Andalusia · Starter
Tortillitas de Camarones
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, acid holding everything up to the light, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 200 g tiny raw shrimp, whole
- 100 g plain flour
- 60 g chickpea flour
- 250 ml iced water, or half water and half clean sea water
- 60 g spring onion, very finely chopped
- 15 g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
- 5 g salt
- 400 ml olive oil for shallow frying
- 1 lemon
The skills inside
Sautéing & the shallow fryThe coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batterDraining fried food: a rack, never paper
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · shellfish
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
- Whisk the two flours with the iced water and salt to a batter that runs off the ladle in an unbroken stream, thinner than instinct says, then rest it cold for an hour.
- Stir in the shrimp, spring onion and parsley, keeping the bowl sitting on ice so the batter stays cold.
- Heat 1 cm of oil to 185C (365F); a drop of batter should spit and lace immediately.
- Pour a small ladle in close to the surface and spread it thin at once with the back of the ladle, so it opens into a ragged disc pierced with holes.
- Fry until the edges are lace brown and the underside lifts free without tearing, turn once, then drain on a rack and salt.
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.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
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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