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JADE SHRIMP COCKTAIL

serves 4 • TIME: 15 minutes preparation, 15 minutes refrigeration

We’re always seeking new recipes to flatter the sparklingly fresh local shrimp we buy in South Carolina, at docks in Shem Creek and Rockville. Recently we became restless with the ketchupy sauce typically served with shrimp cocktail, and decided to spin it in a green direction, using tart green tomatoes and tomatillos. The avocado and cayenne in this recipe nudge our cocktail sauce toward a guacamole, but stop just shy. It’s tropically inclined but still familiar, an intriguing new take on an old favorite.

4½ teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste

1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

1 pound headless large shell-on shrimp (26 to 30 per pound; see Notes on Deveining Shrimp, and Shrimp Shopping Notes)

1 pound tomatillos (husks removed) or green tomatoes, cored and quartered

2 scallions, green tops only

1 ripe avocado, halved, pitted, and peeled

2 tablespoons prepared horseradish, drained

1 teaspoon honey

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Freshly ground black pepper

1 Bring 2 quarts water, 2 teaspoons of the salt, and the cayenne pepper to a boil in a 4- to 6-quart pot. Remove from the heat, add the shrimp, and cook (off the heat) for 1 minute, until they’re bright pink-orange and slightly firm. Drain, and rinse with cold water to keep the shrimp from cooking further and to make peeling easier. Peel the shrimp, leaving the tails on for grasping (this takes about 8 minutes). Refrigerate the shrimp for 15 minutes to cool them further.

2 While the shrimp are chilling, place the tomatillos in a food processor and pulse to form a smooth puree. Drain the puree through a medium-mesh strainer, reserving the strained tomatillo water. Return the puree from the strainer to the food processor (you need not wash the bowl), and add the scallion tops, avocado, horseradish, honey, lemon juice, remaining 2½ teaspoons salt, and 1 tablespoon of the reserved tomatillo water. Process to a smooth puree. Season to taste with salt and black pepper, and adjust the consistency of the sauce as needed with more of the reserved tomatillo water. Transfer the sauce to a ramekin or a small serving bowl. (The sauce will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator.)

3 Serve the chilled shrimp with the dipping sauce.

8 SIMPLE FRESH PICKLES We love pickles so much that in our first cookbook, we devoted an entire chapter—13 recipes spanning 38 pages—to them. Since that time, we’ve only become more flat-out crazy for pickles, making them more frequently than ever—a few quarts a week. We’ve found that the pickles themselves have moved closer to the center of the plate, so to speak, in our eating lives. We serve them often as a side dish—almost like a marinated salad, but with a turbo kick—with fried foods, with grilled fish, chicken, beef, or pork, with anything especially meaty or charry. In fact, we were tempted to put these recipes in the “Salads and Cold Sides” chapter, but we find we eat them just as often for snacking before the meal. When guests are over for drinks, nothing’s easier than setting out a platter of delights straight from the fridge: an assortment of fresh pickles, a Buttermilk Fresh Cheese with crackers or bread, and paper-thin slices of country ham.

We’ve also found that the more we pickle, the more laid-back our technique has become. Here’s what we do: (1) Pack the veggies in a quart-size vessel, (2) heat up the brine and pour it over them, (3) let the pickles cool to room temperature and then refrigerate further to chill. That’s all. Overnight marination in the fridge is optimal, but in most of these pickle recipes, the veggies (or fruit) are cut thin, so after an hour in the fridge, they’re ready to go. And go they do: these are not pickles to store on a shelf in the garage so that next spring somebody can find the dusty jar while looking for a bottle of motor oil for the Buick. These are pickles you keep at the