leaves.

Shrimp all in the boat and ready to serve.

From left to right there is a ginger sauce, jalapeño cream, Thai sweet chili sauce in the bottle, then peanut sauce and soy sauce. You can use whatever sauces you like on tacos. A pico would be good or even a fruit salsa. You can simply buy some sour cream and stir in some chopped cilantro.

There’s my little kiwi flower. I used a “v” knife and made the up and down cuts around the kiwi, then pulled it apart and using a small paring knife, carefully cut the skin away leaving it attached at the bottom.