Sweet Chile Shrimp

It was one of those days a few weeks ago when the snow was beautiful but I sure didn’t want to get out into it. And I hadn’t made the apparently compulsory bread and milk run that happens just before one of these weather events in Memphis. I never could figure that one out anyway. Are those folks going to just survive on milk and bread alone for two days?

So anyway, when looking for dinner makings, I dug around in fridge, freezer and pantry. I had shrimp and intended to make some sort of pasta with tomato sauce. But when I saw the almost empty bottle of Thai sweet chile sauce, I thought I’d just use it up.

I used Penzey’s Singapore seasoning. It is a little sweeter than Indian style curry and made the perfect addition to this dish, but there’s no reason you can’t use regular curry powder and still have great taste.

This is one of most quickly made dishes I’ve come with in a while and it was really delicious. I had put a rice pilaf on before starting it and the shrimp was finished about the same time as the rice. With a salad we had a great meal, not just for chilly weather but any time of the year!

SNOW DAY CHILE SHRIMP
1 jar (7 oz.) roasted red bell peppers, drained
½ cup chicken stock
¼ cup Thai sweet chile sauce
2 tsp. Penzey’s Singapore seasoning (or curry powder)
3 tbsp. olive oil
4 fat cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined (I leave the tails on because I think they’re cute that way)
¼ cup minced onion
Chopped cilantro for garnish

In a blender or food processor puree the roasted peppers, chicken stock, chile sauce, and Singapore seasoning or curry powder. Set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and let simmer a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add the shrimp and sauté two minutes on each side until just barely pink. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add the onions to the pan. lower the heat and cook, stirring occasionally until tender but not browned. Return the garlic to the pan. Pour the pepper puree into the pan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for about five minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Return the shrimp to the pan and simmer a few minutes just to heat through. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and serve over rice pilaf or pasta. Serves four.

Basque Shrimp: A Swimming Success!

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to visit his mother in Philadelphia, PA.  When we are up there, we try to find restaurants with cuisines not available in Memphis.  One evening we googled "tapas restaurant Philadelphia," and at random picked the closest to our hotel, Tinto.  As it turns out, it is owned by the newest American Iron Chef, Jose Garces.  What luck!

We had a wonderful meal of Spanish Basque area small plates.  One of the dishes we most enjoyed was "Lobster with Grapefruit-Vanilla Nage."   Garnished with Spanish smoked paprika croutons (called, in Spanish, "migas"),  it was delicious.

The French culinary term à la nage means "in the swim."  It refers to food, usually seafood, poached in a quickly simmered vegetable broth. called court bouillon, which means "short boil."   It is usually acidulated with vinegar, but at Tinto, grapefruit juice was used instead.  I didn’t think we’d all want to cook up a lobster, but I was pretty sure it would work with shrimp.

 Often in French cuisine the vegetables are served with the broth.  Although it wasn’t done at Tinto, when I served up my third and most successful attempt to my wine dinner group, I did serve the vegetables.

At the wine dinner we had it as a seated first course, but with addition of side dishes of rice pilaf and a salad it would make a light but tasty dinner.

Although it doesn’t take long to do, you can make the broth ahead of time and refrigerate for several days.  Bring up to a simmer for a few minutes before you poach the shrimp.

SHRIMP IN GRAPEFRUIT-VANILLA NAGE

Stock:
2 quarts vegetable stock (see note)
½ head of celery, including leafy greens, cut into 1" pieces, about 2 cups
1 bulb fennel, white and light green parts, sliced ¼" thick, reserving green lacy top for garnish
8 oz baby carrots (half a 1 lb. bag)
2 cups fresh grapefruit juice (must be fresh, not frozen or canned—trust me on this)
1 cup dry white wine
1 tsp. fennel seed, crushed
4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme
4 bay leaves
1 tbsp. mixed whole peppercorns

To finish:

½ tsp. pure vanilla extract
1-1/2 lb. peeled and deveined shrimp (I used 16-20 per pound size)
4 oz. butter, at room temperature
2 tbsp. heavy cream
1 cup ready made large garlic croutons
1 tbsp. Spanish smoked paprika

