Shrimp are Important to Me

I just at some leftover creole and I thought I might share my thoughts on the mighty shrimp. Well, let's preface this by saying the smell of cooking shrimp made me nausious for the first 10 year of my life. It took some time, but I have grown my appreciation for this small creature.

I grew up about 100 miles from the coast and most of the shrimp we ate came from the back of someone's truck where the purveyor of the prawn had driven down to the docks in Glynn County and would return with what were probably Jumbo shrimp for about 6 bucks a pound. Mom would by 20 pounds or so and freeze them. Of course, we'd always have a big shrimp boil and eat the fresh ones. So I developed a bit of a snobery for shrimp after I got over that weird childhood reaction. Now I find it rather easy to distinguish from Atlantic shrimp, Gulf shrimp, and imports. I remember the shrimp in norway were like little pieces of lobster. Weird.

We were at the Your Dekalb Farmer's Market last sunday and I picked up a very fortoutious set of ingreedients for what I call shrim creole. Here's my recipe

1 lb of 15-20 count jumbo shrimp
1 16+ oz can of fire roasted tomatoes
1 cubanelle pepper
1 onion
several shallots
white pepper
salt
red pepper flakes
bay leaf
Beer - I used natural light.

In a sauce pan, I combined the tomatoes (you need to be sure to go through with your hands and pick out the skins/tough pieces) and the pepper flakes and bay leaf with some beer.(bout 1/2 can). I put it on medium heat and let it start to combine and reduce. If it got too reduced, I'd add more beer along the way.

I diced the pepper, shallots, and onion and sauted them until soft in a frying pan. While all that was going on I cleaned the shrimp, leaving the tails on but nothing else, be sure to get both veins.

After it all cooked and the tomatoes tasted spicy, but not too bad, I combined everything in the frying pan. I then brought it up to simmer and added the shrimp and a little more beer, and some green onion tops for garnish. Got that hot, put a lid on it and turned down the heat so the shrimp could cook and the onion would wilt.


Serve over rice. Be sure you salt your rice. I hate it when I forget to salt the rice.

Now I'm going to pay some bills and head to the pool.

Anyways, i turned out to be the best creaole dish I've ever cooked. Give it a try.