This is Not Curry Shrimp

This is not curry shrimp, but it’s a very acceptable approximation.

This is an excellent accompaniment to Rice and Peas, in fact, it’s the only accompaniment so far that I know how to make in my kitchen. Usually if I’m making rice and peas I either eat them as their own dish or order jerk chicken, curry goat gravy, or oxtail gravy to go with it. I’ve researched this extensively and combined a few different recipes and techniques to come up with what I believe are best practices. One common instruction in a lot of recipes from the Caribbean – and especially Trinidad, where I believe one of the world’s most underrated cuisine can be found – is to rinse the shrimp in lime juice. A lot of recipes call for “washing” or “rinsing” chicken or shrimp in lime juice before cooking – there may be some ancillary benefits like tenderized meat, but mostly it seems this is the pervasive wisdom for removing foul odors – either fishiness, some of the “refrigerator” smell, or the chlorine smell that sometimes goes along with chicken. While it is categorically false that doing so removes potentially dangerous pathogens, I suppose it may be true that it removes some of the unwanted flavors that the meat or shrimp may have picked up along its journey from it’s happy life somewhere to the sink in your kitchen. However, and this should barely be necessary to say, if your shrimp smells at all fishy, or your chicken tastes like chlorine, or either one tastes like refrigerant, stop what you’re doing, throw out your chicken or shrimp, never buy it from that same place again, and spend some time upgrading your life here.

The last thing to say is: obviously a lot of the quality and character of this dish will depend on the quality and character of your curry powder. This is something about which I know exactly zero, but I do think that tweaking the formula is part of the fun. In the meantime, the rest of the info here is solid.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 medium large red onion
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 large handful cilantro
• 1 scotch bonnet pepper
• 1 small bunch fresh thyme
• A sprig or two fresh oregano
• ½ cup water
• 1.5 TBSP garam masala or tandoori masala
• 1 tsp ground fenugreek
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 3 TBSP curry powder (I use Jamaican curry powder – but again, you can play around with this. Try to find one that doesn’t have any salt in it, and of course, avoid the ones with MSG.)
• Salt and pepper
• ¼ cup olive oil

Directions:

Clean your shrimp and set it aside. Rough chop half your onion; smash and peel 4 cloves of garlic, strip the leaves off the oregano and thyme so that you have about a TBSP of each. Combine the onion, 4 cloves of garlic, the TBSP of oregano and thyme, cilantro, scotch bonnet, and about ¼ cup of water in a food processor or blender and puree until everything is very finely minced. The final consistency should be more liquid than a paste, and you’ll probably have more than you need for this recipe, but it’s hard to make this in smaller batches. Transfer to another dish and hold to the side.

Combine all the powders in a small bowl and add a bit of water, stirring to form a paste and breaking up any clumps that form. Add the water in small squirts so it doesn’t become too thin. You don’t need much water – you want the consistency to be somewhere between a loose and thick paste. Medium is just perfect. Create this paste and hold to the side.

Cut the remaining half of your onion into ¼-inch slices (this is really up to you how the garlic and onion appear in your finished dish – slices seem right to me though) by cutting both the north and south pole off, then slicing north to south. When you cook these, they’ll lose their curl and straighten out. Cut off the root end of the two remaining cloves of garlic, peel, then thinly slice the long way.

Add the oil to a large skillet and heat over medium heat until the oil is hot. Add the sliced onions and garlic and cook at medium or medium low, until they’re completely softened but are not yet colored, about 5 minutes. Then add the curry paste and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes. You’ve reached the point of no return here – from this point on, your kitchen is going to smell like curry for approximately three days.

Raise the heat to high and after about 30 seconds, add the shrimp and stir/toss to make sure everything is thoroughly coated. Then give the fresh herb/onion/pepper seasoning mixture a few whisks with a spoon or fork to make sure it’s homogenous, and add about 2/3 of a cup to the pan, along with some salt and pepper. Stir to combine thoroughly, cook for another minute or two on high heat until things are simmering away briskly, then reduce the heat to medium and place a cover on your skillet. If you don’t have a cover, another skillet of the same size, placed upside down on top of the one you’re cooking in, works well. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure that the shrimp are not over cooking, and stirring when necessary to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom. You’ll have to play around just a bit to get the consistency right and to your taste. I gather that the old school feels like there should be minimal to no gravy, but I like it to be pretty gravy-heavy, since I’ve make such amazing rice and peas to sop it all up with. The shrimp will spring a lot of their water when you put the lid on, so you may have gotten it just right, but if not, add a bit of water and/or more of your green seasoning mixture and cook for just another minute or at most two to get the consistency right. I have to say that I’ve cooked this dish far past where I thought it might be acceptable to cook shrimp, and they have not suffered. The main thing is that you want your onion puree to really cook down – when you poor it in, it will be granular, but at a certain point it just melts and becomes smooth. This doesn’t happen before 5 minutes and may take as much as 8, even a bit beyond. At this point, normally, I would assume that the shrimp are toast, but for some reason, it hasn’t been the case and they always seem to come out just right. Far be it from me to explain why – I just serve and enjoy immediately, with rice and peas.