Pickled Shrimp

As an American chef, I could naturally have been expected to have learned how to pickle shrimp in my self-studies of regional American cuisines, including South Carolina Lowcountry cuisine in which this dish is an heirloom. But I came to it from another route, from studying Spanish cuisine, in which pickled shrimp is called escabeche de camarón. The Jamaican equivalent goes by the name of escovitch. I'm not really sure how pickled shrimp found their way to South Carolina and while I know these dishes are all related, I don't know the family history. I wish I did.

Pickled Shrimp on Greens

By whatever name, the dish starts with shrimp, raw or cooked, "pickled" in an acidic sauce, usually oil and vinegar. Many domestic versions include typical pickling spices: allspice, coriander, mustard seed, cloves, and black peppercorns. Hispanic versions tend to cumin and oregano. I've had Jamaican versions that are fiery with Scotch bonnet peppers. I like mine fairly plain, aiming for a nuanced herbal flavor from lovage, parsley, and bay leaves. Everyone's version is different and they are all delicious.

Pickled Shrimp Mise en Place

Before getting started with any dish, I gather everything that I will need to make the dish. This is what chefs call mise en place, French for putting everything in its place. It's a really good habit to get into, no matter what you are cooking. Once you start the actual cooking, your food will have your undivided attention because you won't be searching for things.

Before every dinner shift at the restaurant, I would go though my station and the evening's menu, cooking each dish in my head, making sure that I knew where every ingredient and every piece of equipment was. Then when it was show time, no matter how busy we got, I had only to worry about cooking the food and getting it to the dining room. I spent routinely 20 to 35 minutes a night getting set, down to making sure that my mixing bowls, tongs, and tasting spoons were in the exact same location from shift to shift so that I could grab them without looking. It takes a lot to be a professional cook and it all starts with organization.

Court Bouillon

I start my version of pickled shrimp by poaching the shrimp in a court bouillon, a flavored broth which will give its flavor to the shrimp. This court bouillon I made with water, a splash of rice vinegar, a teaspoon of salt, lemon slices, parsley stems, a bay leaf, and pinch of red pepper flakes. I brought the court bouillon up to a boil for three minutes or thereabouts, then turned off the flame and added the shrimp, letting them poach slowly in the hot court bouillon.

Sweating Carrots and Onions

I always pickle carrots and onions along with the shrimp. Besides being a traditional component of the dish, they are a wonderful bonus. I love the pickled vegetables almost as much as the shrimp. The carrots, I slice on the bias into oval-shaped coins. The onions, I cut in half, and then into slices yielding half rings. I slice them this way for presentation: I think the shapes are all complementary. I sweat them a bit over medium heat just until the carrots soften and the onions turn translucent.

Shrimp Ready for the Refrigerator

I mix the shrimp, the solid ingredients from the court bouillon, and the onions and carrots in a bowl. Then I add some lovage leaves, fresh lemon slices, more bay leaves, salt, and a fair amount of ground black pepper. For longer storage, I would pack this mix into a sterilized jar or other container, then top it with a vinaigrette of red wine vinegar (1/3) and olive oil (2/3) to isolate the shrimp from the air and bacteria. Pickled shrimp will keep up to a week in the refrigerator, though I think they're at their best between 24 and 72 hours.

For this dish, I made the shrimp first thing in the morning with the intent to eat it at dinner that evening, so there was no need to submerge it in dressing. I mixed a half a cup or so of vinaigrette and tossed it with the shrimp before refrigerating it.

At dinner time, I picked out and discarded the lovage leaves, bay leaves, and lemon slices. Then, after draining the shrimp, I used the drained oil and vinegar to dress a big bowl of salad greens. As you see in the top photo, I mounded the shrimp, carrots, and onions on top of the greens.

Ann had never had pickled shrimp before and she loved it. I know that she's looking forward to the next time.

Pease Porridge

Depending on who you ask, we've been on borrowed time for anywhere from three days to two weeks. Our luck ran out overnight on Saturday: our first frost of the year followed by a 28F freeze the following evening. Earlier in the week in preparation for the coming cold weather, I picked all the basil and made pesto and Ann asked if I would make a pot of split pea soup on Sunday to accompany the chilly weather and a loaf of her delicious bread.

I've never really considered split pea soup and by considered, I mean in an academic nature. [Cue groaning noises from my wife.] Been making it all my adult life, but I never considered from which culinary tradition it has come. I didn't know anything about the history of the dish.

I certainly did have a guess that since we have a nursery rhyme about the dish ("pease porridge hot/pease porridge cold/...") that the dish is very old. And that it is, the rhyme is first recorded in the early 18th century but the dish is mentioned by Aristophanes and that was nearly 2500 years ago. Split pea soup is downright ancient on a human timescale. Further reading leads me to believe that cooked dried peas and pork is common to most of northern Europe; it certainly is extremely common in many militaries and all throughout Scandinavia. That it appears across such a broad swath of the world tells us that this dish is so old that it predates our modern notion of cuisines and international boundaries.

And its antiquity probably explains why we love it so: at this point, love for the soup is probably recorded at some level in our DNA. All joking aside, it is one of the few dishes that I, the ultimate omnivore, came to kicking and screaming. When I was a youngster of about 8 or 9, my mother made for the first time in my reckoning a nasty looking green soup which she assured me was delicious. I've never really balked at foods, but I bet it took her a solid half an hour of cajoling me while she was cooking it to get me to try that damn green stuff. I guess the color put me off. But once I finally nerved up enough to taste it, I was hooked.

[The only other thing that I came to balkily was sushi. At 25 years of age, I had never seen raw fish before. These were the days before you could buy sushi in any town anywhere. Four or five beers it took to get into the raw fish, but after that, I was likewise hooked.]

My split pea soup is always made with green split peas, a ham hock, an onion, a couple of carrots, some garlic, a bay leaf, and some thyme. Except this batch.

Not My Usual Split Pea Soup Mise

I was fresh out of carrots, so I grabbed a sweet potato for color. That's the only reason carrot is in the soup: for contrasting color. And I grabbed a few small pork sausages because I don't have a ham in the fridge and I didn't feel like getting one out of the back and unwrapping it. The secret weapon in my soup is what we call "pork goodness," the juices that congeal in the bottom of the pan after we have roasted our pork belly. I added about a pint of that at the very end. Because it is so salty, I add it at the end instead of salt.

Ann's roasted garlic loaf was incredibly delicious. Alas the photos did not turn out. The short day did not afford enough daylight and the picture quality was awful. Pictures or no, the soup and bread in front of the fire was a great way to temporarily chase away our first taste of winter.