Cooking
inspiration can come from many places and is different for everyone. My
inspiration definitely falls in the "many places" category. Sometimes
it is a single ingredient that gets me cooking and other times it is a recipe
that needs a little tweaking. I troll farmers markets, grocery stores, and
cookbooks for ideas, but lately, my number one source for inspiration is the
Internet.
I read numerous food related blogs and Web sites in
an effort to stay up to date on what is happening in other kitchens. Sometimes
I just look at the pictures, sometimes I read the stories, but every time I am
looking for something to grab me and get my brain moving. That is what happened
when I was reading a story about honey on
Heavy Table.
Honey is
a hot topic in the food industry due to the dwindling bee population and
without bees, we lack natural pollination. I thought I would just be reading
another bee article, but was pleasantly surprised when I came across a tasty
Honey Lavender Shrimp recipe from
Wisconsin Natural Acres at the end of
the article. It did not take me long to bookmark and make this dish, which I
served alongside roasted orange cauliflower tossed with blue cheese and corn on
the cob. I reduced the olive oil by
half, reduced the salt, and used a local honey from Wolf Honey Farm, Inc.
Honey
Lavender ShrimpServes 4
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb. raw
shrimp
1 tbsp garlic, minced, fresh
1 tsp salt
white
pepper
¼ cup dry white wine
½ cup Wisconsin Natural Acres
honey
1-½ tbsp. lavender flowers, dried
Heat olive
oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add
garlic and shrimp and cook halfway through (about 2 to 3 minutes).
Add
salt, pepper, white wine and lavender and turn heat to high. When mixture boils, remove shrimp with a
slotted spoon, leaving pan juices.
Add honey to pan juices
and reduce mixture by three-fourths over medium heat until it will coat the
back of a metal spoon.
Toss shrimp and serve as an appetizer
or entrée.
