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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