Ssssssssspicy Shrimp Tacos

Last time I made a dish with salsa (the Avocado Salsa) I was very disappointed in the lack of heat. Most recipes tell you to remove the seeds and membranes from jalapenos because that's where most of the fire is and I've always followed that advice.  This time around I wanted the spice that the title of this recipe implies so I just sliced up the jalapeno before throwing the whole thing into the food pro (even though the recipe calls for a half of one with the seeds removed).

Spicy Shrimp Tacos with Grilled Tomatillo Salsa

And wow did it work!  The salsa was pretty amazing and maybe just a tad too hot for my taste buds (which are pretty wussy).  I wanted to devour all of it with chips before I even put it on my tacos.  Now my mistake with this dish came when I coated the shrimp with their spices.  I only used half a pound of shrimp but did the full amounts of hot pepper sauce, ancho chipotle chili powder, and ground cumin.  Yowzers were these some spicy tacos.  I could barely make it through two.  Luckily I listened to Cooking Light and served them with sliced cantaloupe which did help a little.  I would like to try making these again, cutting back on the spices and using fresher shrimp (the frozen shrimp ended up super rubbery).

Quick & Dirty

Changes:

• One whole jalapeno with seeds in the salsa, I think with only a half and no seeds there wouldn't have been much heat at all
• Cooked and frozen little shrimpies, this one was not a good change, can you say rubber bands?
• Halved the amount of shrimp but covered them in the full recipe of spices, they were HOT!
• Used chipotle chili powder instead of ancho because that's what I had on hand

Yumminess:

• The tomatillo salsa was really good, it was my first time using the little green tomato-like fruit (although they are related to the gooseberry and not tomatoes) and I will definitely be making more salsa verde in the future
• Cantaloupe is a good side for these spicy wraps
• Ground chipotle chili powder is still my favorite spice of the summer

Sadness:

• Too hot to eat although I (wo)manned up and finished it all off
• Didn't make enough salsa!  Finished off what was left after eating the leftover shrimp taco stuff with yellow corn tortilla chips, yum
• I wanted to smother these in sour cream because that really balanced out the spice but I also knew that would just be piling on the calories so I tried to be careful and just toughed it out