Gingered Shrimp


Asian flavors


For the tea party last Saturday, I made a batch of Gingered Shrimp from Betty Crocker's Holiday Appetizers. I put most of them on cucumber slices and the rest on melba rounds for the cucumber-adverse. Everyone said they were good, but my soy sauce was old and strong, and I think they turned out not quite as ginger-y or as sweet as I'd like them.

I tried to think of a way to stick the shrimp to the cucumber / melba rounds, but ended up serving them plain. I purchased some whipped chive-flavored cream cheese because the recipe calls for sprinkling the shrimp with chopped green onion when finished. The cream cheese wouldn't stick to the cucumber slices no matter how I tried to dry them off, and and chive flavoring overpowered the soy-ginger taste of the shrimp. Sour cream might have had a better chance of sticking to the cucumber, but I'm afraid even that would overpower the Asian flavors. So they were served "bare" with the caveat that the shrimp would take a header if one was not careful about consuming them.

Gingered Shrimp
from Betty Crocker's Holiday Appetizers

1 1/2 pounds medium shrimp, cooked, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons finely chopped gingerroot
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons sweet sake or apple juice
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 to 3 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions

1. Arrange shrimp in single layer in shallow glass or plastic container.
2. Heat soy sauce to boiling in 1-quart saucepan; add gingerroot. Reduce heat; simmer 5 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Stir in vinegar, sugar, sake and salt. Pour over shrimp. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours but no longer than 12 hours.
3. Remove shrimp from marinade with slotted spoon; arrange on serving plate. Sprinkle with onions.

The Camera Notes:

1. That's two 12-oz. bags of medium shrimp at my grocery.
2. I took the tails off before I marinated them because I was serving them individually on a base.
3. The book also recommends using dry white wine instead of sake or apple juice, which I did. Turns out with my concentrated-by-age soy sauce I would have been better off with the apple juice for extra sweetness. Oh well.

Tags: recipe , shrimp , appetizer

Posted: Mon - January 29, 2007 at 03:15 PM   Home         | | View Technorati reactions

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