Deep Fried Cornmeal Crusted Shrimp over Spinach Apple Truffle Cheese Salad

Dinner tonight was something I dreamed up at the last minute using mostly stuff around the house, and took hardly any time to prepare (20 minutes). I had Jake purchase some fresh unfrozen Wild Gulf Shrimp from Whole Foods.

Cornmeal Mixture for Shrimp
. Cornmeal
. Paprika
. Salt

Spinach Salad
. grated Caciotta al Tartufo (truffle cheese. yeah, seriously. we have truffle cheese just sitting around in the fridge.)
. lemon juice
. cracked pepper
. diced apples
. spinach
. unfiltered olive oil
. truffle oil
. shallots
. salt
. fried garlic chips

Shrimp
. Never Frozen Fresh Wild Gulf Shrimp, peeled and de-veined

Oil
. thinly sliced garlic
. thinly sliced ginger
. mustard seeds

Heat oil to a temperature appropriate for deep frying (I tested this by throwing a few mustard seeds into the oil until they popped instantly). Once ready, add thinly sliced garlic, a little fresh ginger, and mustard seeds. In about 30 seconds, the oil should be ready to deep fry the shrimp.

Toss peeled, de-veined shrimp in Cornmeal mixture, coating shrimp with as much cornmeal as possible. Get some cornmeal in the slit where the vein used to be. Deep fry one by one for about 1 minute. For every 3 shrimp, I tossed in some more ginger and garlic slices.

Once you're done frying the shrimp, fish out the garlic and ginger chips from the oil. I used these to top the salad. The garlic chips were amazingly tasty, and ginger chips surprisingly snappy.

Toss the Salad ingredients together and top with shrimp, garlic chips, and ginger chips. Salt to taste. And add a fruit on the side (I chose a strawberry!).

and Voila!

Sorry there are no measurements for the ingredients - I just eyed it because I was in a rush because Jake beats me if dinner is late.

I'm really glad this turned out well, unlike the last Seat of My Pants Recipe Disaster.