I had some nice jumbo shrimp that I was looking for a recipe for, and wondered if Keller had any shrimp recipes - ta da!
I was very skeptical of the recipe, though. I mean - shrimp scampi is easy and tasty, and this recipe is a bit of a fusspot with the compound butter situation. You make a compound butter of roasted and raw garlic, lemon juice, and parsley (which I forgot), place the shrimp on a bed of breadcrumbs, add a few pats of the butter, sprinkle with more breadcrumbs, and broil.
Still, I had roasted garlic earlier in the week when I roasted tomatoes, so I was halfway to the compound butter already. I decided to leave the lemon for the end (because why cook lemon juice) and instead zested the lemon into the shrimp. I also left the garlic butter soft and mixed it with the shrimp, because I wanted even distribution (and I had a lot more shrimp than he did in the demo).
Well, this was really good! The only “downside” was that I was expecting buttery, garlicky shrimp juices that I would toss with the pasta I was serving the shrimp with, but - duh - the breadcumbs absorbed all that, so I had to butter (and garlic) my pasta separately.
He has this whole fussy thing where he says to butterfly the shrimp and arrange them a certain way to ensure even cooking, which I thought was probably a crock but kind of did anyway. Given that I had a lot more shrimp crammed into my baking dish, it took a lot longer than the 3-4 mins he called for, and I decided to toss them about halfway through so the ones at the edges didnt’t overcook, but they did cook very evenly.
I’d make this again (this way), but with twice the garlic! And rough, toasted pangrattato-type crumbs or panko would probably be better than the really fine breadcrumbs I had at hand.
Served with bucatini and sauteed spinach.
