Two things happen to me when the weather starts getting nice: First, I don’t have the primal urge to cook up a bolognese for the freezer in the middle of a sunny day. Second, I want my dinner cold. This shrimp and avocado salad is a riff on a ceviche I had at Los Gemelos (website is somewhat bizarre, but attn: Westchester bretheren, food is real-deal amazing) that was so fresh and flavorful I had to attempt replication for dinner. You can of course make it when you walk in the door after work, but if you make it ahead of time, the flavors have some time to mingle together and you get the satisfaction of going to work on Monday knowing that family dinner is chilling in the fridge waiting for you at home. Is there a better way to start the week than that?
Sunday morning
When you go shopping pick up the following ingredients: 1 1/4 pounds shelled shrimp, 1 avocado, 1 jalapeno pepper, 2 limes, 1 small container grape tomatoes, 1 small red onion, 1 bag corn tortillas or tostadas.
Sunday afternoon
Boil your shrimp for three minutes. Drain and let cool. Chop your tomatoes, mince 1/3 onion and 1/2 the jalapeno (remove pith and seeds if you don’t want the heat). Mix with the shrimp and squeeze juice from the two limes over everything. Add a little olive oil, salt, pepper. Chill and let flavors mingle.
Monday night
Walk in door, heat tostadas as directed, chop your avocado and mix into the shrimp salad. Pile your salad on top of the tostada and serve with a squeeze of lime. Summon the troops for dinner.
Note: If you can’t find tostadas, fry corn tortillas in a healthy glug of vegetable oil over medium-high for about 2 minutes a side until crispy. Drain on paper towels.
Deliciously simple. I love the idea of this.
YUMMY!! I was going to have shrimp tacos tomorrow, but now its going to be this!!
Cant wait to make this!!
Yum! Can’t wait till that stuff is in season around here!
delish! i love this meal 🙂
Don’t you just love recipes like this? Fast, fresh and flavorful. It looks delicious! I love the idea of shrimp on tosdatas.
Looks amazing! I love ceviche- but this looks much easier to prepare at home. Love it.
This looks like the perfect spring-time dinner! And I’m on a shrimp kick right now. Wait. Am I ever NOT on a shrimp kick? I added your recipe to my inspiration file so I can try to remember to make it ASAP: http://www.eatandwrite.com/2011/04/22/inspiration-notebook-recipes-to-try/
These look DELISH. But where I am this weekend – in upstate New York – it’s still cold enough for Bolognese. 27 degrees when I got up this morning!
But as soon as the weather gets warm, this is on the menu.
this could be the world’s most perfect dinner.
Lovely! Just found some super-awesome tostada shells at my local Latin market (for like 80 cents!) that will go go go with these!
Agree with you, Jesse: this might be an absolutely ideal meal! What’s better than shrimp and avocado? Thanks for the lovely blog, glad to have come upon it!