Upside-Down Pear

So, I have a corkboard in my pantry, and in addition to things like “petsitter’s business card” and “calendar”, it had a zillion and a half recipes tacked up to it. Some of them I’d clipped, some of them were handwritten versions of things I have in my recipe database, some were inherited from my mother. They’re all things I want to make fairly often and/or don’t want to lose, ever.

I had so many that I had run out of pushpins and board space, and the recipes were stacked 3 deep, which meant I could never find anything. Today, as I tried to find a place to tack up the sourdough pancake recipe, I remembered that I’d bought some expanding notebook jobbies for another project and had one left over.

The notebook is sort of a cross between a Trapper Keeper and a scrapbook, and so I glued the recipes onto backing (if they were on small paper) or slipped them into plastic casings (if they were on large paper), stuck ‘em in the notebook, and wrote “Recipes” on the front in silver Sharpie.

Now my board is empty and my recipes are safe. It’s not clear to me why this didn’t occur to me before. Perhaps I am about as sharp as a marble. Still, if you have a corkboard full of recipes that you need to hand, or just want your most common recipes always to hand, it’s worth a try…

If I ever write a letter to Miss Manners, it will go something like this:

Dear Miss Manners,

What should I do with the tails on shrimp? I can understand it with shrimp cocktail, where the tail provides you with a handle for the shrimp, which is properly conveyed to the mouth with the hand, and the tail neatly pulled off and discarded on a little plate. I am at a loss when it comes to shrimp curries, soups, or other liquidy dishes. Should I reach into my bowl and pull the tails off and leave them in the dish, or place them on my bread plate? Should I reach into my mouth and tug the tails off there, and if so, what do I do with them then? Should I simply eat the tails (ugh!) or not eat the shrimp? Please help!

Distressed

I live inland, so when I buy shrimp at home it is usually in frozen form. When I can, I get pre-cooked fully peeled shrimp or raw, tail-on but otherwise peeled & deveined shrimp. The former are best in tacos and curries; the latter for more flavorful applications.

I take the tails off once I’ve defrosted the shrimp. It’s an extra step, but I’d much rather take it at prep time than have to dig around in my spicy habenero shrimp sauce to extract the tails later. I don’t like it, and I don’t know anyone (who is not a cat or insane or an insane cat) who does.

Do the world a favor, y’all. Take the damn tails off. And then, make this.

Shrimp in Tomato Habenero Sauce

1/2 medium yellow sweet onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
1/2 poblano pepper, diced
1 habenero pepper, diced or minced (remember to wear gloves!)
~14 oz. crushed canned tomatoes (I used half of a 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes)
salt
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil
~1 tsp roasted pounded cumin
1 lb. peeled deveined tail-off raw shrimp

Toast whole cumin seed briefly in a small skillet. Remove and crush (or whir in a spice grinder).

Sweat onion & garlic in olive oil over low heat with a little salt and black pepper. Add bell and poblano peppers; stir. Add habenero. After a few minutes, add crushed tomatoes, a drizzle more olive oil, and the cumin.

When it bubbles, add a little water to thin it out, and let it simmer for a little bit.

About 5 minutes before you want to eat, add the shrimp and cook until the shrimp are pink and opaque. If you only have precooked shrimp, cut this time down to about 2 minutes.

If you value your tongue, do not add any other spices to this dish. It is fiery and fruity and the shrimp are tender and juicy. The cumin and garlic keep it from being too sweet and bright-tasting, without killing the essential light freshness of its flavor.

Excellent with steamed green beans in lemon butter.

I’ve had a devil of a time making brownies. In the last seven years, I’ve made many different recipes - including my mother’s trusty old one that I used as a child - and each time turned up brownies that were goopy in the middle and shatteringly brittle on top. Many people offered up opinions - wrong method, wrong pan, wrong oven - but nothing I changed seemed to make any difference.

Until last night, when - struck by a brownie craving - I found a recipe for Irish cream brownies. Studying the recipe, I noticed a few things clearly wrong with the method - things left out. Right. Well, I can fix that - and I stopped and wondered for a moment if my casual attitude towards recipes was going to get me into trouble. I decided it wasn’t, and proceeded.

The first, most obvious thing wrong - the eggs need to be beaten together with the vanilla before you try to incorporate them. Secondly, they need to be tempered before they are added to the hot mixture. That hardly even counts as recipe tampering, to my mind; it’s more like the person who wrote the thing down forgot something so basic and obvious. But it’s not obvious to everyone, and leaving steps like that out can result in tragedy.

I didn’t have a 10×15x1 pan, so I used my elderly 9.5×13.5×2, and increased the baking time to 25 minutes. When the brownies came out, they were soft and dark brown; I brushed the Irish cream over them and watched them turn glossy and nearly black. I rather felt that the glaze the recipe calls for would be gilding the lily, so instead I let them cool and ate some plain. They were delicately-textured, cakey but not sticky, with a tender crumb and a faint Irish cream scent.

Finally, I had conquered the elusive brownie! I did a dance of victory and had another…