Thai Shrimp Bruschetta

Morita chiles are red, fully mature Chipotles. This gives them a unique, medium – hot smokey flavor which is popular in many Southwestern dishes. These can be added to sauces (including Mole) to add smokey flavor and maintain the red color of the sauces. These peppers are about 2-4 inches in length, 1 inch in width, and have a deep brick reddish brown color. The word Chipotle translated to smoked chile. Consider the Chipotle a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hottest). Scoville heat units 7,000-25,000.

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Ingredients:

1 long hothouse cucumber, peeled
3 Tbsp. sugar
2 dried chipotle chiles, soaked for 30 minutes in warm water and drained, or 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobe sauce, sauce rinsed off, or 2 jalapeno chiles; stemmed, seeded and chopped fine
2 tomatoes, peeled, stemmed, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 Tbsp. Thai fish sauce or more to taste
24 1/4-inch thick baguette slices, toasted under the broiler on one side only
24 large shrimp, sauteed in oil for 3 minutes, peeled, deveined, and halved horizontally
24 mint leaves

Instructions:

Halve the cucumber lengthwise and use a spoon to scoop the seeds out of each half. Slice the cucumber lengthwise into 1/4″wide strips. Cut the strips crosswise to make a 1/4″ dice. Toss the diced cucumber with the sugar and rub your hands until you dont feel the sugar. Let the mixture drain in a colander for 30 minutes.

Combine the diced tomatoes with the chiles and set the mix aside.

Squeeze the cucumber dice in your fists to extract as much liquid as possible, then toss the cucumber with the fish sauce.

Just before serving, place 1-1/2 tsp. of cucumber dice on the baguette slices. Place 2 shrimp halves on the cucumber and top with a teaspoon of tomato dice. Place a mint leaf on each.

Recipe from “Simply Shrimp: With 80 Globally Inspired Recipes” by James Peterson Stewart, Tabori & Chang, ISBN: 1-5847-9585-9.