Saucing the shrimp: grilled shrimp in herb sauce

When you have cooked as long as Annalena has,  your mind makes food connections, whether you like it or not.  Sometimes good, sometimes not.  In this one, it was good.  Annalena explains.

When looking at the food for the week,  steak was in the future (and the recipe is as well), as was a very rich lasagna.  So,  thinking about what to do,  her mind settled on sea food, and since the fish guy is not around on Tuesday, she went to her standby: shrimp.  They freeze well, and they cook quickly, and they taste good.  These are all VERY relevant factors during the week, ragazzi, as Annalena is sure you know.  And looking at her vegetable stash,  there were summer squash that called to be used. So, Annalena began searching for a recipe that used squash and shrimp - AS LONG AS IT WASN'T PASTA.  This was not an easy task.  She did find a recipe which called for both, but it was not precisely what she wanted.  HOWEVER, the seeds of a good recipe were there.  And so it is.  This follows.

Shrimp take well to just about any sauce you can make, be it savory, sweet, spicy, semi sweet, etc.  While we grew up with tuna as "chicken of the sea,"  Annalena really does think of shrimp that way.   She suggests that you develop a repertoire of shrimp dishes, and have some shrimp in your freezer at all times.  You will be amazed at how useful and how many quick meals you can come up with this way.

So, here we go.  First the sauce,  and the sauce is so good, you could, and should, use it with many things.  Annalena is doubling the recipe for you, because she made it in the blender.  If you make the regular size of the recipe, there is too little of it, and your blender will be very upset, unless you have a mini blender, and in that case, it won't work very well.

You need 1/3 of a liquid cup of red wine vinegar.  If your eye is just not steady enough to measure that, then go to half a cup, and do the same thing with all the other "1/3 of a cup" ingredients here.    Those are chopped, fresh oregano (which is very easy to do), and chopped fresh thyme, which is not.  The difference here, is that oregano has a fairly soft stem, so you can use all of it.  Thyme, on the other hand, has a branch that can be very woody.  So, ragazzi,  you will be picking smaller stems off of the major one.  It will not take long, but unless you are Annalena's buddy Kevin, you will be a bit frustrated. 

You also need two cloves of garlic.  Take these ingredients,  and chop them.  If you are not using a blender, chop them REALLY fine.  Add about 2 teaspoons of salt to it all.  Combine them with the vinegar, or put them in the blender and puree.  Have half a cup of olive oil ready, and either whisk it in, or slowly add it and stir constantly.    Finish it with some black pepper that you grate freshly.

Taste it.  Add some salt if you like.  Taste it again. Good huh?  It's like a superb herbal salad dressing, and you could use it as such.

Now, to your shrimp.  You can make anywhere from 1-2 pounds of it for this much sauce.  If you are going to make the smaller quantity, any size shrimp will do; however, for the larger one,  Annalena suggests the large or even jumbo shrimp, because of the step you are going to do next, which will take a lot of time with smaller shrimp.  Get the ones that have been peeled and deveined. You're worth the extra buck.

Get a ridged grill pan ready by brushing it with olive oil, and getting it hot.  Put the shrimp directly on the pan, and as soon as you coat the pan with the babies, turn them over.    See, shrimp cook fast, and  in the time it takes to load the grill pan, the first ones will be done.    If you are doing this with smaller shrimp, you will probably have on the order of 90 of them to do this.  You will rip out your nails. 

Flip the shrimp, as noted, and grill them for just about another minute.  Put them in a bowl, pour in some sauce and stir. 

And... BINGO.  You are done.  You should eat these with your fingers, sucking the delicious sauce off, as you go along.  Make some rice, or couscous, or something like that to serve with them, and perhaps put yet some more sauce on that.  Or, a salad with the stuff. 

Really good, and ultimately, you will spend no more than 30 minutes making your meal.

I mentioned steak.  It's a coming.  So is blueberry cobbler.  And corn ice cream.  A match that should have been made in heaven, but was in fact made, in Annalena's kitchen.