Saturday, March 30, 2013

Shrimp with Tomato Cream Sauce on Peppercorn Rice


Wednesday March 27
It's the third night of Pesach, so we ate trafe.
We had an excuse: couldn't get it together to defrost anything ahead of time, which limits us to shrimp, which defrosts in a half hour.  Barbara had a vision of cooking them with sun-dried tomato cream sauce (which is yet more trafe), on rice.
So we started 2/3 cup of rice, which makes two servings.  Don't know if we've mentioned this before, but the ideal (i.e. our) way of cooking rice is to grease the bottom of a tightly-coverable pot with a little butter.  Pour the rice in, add a little salt and twice the amount of liquid as you have rice (in this case, a half teaspoon of brined green peppercorns and a bit of their juice went to make up the the 1 1/3 cup of liquid).  Bring to a boil on medium-high heat, and as soon as it boils, slap on the cover and turn down to lowest heat, to steam for 19 minutes.  Then open the top, fluff the rice with a fork, taste, and either cover for a minute more if it's not done yet, or uncover if it's done.  As it turned out, we could have used even a bit more peppercorns, as the boiling made them rather mild.
This makes rice into R*I*C*E.
Oh, and then there was the shrimp.  This too was Barbara's idea.  Stir-fry a diced onion in olive oil on medium high heat until translucent, add a pound of de-shelled raw shrimp, and cook gently, until pink and white and opaque; remove shrimp to bowl. 
Add a quarter cup of chopped/mashed/whizzed-up sun-dried tomatoes sott'olio to the pan, and sauté with a teaspoon of tomato paste.  Add white wine (and any liquid the shrimp gives off in its bowl) a quarter cup at a time, twice or thrice, to soften all the particles and cook down. 
About 6 minutes before the rice will be done, add a quarter cup of cream and simmer down until thick, adding a glugg more cream till you like  the way it looks. 
Serve the shrimp on a mound of green-peppercorn R*I*C*E, and pour yourself a glass of a provençal rosé.  The sauce is oddly meaty, but it's all delicious nonetheless.

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