Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [140]
Shell the prawns. With a tiny teaspoon, scrape the soft part from the heads and set it aside. Melt the onion and garlic, until soft, in the butter. Add the scrapings from the prawns, tomato, rosemary or basil and cinnamon. Season with salt, pepper and sugar (eventually, with northern tomatoes, you may find it necessary to add more sugar and plenty more pepper). Simmer, uncovered, for half an hour. Sieve into a clean pan. Pour in the vermouth and the cream and stir the sauce together. Reheat the prawns in it at the last moment.
PRAWNS WITH RICE, AND PRAWNS IN PASTRY CASES
Prawns are so full of flavour that they are the ideal fish for serving in rich sauce with boiled and buttered rice. This is usually pressed into a ring mould, before being turned on to a serving dish; the prawns in their sauce are poured into the centre. If for rice you substitute deep-fried caissettes – 5-cm (2-inch) thick, crustless slices of bread, hollowed out in the middle – you have an even better method of making a few prawns go a long way. If you are pampered by the proximity of a first-class pastrycook, you can buy brioches and use them to hold the prawns and sauce (scrape out the soft dough inside first, having removed the little topknot). A solution which is open to everyone is to buy or make puff pastry or shortcrust pastry cases. Any of the three mixtures in the recipes for Curried prawns, Prawns and mussels in a cream sauce or Prawns in tomato and vermouth are offered as suggestions – they can easily be varied to suit your resources and tastes.
POTTED SHRIMPS
Fresh shrimps should be used at all times. The best ploy is to buy lots, eat some fresh and then pot the rest, and this should be done as soon as possible after you have bought them.
To every 600 ml (1 pt) of picked shrimps – which will serve 6-8 when potted – allow 100–125 g (3–4 oz) butter. Melt it slowly with a blade of mace, cayenne and a shade of grated nutmeg. Stir in the shrimps and heat them through without boiling. Stir all the time. Remove the mace, and then divide between little pots. Cool quickly in the refrigerator. Cover with clarified butter.
To serve, warm them slightly. Provide brown bread and butter. Prawns, crab and lobster can all be potted in the same way.
SHRIMP AND TOMATO BISQUE (Potage à la crevette)
Whatever the attractions of travel or Paris were for Dumas, he was always drawn back to the sea (he quotes Byron: ‘Oh sea, the only love to whom I have been faithful’). He wrote much of his Dictionnaire at Roscoff in Brittany, and some in Normandy at Le Havre, where he met Courbet and Monet. He loved the shrimps and bouquets roses of that coast, and invented this soup for them. In the end he died near the sea.
Judging by a similar recipe in the soup section in the Dictionnaire, this dish was invented by Dumas himself. Ideally, it should be made with the remains of a pot-au-feu liquid and live shrimps. If you cannot manage this, use a good beef stock and boiled shrimps (or prawns, or mussels opened with white wine – see method 2 on p. 239).
Serves 4
750 g (1½ lb) tomatoes, peeled, chopped
500 g (1 lb) onions, sliced
150–200 g (5–7 oz) shrimps
white wine
salt, pepper, cayenne
bouillon from pot-au-feu or beef stock
Cook tomatoes and onions slowly in a covered pan. When the tomato juices flow, raise the heat and remove the lid. Simmer steadily for about 45 minutes, then sieve.
Meanwhile cover the shrimps generously with white wine, add salt, pepper, cayenne. Bring to the boil, and cook briefly for a moment or two. Try one to see if it is ready. Strain off the liquid.† Peel the shrimps, setting aside the edible tail part. Put the debris back into the pan with the liquid, and simmer for 15 minutes to extract all flavour from the shells, etc. Strain, pressing as much through as possible. Measure this shrimp liquid, and add an equal quantity both of the tomato purée and beef stock. Bring to the boil, taste for seasoning, and adjust the quantities if you like, adding a little more tomato or stock, or