jalapeño Archives - A Calculated Whisk

Grilled Vegetables with Jalapeño Aioli

September 16, 2019 By Becky 2 Comments

These grilled vegetables with jalapeño aioli are a great way to make the most of the last few weeks of grilling season! Zucchini, okra, mini peppers, and red onion wedges grill up quickly and are irresistible dipped in the creamy and spicy aioli.

Here in the South, the highs continue to sneak into the nineties most days and the markets are still packed with tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and okra. So while fall may technically be looming on the horizon, I am not ready to give up grilling anytime soon.

All summer long I’ve been firing up my grill and filling it with local veggies, sometimes adding some sausage or chicken as well, and calling it dinner. Nobody has complained, but I recently decided the one thing a platter of grilled vegetables really begs for is a flavorful sauce for dipping. The grilled vegetables almost seem like extra flavorful and colorful French fries once you add a nice aioli to dunk them into.

Stuffed Avocados with Shrimp and Mango

May 5, 2016 By Becky 13 Comments

Stuffed avocados with shrimp and mango are simple, quick, and crave-worthy, especially when topped with a spicy jalapeño aioli!

I’m having a really hard time writing this post because there aren’t any fixings for these stuffed avocados left, and I’m craving them so badly. They check all the boxes for my top practical considerations because they’re healthy, fast, easy, and filling. And they check all my flavor and texture boxes because they’re creamy, savory, spicy, and sweet with a little bit of crunch from the scallions. They’re pretty much all I’ve wanted for dinner ever since I first dreamed them up.

My fiancé Ben loves these, too. He’s not too hard to please with food because he’ll eat almost anything besides sweet potatoes or cooked apples (I know, right?), but it’s rare that he gets super excited about a food.

However, after the first time we had these stuffed avocados with shrimp and mango, he made a point of telling me twice that he really liked them. (And in case you don’t know Ben, “I really liked those” is Ben-speak for “Those are the best things I’ve ever tasted!”) He hasn’t said so many good things about one of my recipes since last time I made the millionaire’s shortbread from Paleo Planet.

The premise for this dish is simple: it’s an avocado boat stuffed with a shrimp and mango filling accented with scallions and topped with an easy jalapeño aioli. The aioli is creamy, heart-healthy and delicious thanks to its main ingredient: avocado oil mayo from Primal Kitchen, which I buy from Thrive Market (affiliate link–I earn from qualifying purchases). It has only a handful of wholesome ingredients: avocado oil, cage-free, organic eggs, organic vinegar, salt, and rosemary extract. No sugar or canola oil in sight!

It’s kind of weird for me to be whipping up a mayonnaise-based sauce because I’ve never been a fan of mayo, but this one is so good and unlocks so many epic paleo sauce possibilities. Since I try to limit my dairy intake and I’m allergic to coconut, there are so many creamy sauces out there that just don’t work for me.

I first used this avocado oil mayo last year in an awesome green goddess dressing, and I’ve been hooked ever since. This jalapeño aioli is even better because it’s nice and spicy, and in addition to being great with these stuffed avocados with shrimp it’s also epic with baked sweet potato fries.

Grapefruit Jalapeño Margaritas

April 26, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

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Grapefruit jalapeño margaritas sweetened with honey are perfect for Cinco de Mayo! Tequila quickly infused with jalapeños gives these just the right amount of kick.

How do you feel about spicy cocktails? I’m pretty much obsessed, and these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas are my current drink of choice. I hope this doesn’t make me sound insufferably picky, but I’m starting to feel the same way about non-spicy cocktails that I feel about non-salted desserts. If my sweets are not salted or my cocktail doesn’t pack a punch, I’d almost rather go without. The depth of flavor that the jalapeños give these margaritas really makes them for me.

That being said, I aim to please, and you can definitely skip the chiles and just make a delicious grapefruit margarita if spicy drinks are not your thing. It’s easy to make some margaritas spicy and some not according to each person’s tastes. Ben took a sip of my spicy margarita and declared it “interesting”, but preferred the plain grapefruit ones I made per his request.

The inspiration for these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas comes from my friend Lauren, who shares amazing gluten-free recipes over at Wicked Spatula and has quite an impressive array of creative margaritas. If you read my site often, you may remember that we swapped guest posts back in the fall. Last weekend, we met in real life for the first time! Lauren lives about a three-hour drive from me, and we decided to meet up at her place and road trip together all the way up to Pittsburgh to go to a workshop led by Jessica Merchant of How Sweet Eats.