Pickled Shrimp

By SFCook

By Tamar Adler - NY Times
Shrimp season is summer and fall in marshy coastal Georgia and South Carolina and in the Louisiana Gulf. If you can find shrimp from any of those places at those times of year, get enough for eating for several weeks, and make this marinated or pickled shrimp, which lasts that long. There is a version of a recipe for this everywhere, over eons, including in Sciappi’s "The Works." His recipe is for a fish called gilthead, but the method and result are almost identical. Something very similar to this exact recipe was popular through the middle of last century as Pickled Shrimp, or Shrimp Sea Island. And the Alabama chef Frank Stitt has a recipe almost exactly like this one, in one of his fine cookbooks.

Featured in: What We Learn From Old Recipes.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails on
• 4 scallions, mostly white, quartered or in eighths lengthwise
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced lengthwise, very thinly
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup white-wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coriander
• 10 dried chiles, broken once or left whole
• 1 pod cardamom
• 1 lemon, quartered and thinly sliced
• 1 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh oregano
• a few peppercorns
• 4 bay leaves
• 1/4 onion and/or leek
• 1 clove garlic
• a few sprigs fresh thyme or oregano

Details

Servings 10
Adapted from cooking.nytimes.com

Preparation

Step 1

Make court bouillon for shrimp: Put a few peppercorns, 4 bay leaves, 1/4 onion and/or leek, 1 clove garlic and a few sprigs fresh thyme or oregano in a pot of water. Bring to a boil, and let cook 15 minutes. Then add 1 teaspoon salt and shrimp, and cook for 2-3 minutes at below a boil. Remove shrimp with a strainer.

In separate bowl, combine all other ingredients except oil and oregano. Let sit 5 minutes. Add shrimp. Mix well. Add oil, and mix. Add oregano, and mix. Serve at least 5 hours later and ideally the next day, cold or room temperature.

NOTE: Do NOT add to ice bath. It is fine to place warm shrimp in the marinade.