Today I gave the kids a mystery box. It had shrimp, rice noodles, onions (garlic, red onion or green onions), vegetables (spinach, tomato or peas) and a few random additions (coconut milk, basil, a half bottle of champagne).   I told them they had to make a main course using the 1) shrimp, 2) rice noodles, 3) one of the onion ingredients, 4)one of the vegetable ingredients and 5) one of the random ingredients (and any basic ingredients from the pantry…like olive oil, salt, pepper that they wanted). This is what they came up with:

Max: I made a shrimp tomato sauce for my rice noodles. First I started the water for the rice noodles (we weren’t sure how to cook them but putting them in hot water seemed a good start).  Then I sauteed chopped garlic in olive oil. ( In between all of this, Alex and I checked on the water, added the rice noodles and let them soften.)   For my sauce, I added vine tomatoes that I had quartered to the garlic and let soften.  The sauce seemed a little dry, so I added some champagne.  Finally I added the shrimp. I flipped the shrimp after three minutes and then put the shrimp/tomato sauce on the rice noodles and added basil for seasoning.

Alex: I was inspired to do an Asian-style meal by reading the suggested uses on the coconut milk. I decided to make a shrimp coconut curry.  First I sauteed chopped garlic in olive oil. Then I added some sliced cherry tomatoes to the pan. And then I added the coconut milk and let it simmer for 5 minutes. It tasted a little tart, so I added some brown sugar.  (We didn’t have any curry powder, but I still liked the taste) I added the peas and then the shrimp. At the end I added a few green onions. To serve it, I put it over the rice noodles and added a few basil leaves and more green onions.

We also made a quick salad of the spinach, tomatoes, green onions and some avocado we had in the fridge.  We liked our dishes (and mom and dad did too) but we decided we needed to work a little bit on how to cook rice noodles (ours tasted a little like clear rubber bands).

For desert, we made one of our favorites: fudge brownies, but we topped it with M&Ms that we saved from Halloween (mom put them in the freezer to stay fresh.)

Mystery box of ingredients

Alex cooking her coconut milk shrimp

Max softening his tomatoes for his shrimp dish

Max’s dish: shrimp with tomato, garlic, basil on rice noodles.

Alex’s dish: shrimp with coconut milk, peas, tomatoes and garnished with basil and green onions.

Spinach salad

Brownies with M&Ms. Be sure to put the M&Ms on when brownies just out of the oven so they melt a little.