The Minimalist Cooks Dinner (14 page)
Read The Minimalist Cooks Dinner Online
Authors: Mark Bittman
About ½ cup fresh lime juice (3 or 4 limes)
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon nam pla (Thai
fish sauce), or salt to taste
2 tablespoons neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed
1 teaspoon minced garlic
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
1½ pounds peeled shrimp (deveined if you like), or 3 pounds head-on shrimp, left unpeeled
Minced cilantro
Combine the lime juice, sugar, and nam pla in a small bowl. Pour the oil into a 10- or 12-inch skillet, turn the heat to high, and heat for a minute. Add the garlic and pepper flakes and cook just until the garlic begins to brown about 5 minutes. Immediately add the lime juice mixture all at once and cook until it reduces by half, or even more, 3 to 5 minutes; there should be only about ¼ cup liquid in the skillet, and it should be syrupy.
Add the shrimp and cook, still over high heat. The shrimp will give off liquid of their own and begin to turn pink almost immediately. After about 2 minutes of cooking, stir. Continue cooking and stirring occasionally until all the shrimp are pink, about 2 more minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning, then garnish with cilantro.
| WINE | Beer |
| SERVE WITH | Easy Rice , and plenty of it, plus stir-fried vegetables or Green Salad with Soy Vinaigrette |
FOR BEST FLAVOR
, see if you can find head-on shrimp; they make for a more impressive presentation; and it’s fun to suck the juices out of the heads themselves (which, I realize, is not something that everyone enjoys). But none of these assets is worth making heads-on shrimp a sticking point.
BE SURE TO BROWN
the garlic lightly without burning it.
LET THE LIME-SUGAR
mixture cook until it is syrupy; this won’t take long, just 3 minutes or so, but it will guarantee that the liquid coats the shrimp nicely.
NAM PLA
—Thai fish sauce—is available in many supermarkets and all Asian food stores; soy sauce or even salt are adequate substitutes.
SCALLOPS OR SQUID COOKED IN LIME JUICE:
The same technique will work with scallops or cut-up squid; each will take slightly less time to cook than the shrimp.
Roman Style
TIME:
30 to 40 minutes
MAKES:
4 servings
This shrimp dish is based on a combination of ingredients that is traditionally used for cooking tripe in and around Rome. It’s a simple tomato sauce spiked with the powerful flavors of garlic, chiles, and mint. When you make it with tripe, it must cook a long time in order for the tripe to become tender; when you use the shrimp, the dish is practically done as soon as they are added.
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon slivered or not-too-finely chopped garlic
6 dried red chiles or ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
One 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juice, or 4 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds shrimp, peeled (and deveined, if you like)
1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves, or 1 tablespoon or more dried mint
Pour the olive oil into a large, deep skillet and turn the heat to medium. Add the garlic and chiles. When the garlic begins to color, about 3 minutes later, cook carefully until it browns just a bit. Turn the heat off for a minute to avoid spattering, then add the tomatoes.
Turn the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add the shrimp and cook, stirring occasionally until they are all pink, 5 to 10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning; the sauce should be quite strong. Stir in the mint and serve.
| WINE | Chianti or any not-too-serious wine from Italy or France |
| SERVE WITH | If you’re not making pasta (see above), serve with 60-Minute Bread or good store-bought bread and Simple Green Salad . |
THE GARLIC
in the sauce is not cut too finely, and it is browned nearly to the point of bitterness to make it extra strong.
THE SAUCE
itself is cooked just long enough for the tomatoes to juice up and begin to fall apart; it should not be allowed to become too dry because the final product should be a moist, almost soupy stew, rather than shrimp coated in a thick paste.
MINT IS
the star component here. (Mint grows wild in the hills around Rome and is featured in a number of classic dishes.) Dried mint will do—add it a couple of minutes before the sauce is done—but given that fresh mint is readily available I strongly recommend using it.
Shrimp, Roman Style, with Pasta:
The consistency of the sauce makes the dish ideal as a topping for pasta. Just cut the amount of shrimp to about a pound—with a pound of pasta as the base, there’s no need for more than that. Start the water for the pasta when you start the sauce, and begin to cook the pasta at the same time as the shrimp.
Squid or Scallops, Roman Style:
The same procedure can be followed to make this dish using cut-up squid (which should be cooked just until tender, probably even less time than the shrimp) or scallops, which will take about the same time as shrimp.