Place all the stock ingredients in a non-reactive pan and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes.  Remove bay leaves and thyme stems.
    When ready to serve, add the vanilla and bring to a simmer.  Add the shrimp and simmer until just barely done, depending on the size of the shrimp.
    With a slotted spoon divide the shrimp and vegetables among 8 warm flat soup plates.  To the broth, add the butter and cream.  For best results, use an immersion blender to emulsify the broth with the butter and cream.  If you don’t have an immersion blender, whisk vigorously until well blended.  Even if it doesn’t emulsify totally, it will still be delicious.
In a small bowl, toss the croutons with the smoked paprika.  Ladle hot broth over the shrimp and vegetables, garnish with the croutons and reserved fennel fronds and serve immediately. Serves 8 as a first course, or 4 to 6 as a main course with side dishes.

NOTE:  I use Better Than Bouillon stock pastes, available at most supermarkets, for my vegetable stock.  You can use vegetable bouillon cubes or packaged vegetable stock.  But the BTB will be far better!

Carolyn's Shrimp Salad

If you’re a loyal reader of this blog you may remember a couple of recipes I’ve gleaned from the files of my dear friends Lewis and Carolynn Clark. One of the most popular was the gumbo recipe from Lewis’ mother a couple of years ago.

We were invited to a post-holiday gathering at their home and one of the appetizers was the best shrimp salad I’ve ever had. Carolynn said it was a Clark family favorite, but with a little cajoling, I got the recipe. If you’re a shrimp lover, I predict this will be one of your favorites.

ROYALE SHRIMP SALAD

3 lb raw shell-on shrimp
2 tbsp. Old Bay Seasoning
5 eggs, hard-cooked and peeled
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 ribs celery, minced
1/4 cup onion, chopped
2 small shallots, peeled and minced
¼ cup sweet pickle, chopped
1 tbsp. juice from pickle jar
Juice and zest of half a lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

In a Dutch oven, bring enough water to boil to cover the shrimp. Add the Old Bay seasoning. Drop in the shrimp and cook for 3 to 5 minutes (depending on the size) until just cooked through. Drain and let cool. Peel the shrimp and put into a food processor. Pulse two or three times. (Or chop finely by hand.)

In a large bowl, mash the egg yolks with the mayonnaise. Dice the egg whites and add with the shrimp and remaining ingredients and mix well. Add more mayonnaise if you like a looser shrimp salad. Cover and chill well.

For an appetizer, serve in tablespoons on crisp crackers or endive leaves. For a lovely luncheon dish or first course salad, serve scoops on a bed of lettuce, garnished with tomato slices and lemon wedges.  Makes appetizers for about 10, or salads for 6 to 8.

NOTE: With a considerable sacrifice of flavor you could use frozen pre-cooked shrimp. However, many supermarket seafood departments will steam shrimp for you now, in the seasoning of your choice. This would make this a really quick fix!

A Nostalgic Recipe...

 

My sister is a hopeless addict to garage sales. A few weeks ago we were both at home in Louisville at the same time, and she convinced me to go along with her to several. At one of them, there was a stack of old menus. Among them was one from the Fig Tree Restaurant, one of my favorite places to eat in the 70's in Louisville. Long gone now, it was an early innovator in both menu style and individual dishes. It had a set menu that changed each night. You could substitute a steak for the main course, but otherwise, you got what they were serving that night. Knowing what I know now about the food business, it was an incredibly ambitious undertaking.

One of my favorite dishes at the Fig Tree was a shrimp dish. I don't recall their name for it, and it wasn't on the menu I brought home, but I've made my version of this many times over the years. Recently I made it again for friends, who all pronounced it a worthy recipe to share with you.

The reduction is similar to that for béarnaise sauce, and includes chervil. This isn't the most common of herbs. In my opinion, it is under-rated and under-used. It makes a good addition to salad dressings, and is particularly nice in almost any potato salad recipe. Added to butter with lemon, it can be drizzled over grilled fish or chicken.

A suggestion: for herbs and spices you're not sure you're going to want to use over and over, go to Penzey's, on Poplar near Kirby Parkway. They sell almost everything in small packages. If you don't have chervil, you can leave it out of this recipe and it will still be very good.

