So I thought I’d do something simple for Tuesday night supper. Since my wife loves shrimp, I thought I’d make Garlic Sauteed Kuruma Shrimp from Nobu Now (p. 146). My wife volunteered to do garlic sautee of romaine hearts and a sugar snap peas garlic sauteed to go with the shrimp. The ingredient list was simple enough, except I ended up having to use head off u16 shrimp since I couldn’t get my hands on kuruma shrimp –
10 kuruma shrimp in shell (the amount of kuruma shrimp amounted to about 10oz; I used 1 lb of u16 shrimp)
sea salt, black pepper (I used 4:1 salt/pepper mix)
3 tablespoons grated garlic
olive oil
sake (I used about 2 oz here)
chopped chives
3 tablespoons of grated garlic for the dish
Sake to finish cooking the dish
The recipe is basically sauteeing lengthwise split shrimp (seasoned generously with salt/pepper) first shell side down in garlic olive oil then finished by cooking them with the flesh side down. Matsuhisa-sama cautions not to let the shrimp burn while sauteeing.
So I began my preparation by slicing whole shrimp in lengthwise and de-veining them.
Splitting and deveining the (head off) shrimp
I then laid out the shrimp and seasoned them generously with sea salt and black pepper (and of course, here I used the 4:1 salt/pepper mix).
All the shrimp laid out and seasoned with 4:1 salt/pepper mix
While the recipe calls for adding grated garlic and olive oil to a frying pan and then heating, I went ahead and heated a frying pan on 50% max power, added the olive oil and then the grated garlic.
Generous amount of Lucini olive oil and garlic infusing in the pan
When the garlic aroma has infused the olive oil, the heat was turned up (I turned it up to 75% max power) and the shrimp was added, shell side down.
Shrimp added to the pan, shell side down
I sauteed the shrimp, gently shaking the pan from side to side. Halfway through the recipe calls for turning the shrimp over and sauteeing flesh side down – but what was ‘halfway through’? I turned the shrimp over once I saw the originally flat flesh side had plumped up.
PLumped up shrimp ready to be turned over
The recipe calls for finishing off the cooking process by sprinkling some some sake over the shrimp (I used 2 oz here and cooked it just a touch more until I could see the steam rising from the pan). While the recipe calls for garnishing the dish with a scattering of chopped chives, I chose to omit the step. I transferred all the shrimp onto a square plate to be served family style.
Nobu Now Garlic Sauteed Shrimp With Garlic Sauteed Romaine Hearts and Garlic Sauteed sugar snap peas
Much of the effort was taking care in preparing the shrimp and grating the garlic. My wife was surprised how good such a simple dish tasted and now wants to try to make this dish in the future (and definitely finger licking good!).