Better Cocktail
Sauce
TIME:
30 to 40 minutes
MAKES:
4 main-course servings or 8 appetizers
No doubt shrimp with cocktail sauce is a luxury dish, but it has sunk to the point where too frequently it means a pile of shrimp cooked days in advance, served on a bed of iceberg lettuce with some bottled sauce that always needs more help than it ever receives. There is a better way, however. Cook the shrimp yourself; in the meantime, prepare a simple ketchup-based sauce that has so much flavor, you’ll find it becoming a part of your standard repertoire.
About 2 pounds large shrimp, peeled (and deveined, if you like)
1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon red wine or other vinegar
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish, or to taste
Combine the shrimp in a saucepan with water to cover. Turn the heat to high and bring to a boil. Cover the pan, remove from the heat, and let sit for 5 minutes. Drain and chill (you can run the shrimp under cold water if you’re in a hurry).
Combine the ketchup, vinegar, and butter in a small saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter melts. (At this point, you can keep the sauce warm for an over—but keep the heat as low as possible.) Add horseradish to taste.
Serve the cold shrimp with the sauce, warm or cold.
| WINE | Chardonnay or Pinot Blanc |
| SERVE WITH | If you serve this as an appetizer, follow with pasta like Pasta alla Gricia or risotto. If you serve this as a main course, serve with bread, like 60-Minute Bread and a steamed vegetable, like Steamed Broccoli (or Other Vegetable) . |
THE EASIEST WAY
to cook shrimp is to let them steep in hot water until they’re done; they will cook through but not overcook, and thus remain tender. Peel them before cooking.
SEE SPANISH-STYLE SHRIMP
for recommendations about buying shrimp.
|
If you have fresh horseradish, grate it and serve it separately from the sauce; dip the shrimp into the ketchup sauce and then into the horseradish.
|
Use fresh lemon juice instead of vinegar, and/or Tabasco or other hot sauce in place of the horseradish.
|
Cook the shrimp with herbs or spices, such as a premixed combination of pickling spices, or simply a couple of bay leaves, some peppercorns, and some whole coriander seeds.
“Barbecue” Sauce
TIME:
15 to 30 minutes
MAKES:
4 servings
This is an old New Orleans recipe that has nothing to do with grilling or barbecuing. Its name comes from the spicy, slightly smoky flavor the shrimp gain when cooked with Worcestershire sauce and lots of black pepper. It’s a fine and almost absurdly fast dish—once the shrimp are peeled, you can have it on the table in 10 minutes, and that’s not an exaggeration—with a creamy, rich, savory sauce that completely belies the amount of effort required on your part.
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1½ to 2 pounds shrimp, peeled (and deveined, if you like)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire or soy sauce
Salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
Juice of 1 lemon
Put the butter in a skillet and turn the heat to high. When the butter melts, add the shrimp and Worcestershire sauce. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is glossy and thick and the shrimp uniformly pink, about 5 minutes. If at any point the sauce threatens to dry out, add 1 to 2 tablespoons water.
When the shrimp are done, season with salt and pepper, then stir in the lemon juice and serve.
| WINE | Any simple, inexpensive red |
| SERVE WITH | 60-Minute Bread or good store-bought bread, Easy Rice , or Pasta, Risotto-Style; Steamed Broccoli (or Other Vegetable) |
THE KEY INGREDIENT
here is butter. If you start with a moderate amount of butter, about a tablespoon per serving of shrimp, you can add almost any flavor you like to the skillet and create a sauce with the same creaminess and great depth of flavor. (This is not a place where substituting oil is a good idea; you’ll never get anything approaching the same texture.)
IN A NARROW PAN
, the liquid seasoning and shrimp juices will evaporate more slowly; you’ll need less liquid to prevent the sauce from being too watery. In a wide one, however, the liquids evaporate quite rapidly and there’s even a danger of burning. In this case, add a tablespoon or two of water, which will keep the sauce at the right consistency.
GENERALLY, I ADVOCATE
buying wild shrimp, like Pacific or Gulf whites, which are the best. In this instance, however, you can get away with the far less expensive farm-raised shrimp, like black tigers—the sauce has so much flavor that no matter what seasoning you use, the subtleties of better shrimp would be lost.
