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Sofrito Shrimp Creole
- Intermediate
- 50 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with a briny, maritime salinity, a warm current of chile, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 700g shrimp, peeled
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 400g crushed tomatoes
- 120ml white wine
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp oregano
- 2 tbsp capers
- 75g green olives, sliced
- Salt, pepper, and cayenne
- Rice to serve
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceFrying the paste until the oil splits
Allergen screen
Found: shellfish · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook the onion, pepper, and garlic in the olive oil to a soft sofrito, 10 min. 10 min
- Add the cumin and oregano and cook 1 min, then the wine and let it reduce by half. 1 min
- Add the tomatoes, bay, capers, and olives and simmer 15 min into a thick sauce. 15 min
- Add the shrimp and cook 3-4 min only, until they curl and turn pink. 4 min
- Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne and serve over rice.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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