The new chef at Cantina Laredo Restaurant, located in Khalidiya Mall, provided this week’s recipe to help spice up your dinner. Chef Karim Fawsy says, “Camarones is a quick and easy meal capturing the delicious flavour of a classic Mexican meal.”

Ingredients:

• 7pcs Shrimps (sautéed)
• 5oz Mexican Rice
• 5oz Mixed Vegetables (sautéed)
• 1.5oz Chipotle Sauce
• ½pc Lemon
• 1pc Corn Cup
• Leaf Lettuce (as needed)

Preparation:

1. Sauté the shrimp in a pan and separately sauté the mixed vegetables
2. Ladle the chipotle sauce into a corn cup
3. Place the lettuce leaf on the 1/3 portion of the plate and the corn cup on top of the lettuce leaf
4. Place the Mexican rice on the 1/3 portion of plate beside the lettuce leaf
5. Place the shrimp on top of the Mexican rice. Line the shrimp together with the tails facing the same way
6. Place the sautéed vegetables on the remaining 1/3 portion of the plate
7. Place the lemon crown in the center of the plate
8. You may also garnish the sautéed vegetables with almonds

Check out our very own Tried and Tested review of this recipe below.

We go crazy for Mexican food, and that's not an exaggeration. It's one of the most flavorful and delicious things we've ever gotten to eat. So despite living in a land with a shockingly lack of all things a la Mexico, we've gotten by these past eight months with nachos, refried beans and boxed enchilada kits.

So imagine our delight when we received a lovely recipe for Camarones from Cantina Laredo. We were off to the supermarket determined to return with everything required however once again the lack of things Mexican definitely put a damper on our mood. Perhaps if we had gone to an enormous supermarket we may have found proper corn cups (we used crushed tortilla chips instead) or real chipotle sauce and not just the chilli con carne spice mix bought in desperation.

Nevertheless, we were determined to cook this meal. That was until we read the very vague directions. Not only did we not know how to make Mexican rice, or what to sauté the shrimp in to make it flavoured, we basically were left clueless full stop—but strangely were well informed about the presentation of the dish.

We added a heaped spoon of cajun spice and chopped up tomatoes with herbs to our rice to make it flavourful and look the part. It turned out quite nice and we were impressed with our improvisation skills. We then added the cajun spice on to shrimps which we sauteed in oil. Unfortunately we were completely at a loss for the chipotle sauce and so opted out of trying to ramshackle anything remotely close to that, though we were tempted to use the taco sauce and/or chili con carne spice packet we bought in a momentarily panic when grocery shopping.

Regardless, our thrown together meal turned out to be quite tasty and flavourful. However the panic at the market (and later at home) when trying to mix and match a handful of strange ingredients brought together to make this dish wasn't worth the effort.

For that reason we give this dish three out of five spoons!