Saturday, May 21, 2011

Yeah, everyone does this at least once...

 This is an easy one, the way I make camarones al mojo ajo. This is one of the few seafood dinners I did a lot when I was still back home again in Indiana.  Shrimp with toasted garlic.

There are lots of fun things about this recipe-- it is easy to expand to cook for other folk and you can add and subtract flavors when you want to play.

The two most important parts of the recipe are the shrimp and the garlic.  When cooking this for myself I use 10 medium shrimp and four good sized cloves of garlic.  Put the shrimp off to the side for awhile and chop the garlic cloves somewhat roughly, you don't want large chunks but you don't want real small ones either – say slightly smaller then the head of a thumb tack.

Place the garlic in a small skillet and add enough olive oil to fully over the bottom of the pan. Heat this to medium.  Stir from time to time until the oil starts to simmer (bubble sightly).  Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook until the garlic becomes soft (a ½ an hour or so).

Take a lime and cut it in half.  When the garlic is soft squeeze the juice into the garlic and oil and stir.  Let this cook for about four minutes, again stirring occasionally.

Get out a larger skillet  and spoon out some of the oil, but not the garlic, into the larger skillet and heat to medium.  Add a splash of white vinegar. Once the skillet heats up add the shrimp (shelled and cleaned if you haven't yet) sprinkle with salt, add some chopped cilantro and cook for about for four to five minutes.  Place this on a bed of rice or noodles (or lettuce for that matter).  I might also add some chopped orange at this point.

Take the other skillet and strain the oil from the garlic.  I take the some of the garlic and sprinkle over the top of the shrimp.  I usually retain the oil for future use.

Serve with a hearty bread.

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