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| Shrimp with Sweet Vermouth | ||
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I started this sauce last night at 8, and didn’t finish until 10 this morning. What took so long?
It snowed yesterday. It started in the afternoon, and didn’t stop until 3:00AM. It came down fast and furious, about a foot. Batu didn’t mind--he loves the snow. But it wreaked havoc on the city--cars were stranded and abandoned on the highways, and there were power outages all over Baltimore. I started cooking around 8:00 PM. The power went out at 8:30, and didn’t come back on until 9:30 the next morning. At which time I continued making this sauce. It was quite an unusual breakfast, but it was delicious, and Batu and I were starving! My grandmother, Angela, used to drink bourbon Manhattans, a drink with bourbon and sweet vermouth. And a few months ago, I was visiting my Dad in upstate New York, and he didn’t have any white wine for a shrimp sauce I was making, but he did have sweet vermouth. I thought of Angela and said...”Why not?” My Dad lives on top of a mountain, and it’s not the easiest place to get to. And there aren’t very many neighbors to turn to. So if you run out of something you need for dinner, you have to make do. So I used sweet vermouth for this shrimp dish instead of white wine, and it turned out really well. So I tried to recreate it during the Blizzard of 2011. I started off by sipping some sweet vermouth, and going through my memory banks to try and remember how I did it. And it came to me in a flash. And it turned out even better than I remembered. Maybe I had a little too much sweet vermouth, but this dish was delicioso, even though it took 14 hours to complete. Let it snow! Keep in mind, you can use this dish as an appetizer, and serve it with some warm, crusty bread to your warm and crusty friends. Or you can put it over pasta. I was down in San Antonio, Texas, a few months ago. They had fresh shrimp, never frozen, straight from the Gulf of Mexico. They were incredible. Fresh shrimp are the best. I used previously frozen wild shrimp for this dish, and they were really good. I’m not a big fan of farm-raised shrimp. But what the hell do I know? To de-vein the shrimp...remove the shell. Take a small, sharp knife, and make a small incision down the spine. You’ll see a thin dark vein. Remove it, rinse the shrimp and pat it dry with paper towels. Ingredients: 1 pound medium shrimp, de-shelled and de-veined, rinsed and patted dry 6 cloves of garlic sliced thin (about 2 or 3 tablespoons) 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup sweet vermouth A handful of Italian flat-leaf parsley, cleaned and chopped (about 3 tablespoons) 1 pound of linguine pasta 1 lemon, cut in half Crushed red pepper and kosher salt If you’re using this over pasta... Get a large pot, fill it with water, put it on the highest heat you got. In the meantime... Take a fry pan, put it on medium-low heat. Add 4 tablespoons of evoo, some crushed red pepper to taste, and add the sliced garlic. Cook until pale gold, about 2 or 3 minutes per side. Raise the heat to high, add the sweet vermouth, and let it cook off for 2 minutes or so. Lower the heat to medium, and add the 2 tablespoons of butter. When the butter has melted, add the shrimp. Sprinkle a little salt on top, and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Turn the shrimp over. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the shrimp--don’t let any seeds slip through! Lightly sprinkle with salt, and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. When the shrimp are done (try one to make sure--don’t overcook!) add the chopped fresh parsley and give it a final stir. If you’re serving this as an appetizer, put the sauce in a gorgeous serving dish. Take the remaining half of a lemon, and slice it into thin slices. Garnish the sauce with a few fresh parsley leaves, and some lemon slices. Put out some warm, crusty bread, and dig in. If you’re going to put this sauce over pasta... When the pasta water is boiling furiously, add a few tablespoons of kosher salt. Add the pound of linguine. Cook, stirring occaisionally, for 8 or 10 minutes, until firm to the bite (al dente, as they say in Italiano). Drain the pasta, transfer to a warm bowl, and drizzle with about 1 tablespoon of evoo. Mix it up. Add most of the shrimp and sweet vermouth sauce to the pasta, and toss gently. Plate it up! Put some pasta on a plate. Top it off with a little of the sauce you saved. Take a parsley leaf or two, put them around the plate. Take the remaining half of a lemon, slice it into thin slices, and place a piece around the plate, or on the pasta. Make it look nice. And then pour a small glass of sweet vermouth, straight up or on the rocks, and... MANGIAMO!!!! |
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