Shrimp with Tomato Curry #recipe by @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  We love goop. By goop, of course, I mean sauce. When Mr. Right and I were first married, I laughed when he called sauces goop. Then his older brother visited and I knew where the term had come from.

This dish features a rich creamy curry. Curries are wonderful warming dishes for this time of year, filled with fragrant flavor. Some people think of curries as hot, and they can be, depending on the blend you use, but most good spice shops will carry a variety and clearly label the ingredients so you can gauge and adjust the heat level for your own palate. (I created my own curry in Guilty as Cinnamon, though for this dish, we used the mild curry sold by The Souk in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.)

The author of the original recipe touted the option to freeze half the goop for future use. We didn’t find the original recipe nearly goopy enough for us, let alone for extra, so I’ve doubled the original amount. If it makes enough for you to save some, great! If you're goop lovers like us, enjoy!

The greens add color and create a full meal in one dish. We did use the immersion blender to puree part of the sauce; you may like it as is, or dice your onions finely and use crushed canned tomatoes to skip that step. 

Enjoy!

PS: I finally figured out how to embed a PDF of the recipe for easy printing. 

Scroll down to the 💕 for the link. 

Shrimp with Tomato Curry 

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons canola oil 

1 medium yellow onion (around 8 ounces), diced

3-4 cloves garlic, minced 

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger or jarred ginger

2 tablespoon curry powder

2 teaspoons sweet paprika

1 teaspoon fine salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

One 28 ounce can diced tomatoes, with their juices, or crushed tomatoes

1-1/2 cup coconut milk

Cayenne pepper (optional)

For the shrimp: 

1 tablespoon canola oil 

1 pound cleaned, deveined large shrimp, tails off (uncooked) 

For the dish:

4 cups (4 ounces) lightly packed baby spinach

4 cups cooked white or brown rice 

Start the rice, in a pot or rice cooker. 

Make the sauce: In a stock pot, heat oil over medium until shimmering. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Stir in the curry, paprika, salt, and black pepper, coating the onions and warming the spices, about 30 seconds more.

Add the tomatoes and coconut milk, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching, until the sauce thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. Taste, and add a pinch of cayenne, if you’d like. Remove from the heat and let cool in the pan for about 15 minutes. Puree with an immersion blender, or transfer to a blender and puree. (If you plan to use a standard blender, you could make the sauce in a large skillet instead.) Skip this step if you like a slightly chunky sauce, or leave some chunks in your puree. 

Cook the shrimp: In a large skillet (the same one you may have used for the sauce, heat the oil over medium until shimmering. Add the shrimp and cook until they turn pink, and are lightly browned and nearly cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes per side. 

Finish the dish: Add the sauce, or half if you like a less sauce-y dish. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the sauce is thoroughly warmed and the shrimp are cooked through and opaque, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the spinach and cook until just wilted, about 1 minute.

Serve over rice. 

Serves 4. Leftovers reheat beautifully. Extra sauce may be frozen and reheated in a small sauce pan. 

💕 Click here for a free printable PDF! 

ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION, now available in in paperback and ebook 

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.  

“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

TO ERR IS CUMIN:A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, out now in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest books are To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. Watch for Lavender Lies Bleeding, the 9th Spice Shop Mystery, on July 15, 2025.

A past president of Sisters in Crime and former national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.