I make it in individual baking dishes, but you can just as easily make it in one shallow casserole. I like to serve it on a bed of rice with mushrooms, with tomatoes topped with garlic breadcrumbs and baked. If you serve it with rice, you might want to double the sauce ingredients so you will have some to pass at the table.

FIG TREE SHRIMP

To start:
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon dried chervil
2 cloves garlic, very finely minced
1 shallot, very finely minced
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To finish:
1/4 cup butter
1 clove garlic, smashed
2 pounds raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
Minced parsley for garnish

Combine all the "to start" ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer until reduced by about half. In another pan, melt the butter with the clove of garlic in it. Remove the smashed garlic clove and add the wine reduction.

Preheat the oven to 350. Place the shrimp in one layer in a shallow baking dish. Pour the butter-herb mixture over the top and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the shrimp is just done.

Happy Hour at the Beach

We've just come back from a week in a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We filled a 5 bedroom house with family so it was a little hectic. Tom and I found a great little place, Cafe 12, just a couple of blocks from our house in Avon, on Cape Hattaras. From 4 PM to 6 PM they had great spicy steamed shrimp for $.19 each. We could have a lovely quiet time and chow down as well. We didn't eat any meals there but they had great looking dishes coming out from the back to a full house about the time we vacated the bar each afternoon.

Spanish Shrimp and Pear Salad

 

I cooked dinner for neighbors of my gentleman friend this week and made a lovely Latino beef stew that will be featured in my Weekend Entertaining column of the Commercial Appeal this Friday. When it is published, I'll add a link to it. It was really easy and truly delicious.

I started the dinner with a Spanish style salad that everyone seemed to enjoy, so I thought I'd share it here. I'd had a salad similar to this in Spain a few years back, made with fresh juicy ripe pears. Since it's not always easy to find juicy ripe pears, I've made it with good quality canned pears with success, which saves a lot of time.

The salad dressing can be used on all sorts of salads, but goes particularly well with the shrimp and pears of this recipe.

SPANISH SHRIMP AND PEAR SALAD

Dressing:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 green onions, with some of the green top
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
4 anchovy filets
Juice and finely grated zest of one large lime
2 teaspoons dried tarragon, or 1 teaspoon fresh

To finish:
4 handfuls salad greens (romaine or bibb work well)
12 cooked, peeled and deveined shrimp, chilled
1 16-ounce can good quality pear halves, drained
A few black olives

Put all the dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree well. Pour into an airtight container and chill until ready to use.

When ready to serve, divide the greens among four salad plates, top with the pears, then the shrimp. Drizzle with the dressing and scatter the olives around for garnish. Serves 4.

Lemongrass Grilled Shrimp

Recently I was asked to do a private cooking class on grilling out. I came up with a full four-course menu of grillable recipes. I knew I wanted to use shrimp but I wanted it to be a little different from the usual lemon-garlic-olive oil marinade, as good as that might be.

I was wandering around the supermarket one afternoon and found something wonderful in the produce department. There were tubes of seasoning pastes in various flavors, but the one that appealed to me was the lemongrass.

I like the flavor of lemongrass, widely used in Thai, Vietnamese and other oriental cooking. It has a pungent lemon flavor that blends well with the other elements of those cuisines: garlic, cilantro and hot chiles. But it can be a little tough and fibrous if not prepared correctly. So when I saw the tube of lemongrass paste I grabbed it and went home to play.

This was served at the cooking class as an appetizer, but more recently I served it as a main course for a group of friends. I like to use the larger size shrimp (16-20 to a pound) for this so that it can be marinated a bit longer. Don’t let it set too long in the marinade, though, or it will get a little mushy from the acid in the vinegar.

If you’re using wooden skewers, be sure to soak them at least an hour in warm water so they don’t catch on fire if you are doing these on the grill.

I served it with Zatarain’s Caribbean Rice from the supermarket, which has pineapple in it. The slight sweetness was the perfect accompaniment to the shrimp. Add some fresh green beans, cooked until just crisp-tender and tossed in garlic butter, and you have a wonderful meal.

