Shrimp Venustiano
Serves 4
This is my version of a delicious dish from the old Carranza Grocery & Market. It’s basically sauteed shrimp with a bright lemon beurre blanc sauce with sweet-and-spice Peppadew pickled peppers.
Ingredients #
- 1 lb jumbo Gulf shrimp, peeled and deveined (tails left on)
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- Flour
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 3 sticks (1 1/2 cup) cold butter, cut into pieces
- Juice of 1 large lemon
- 2 tbsp Peppadew brine from the jar
- 2 cloved minced garlic
- 1 tbsp minced shallot
- Pinch of dried Fines Herbes
- 4 Peppadew pickled peppers, sliced very thinly
- Salt, black pepper and Tabasco sauce to taste
- 1 1/2 tbsp minced parsley
Instructions #
In a shallow bowl, combine the eggs and milk, season highly with salt and pepper, and whisk thoroughly. In another bowl, put a cup or so of flour and season it highly with salt and pepper (some Old Bay is nice too).
Heat the oil in a saute pan. Dip the shrimp in the egg mixture and then flour them lightly. Add the shrimp to the hot pan 6 at a time (or more if your pan is big enough, but don’t crowd them — you want them to get crusty and browned), browning on one side, and then turning to brown the other side. Hold them in a 250 degree oven.
Venustiano Sauce:
The key to this sauce is the regulate the heat constantly, tipping the pan off and on the heat, so that the butter just melts and becomes nicely warm, but without fully liquifying and separating. It should be a bit thicker than heavy cream, and mostly opaque.
Finish the shrimp and everything else first, because this sauce, while easy, requires a few minutes of your undivided attention.
In a heavy saucepan, put 1 tbsp of the butter over medium heat along with the garlic, shallots and Fines Herbes. Cook gently until the shallot is softened (no browning). Add the lemon juice and brine, and cook until slightly reduced.
Reduce the heat to low, and add a big handful of the cold butter pieces. Stir constantly — and I mean constantly! — until just liquid. Keep stirring until the sauce is very warm (but not truly hot) again. Add another handfull of butter and repeat until you just have a few tablespoons of butter left. Add the sliced Peppadews and keep stirring until everything is nicely warmed.
Pull the sauce from the heat, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and dashes of Tabasco sauce. If the sauce seems too tart, add another tablespoon or so of butter. Stir in the parsley.
You can serve the sauce over the shrimp on a bed of angel hair pasta. For an elegant entree or appetizer, spoon a pool of the sauce onto a plate and arrange 3 or 5 shrimp on top. Drizzle a ribbon of sauce across the shrimp, and sprinkle with minced parsley or chives.