Portugal, by way of Mozambique and Boston: Spicy Portuguese Shrimp with Garlic

The “spicy” refers as much to the paprika’s flavoring as it does the pepper’s modest heat, and what sounds like too much garlic is just right. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]e love reading about cooking almost as much as we do actually cooking. We have at least six cookbooks out of the library right now. We have another from a publisher, waiting to be reviewed. And though right now, we’re only subscribed to two food magazines—Bon Appétit and Saveur—I think I’m about to add another.

Several weeks ago, an unordered copy of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street showed up in our mail slot. I knew that Kimball had left Cook’s Illustrated a couple of years ago under bad terms (a lawsuit may still be under way) to start Milk Street. But to be honest, I never fell for Cook’s Illustrated the way many people do. To me, there is just something joyless about their approach to cooking and food: “We roasted 57 chickens to arrive at this precise recipe, and if you follow this recipe exactly, you will have a perfect roast chicken.” And the anachronistic use of black-and-white illustrations makes me think more of Harper’s Weekly’s Civil War battlefield reportage than it does “omigod, I’ve got to cook/serve/eat this right now!”

So I didn’t bother to seek out Boston-based Milk Street when it first hit the newsstands in 2016. I also ignored the free copy dropped at our door until, one morning, rushing for the el to go to work and realizing I had nothing to read, I grabbed it. Before I had made it halfway to my office, I’d decided I was probably going to subscribe. There were color photos! There were many cultures and cuisines represented (the current issue features street food from many corners of the world). And there was a general unstuffiness, an approachable “this is easy, you can do it, it will taste great” tone to the writing.

Some of the recipes (including the shrimp recipe I’m riffing on here) are even written in that casual, paragraph style, with key ingredients bolded within the story: “Season 1-1/2 pounds jumbo shrimp (peeled, deveined, tails removed) with 1 teaspoon sweet paprika, 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper.” While I tend to like my recipes in the more formal style, so I can quickly scan ingredients and make sure I have everything ready, I appreciate how simple and doable this approach makes recipes seem—how friendly.

Like Cook’s Illustrated, Milk Street accepts no advertising, so the slim volume is full of recipes, cooking technique instruction, book and product reviews, and more. If you’re interested in trying Milk Street for yourself, you can do so here. And no, we don’t get anything if you subscribe—we just liked what we saw and wanted to tell people about it.

This particular issue has at least four recipes we’re planning to try. The first is a flavorful, traditional Portuguese shrimp dish that traces its roots back to Mozambique.

Spicy Portuguese Shrimp with Garlic
Serves 2 generously (adapted from Christopher Kimballs’ Milk Street)

1 pound large shrimp, peeled, deveined, tails removed
1 teaspoon sweet paprika (not smoked)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped (see Kitchen Notes)
1 Fresno chili, stemmed, thinly sliced (see Kitchen Notes for substitutes)
1/2 cup dry sherry (nothing fancy—see Kitchen Notes)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

cooked white rice (see Kitchen Notes)

Mix shrimp, paprika, 1 teaspoon salt and a generous grind of black pepper in a bowl, stirring gently to combine. Set aside for 10 minutes.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high flame. Add half of shrimp in a single layer and cook undisturbed for 1 to 2 minutes, until golden browned. Turn and cook on other side until just cooked through, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Add another 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan and cook the second batch of shrimp. Transfer them to bowl.

Reduce heat to medium, add remaining 4 tablespoons of oil to the pan, then stir in the garlic and chili pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is nicely golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Add sherry and cook, stirring occasionally and scraping up any browned bits, until slightly thickened, about 3 minutes.

Remove pan from heat and stir in cilantro, sugar and lemon juice. Return shrimp to pan and stir to combine. Spoon rice into shallow bowls and top with shrimp, making sure to include plenty of garlic and juices. Serve.

Kitchen Notes

How much garlic? Four cloves sounds like a lot, but cooking it longer than the usual 45 seconds calms it way down. Here, it added all kinds of savory goodness without announcing its presence in all caps.

Fresno chilies? What’s the deal? The recipe called for one, and that’s all they said. So I dug a little bit and found this: “The Fresno pepper is a darling chili among foodies for its very eatable medium heat and, when red, subtle smokiness.” The site with this amusing description said that a good substitute is the always available jalapeño (which another site said is about twice as hot as the Fresno). I used a jalapeño because I couldn’t find a Fresno. I will keep looking, because now I’m curious. Don’t judge me.

Go modest (but not “cooking”) with the sherry. We have a couple of sublime sherries from Spain, with appropriate price tags. We don’t cook with these. What you want is a modest dry sherry—we usually keep Taylor dry sherry from New York on hand. Don’t use cooking sherry—it contains preservatives, including salt, to extend its shelf life, which will affect the flavor of anything you cook.

Rice? Bread? The Milk Street recipe specifies toasted slices of bread for soaking up the juices. To me, the rice did an even better job.