So Day 9 is where it starts to get hard...9 ladies dancing clearly does not have an obvious food translation, so I had to throw in a splash of creativity for today's dish. I tried to brainstorm as many feminine foods as possible and came up with: seafood and ladyfingers. To incorporate the dancing aspect, I figured I'd introduce some sort of alcohol element into today's dish to "get the ladies dancing!" So on the savory side I figured I could do a seafood in wine dish or for the sweet side I could make a tiramisu. But since I'm at home for Christmas and my family tires of me making endless desserts that they are forced to consume, I chose to take the savory route.
I kind of ended up making this recipe on the fly, incorporating whatever ingredients I could find in the kitchen - this I do not recommend. For instance, I grabbed a container that I thought contained salt and did not realize until the very last minute that I had been using sugar all along. On a similar note, after I thought I had finished the dish, I would come across another ingredient that I thought would be a delightful addition and I would end up doing...something wrong (i.e. I spilled a whole bunch of sea salt into the pan when I only meant to add a pinch). Also, once I started adding ingredients into the pan, I realized I had no idea where I wanted to go with the dish and spent countless seconds staring blankly at the pan. Lastly, though I was ultimately okay with using plum wine for my sauce, I think it could have been nice to use tequila instead (and really make those ladies dance).
Anyways, for today's dish I chose to make roasted shrimp atop a bed of corn and sweet onion in a plum wine sauce. I had envisioned using smoky, fire-roasted shrimp for this dish, but alas, I just roasted the shrimp in the oven and all that really happened was that it...cooked. But if you have access to a grill, I'd highly recommend you grill the shrimp instead; the charcoal flavor could have played wonderfully against the sweet flavors of the rest of the dish.
To prepare the shrimp, I pre-heated the oven to 400 F and spread a layer of shrimp in a roasting pan. I seasoned the shrimp with salt (well actually, I used sugar but I would've preferred salt...) and pepper, a dash of lemon juice, and a drizzle of olive oil. I then placed the pan in the oven and roasted for 15 minutes (or until the shrimp turned pink and were fully cooked). Because I didn't realize I had used sugar instead of salt until the shrimp were done, I sprinkled salt over the shrimp as soon as they were out of the oven.
For the corn and onion relish, I first sauteed diced garlic in melted butter and then added in the diced onion. After the onions were browned, I threw in the corn and seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley. I then added a splash (enough to form a thin layer in the pan) of plum wine as well as a bit of water and sauteed until the sauce slightly reduced. Because I was going for a slightly sweeter taste, I ended up adding a little bit of brown sugar...as well as an accidental sizable amount of sea salt. I couldn't quite figure out where I really wanted to take the sauce, so I chose to just remove the pan from heat and eat it as is. I'm still not too sure what I wanted the sauce to be like - it was fairly sweet with notes of plum wine, but also very salty because of the sea salt - but when I couldn't taste the overwhelming salty flavors, the sweet flavors were quite nice with the shrimp.
No comments:
Post a Comment