Filipino Shrimp

I am not sure how to properly title this excellent shrimp dish, but my wife wanted me to give it the name Filipino Shrimp, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost the recipe was given to me, and slightly tweaked, by my wife’s cousins, the Tayags. Years back we all gathered up in our cars and decided to spend a week at a lake house in northern Canada. Not only was this amazing in itself, but to come together with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, was, and always will be a blast. To start, the Tayags are pretty amazing in themselves, and stories always heard of how great a cook the father us, and the Mom, or as I know her as Auntie Cora, an amazing cook and former caterer herself. Lets just say, both my wife and I get excited when we see the Tayags, as they are just great people, through and through. The days and nights we gathered in and around the kitchen and cooked, and ate really delicious food, but there was one dish that I did not forget about, and that was a shrimp dish that our cousin Christel made. She was totally confident in cooking this dish so you know she had made it many times, and I don’t blame here for that as it is really killer, and I just remember, sitting there and eating this shrimp. Perfectly cooked, and just right in every sense. She used whole prawns, head on (which I enjoyed), and it was one of those fun dishes where you get to eat with your hands, get a bit messy, and it was just a real treat.

Not too long ago, I asked Christel if she would not mind sharing her recipe with me, and she responded with the ingredients. What I love about the response is that there were no measurements; no pound of this, no tablespoon of that, just the listing of ingredients, which is perfect for me, as I was able to experiment on many guests this past weekend.

Our other cousins, who recently moved down the road from us and who have been having dinner parties pretty much every weekend, had a dinner party to celebrate a visiting from Sunny, a lifelong friend, and relative. As I got word of the meal plan, I thought shrimp would be a nice offering for their guests. They all loved this shrimp dish, and it really brought back the great memories we had with everyone during that trip to Canada.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs of medium to large shrimp, fresh, shell on, deveined, and slit down the back
• 2 lemons
• 6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp of unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 2 tbsp of fresh flat leaf parsley, minced
• 1 1/2 tbsp of paprika

This is super simple, and goes quick which is great for any party.

Start by heating a large skillet on medium-high heat. Add the butter and olive oil, and wait until the butter is fully melted. Toss in the garlic, and onions and cook for a couple of minutes. Toss in half of the parsley, and all of the paprika, and mix. Toss in the shrimp. Get your skillet wrist ready and give them a good toss to try and mix everything. Try the skillet toss again as it never hurts to practice that. Cook the shrimp until the flesh becomes opaque. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the shrimp, toss, and plate. Sprinkle a bit of paprika and the remaining parsley on the top, and serve with lemon wedges.

The other reason for giving the dish the name Filipino shrimp was due to the fact that when my wife thinks of the food of the Philippines, she thinks of all of the great shrimp she had there, and this really reminded her of that. Enjoy.