Salmon with Guava BBQ Sauce

Mmmm... guava BBQ sauce. So good.  Made with my guava jam and caramelized on top of a nice piece of salmon, quite tasty.

I used this recipe, although I added a liberal squirt of Sriracha for extra spice to balance the sweetness in the sauce.  I plopped the salmon atop this bell pepper free mango and cucumber salsa recipe from Simply Recipes, mixed with a can of black beans.  Good stuff.

Mango Cocktail

Tim was musing the other day that we should make a pineapple and vodka cocktail of some sort since the pineapple is so sweet and easy to get here (you can pick one out and have them peel it for you at the store...so easy).  My mouth started watering at the thought, but we didn't have a pineapple at that exact moment.  We did have a ripe mango, though, not yet earmarked for another purpose, so I looked up some mango cocktail recipes and immediately had at it, with delicious (albeit not very photogenic) results:

I ended up using this recipe from The Kitchn... mango puree, lemon juice, vodka, a little simple syrup and soda water.  So good.  Not too sweet, not too thick, extremely refreshing.  An exciting break from our usual, the gin rickey.

For a party I think you could make a big pitcher of the mango/lemon/vodka mix and then have people pour it in the glass and top off with soda water.  Also, I think a flavored simple syrup would do well here- ginger, lemongrass or vanilla, or maybe chili for some spice.  I guess you could do flavored vodka, too, if you wanted. 

Pineapple vodka cocktail recipe coming soon...

Coconut Rice Pudding with Mango

For some reason I had the most intense craving for rice pudding last week... I rifled through my cabinets and the internets and decided that I could make a combination of these two recipes.  Good plan... the end result had the homey, spicy feeling of a traditional rice pudding mixed with flavors reminiscent of mango and sticky rice.  Mmmmmm.  

Here's what I did:

- I used the risotto method from Joy the Baker, but substituted one cup of milk with coconut milk.

- I used brown sugar as the sweetener.

- I added the vanilla bean and cinnamon Joy suggested, as well as the 1/4 cup of freshly toasted coconut from the Evil Shenanigans recipe.

- Finally, I topped it all off with diced mango and some more of the toasted coconut, then ate it for breakfast.  Pretty tasty!

I think next time I might cut down on the cinnamon to let the other flavors stand out a little bit more.  My only complaint.