{"id":5793,"date":"2015-10-25T23:26:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T23:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5793"},"modified":"2015-10-25T23:26:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T23:26:25","slug":"grilled-fresh-shrimp-roasted-fennel-bell-peppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5793","title":{"rendered":"grilled fresh shrimp; roasted fennel; bell peppers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shrimp_fennel_peppers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our<\/em>\u00a0prawns may not have come\u00a0dressed in elegant long\u00a0claws, but they had excellent taste.<\/p>\n

I expected\u00a0the shrimp would taste very fresh, and they definitely did. \u00a0On the other hand,\u00a0I expected\u00a0that, because of the circumstances of their origin, they might\u00a0lack the complicated flavors of shrimp harvested in the wild. \u00a0I was wrong; these\u00a0jumbo Hudson Valley shrimp\u00a0from Eco Shrimp Garden<\/a> in the Union Square Greenmarket were intense, and absolutely delicious. \u00a0The recipe itself was a major player, in spite of, or because of<\/em> its very elegant simplicity.<\/p>\n

For almost 20 years, or ever since I first opened my first, and the original River Cafe cookbook, ‘Rogers Gray Italian Country Cookbook’,\u00a0I had only been able to dream of\u00a0assembling one particular recipe I had found there, ‘Mazzancole ai Ferri<\/em>‘, or, ‘Grilled Langoustine with Fennel and Chile Sauce’ (I was even dazzled by the photograph on the facing page, although\u00a0it was a black and white image). At first the obstacle was that\u00a0I had no idea where I was going to find Langoustine in New York City, and even when they began to appear in upscale fish shops years later, I couldn’t bring myself to pay the price, which was always something like $35 a pound.<\/p>\n

Enter Hudson Valley shrimp, or rather, Eco Shrimp Garden.\u00a0 Two weeks ago I began to realize that with a little tweaking of the recipe, I might be able to reproduce the Rogers and Gray dish without destroying our food budget. At the Greenmarket on Friday\u00a0I picked up ten\u00a0rather\u00a0large, translucent, and very beautiful, whole ‘Pacific White’ jumbo shrimp. \u00a0They had spent their entire lives in an\u00a0indoor saltwater facility near the\u00a0Hudson River, in\u00a0Newburgh, New York. \u00a0 On the previous Friday I had learned about the process which had brought them there, had wondered at the ingenuity and the industry of its authors, and was impressed with the clean minimalism of their presentation in the market.<\/p>\n

\"Hudson_valley_shrimp\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The shrimp almost looked as if they were still alive and possibly only in shock at the change in their environment. They had been taken out of their tank early that morning, and of course, they had not been frozen. \u00a0Only later at home, while weighing the cooking possibilities, and after\u00a0I had opened the blue-dust-jacketed book to page 204\u00a0and\u00a0the simple recipe which had eluded me for so long did I notice that the major ingredient was described as, “5 to 6 medium langoustines or large shrimp<\/em>\u00a0[my \u00a0italics] per person”.<\/p>\n

Mazzancolle ai Feri\u00a0<\/em>at home? \u00a0I was\u00a0on it.<\/p>\n