LEMONGRASS GRILLED SHRIMP

1-1/4 lbs large shrimp, raw, peeled, tail on
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 large pinch crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste
2 teaspoons lemon grass paste
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
8 wooden skewers, soaked for an hour in warm water

Place the shrimp in a bowl. Mix remaining ingredients. Reserve a couple of tablespoons of the mixture and pour the rest over the shrimp. Marinate, chilled, for no more than an hour. Thread the shrimp on the skewers and grill for about two minutes per side. Drizzle with the reserved marinade and serve immediately. Serves 8 as an hors-d’oeuvre or 4 as a main course.

NOTE: This can also be done on a cast-iron griddle or heavy skillet on top of the stove, or under your oven broiler.

Sicilian Summer Pasta

It’s summer and the tomatoes are great right now! I love them just eaten out of hand, with a sprinkling of salt. Or sliced, sprinkled with fresh basil and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a good green fruity olive oil. Or sprinkled with herbs and olive oil and run under the broiler for a moment or two.

And I love them in a fresh tomato sauce, which I had every intention of making for the "Presto Pasta Night Roundup." That’s the one with diced red ripe tomatoes, slivered fresh basil or oregano, diced red onion, a bit of minced garlic, capers, olive oil and a drizzle of either lemon juice or balsamic vinegar. Let it set at room temperature, loosely covered, for the better part of the day, and at dinner time, cook pasta (angel hair is the traditional one to use), toss it, still hot, with the room temperature sauce and some shredded Fontina cheese and enjoy.

I was going to make that, until I came across this in an old edition of Gourmet Magazine, speaking of the multi-starred French chef, Michel Troigros: "…(he) does cold spaghetti with poutargue (pressed tuna roe) in a sweet tomato vinaigrette…" It reminded me of a dish I had in a Sicilian restaurant in Rome several years back, and now is the perfect time to make it.

The cuisine of Sicily uses more "exotic" spices than most Italian food because of the various Mediterranean cultures that have passed through this island at the tip of the mainland "boot." And citrus fruit practically grows wild there. Anyway, I loved the dish and came home and played with it until I got close. Poutargue (or botarga, as it is known in Italy) is not readily available here—and besides it’s expensive and definitely an acquired taste--but seared shrimp make a perfect substitute.

Here’s the menu: A big salad of crisp mixed greens with chunks of peeled seeded cucumber, slivered red onion, black olives, shavings of pecarino romano cheese and a red wine vinaigrette dressing, Sicilian marinated tomato pasta, a loaf of crusty bread and for dessert, store-bought pastry shells topped with jarred lemon curd and berries. Almost everything can be done well in advance, giving you time to enjoy a nice glass of mint iced tea with your friends. How easy could it be?

SICILIAN MARINATED TOMATO PASTA

For the sauce:
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 piece fresh ginger, peeled, about 1" square, minced
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed
1 whole clove, lightly crushed
1 orange
1 lemon
1 pint baby plum tomatoes or grape tomatoes, halved, or 1-1/4 lb tomatoes, cored and cut into chunks
To serve:
12 oz spaghetti, preferably imported
1/2 cup good extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 large clove garlic, very finely minced
12 large leaves basil
The juice of the lemon
The juice of 1/2 the orange

Early in the morning, or even the night before, make the sauce: Dissolve the sugar in the water. Add the ginger, spices and the zest of the orange and lemon, taken off in strips with a vegetable peeler. Add the juice of half the orange. Bring to a boil, remove from the heat and reserve. Put the tomatoes in a glass or ceramic bowl and pour the syrup over the top. Let marinate, covered, up to 8 hours at room temperature, or chill up to overnight. Remove from the fridge to come to room temperature before serving.

When ready to serve, cook the spaghetti in plenty of well-salted boiling water until just barely al dente. Drain, mix with two tablespoons of the olive oil and reserve. Meanwhile, heat half the olive oil in a skillet with the garlic. Cook the shrimp until just barely pink, 2-3 minutes. Lift the tomatoes from the syrup and place in a large warmed serving bowl. Add the rest of the olive oil, a spoonful or two of the syrup (leaving the spices behind) and the lemon and orange juices. Salt and pepper generously. Add the spaghetti and shrimp and toss to combine. Sprinkle with the basil leaves, torn into bits and serve at once, or let cool to room temperature. Serves four as a main course.