Don't tell my mother. She will kill me if she finds out I'm printing this recipe. She's not particularly secretive, but this shrimp dish is so beautiful, so easy and such a lightly delicious first course, she will be paralyzed if it becomes de rigueur, and she needs to come up with an appetizer that can compare.
I cringe to remember those bacon-wrapped 1970s, when my mother stuffed mushrooms with a mixture of cream cheese, bacon and Worcestershire sauce. In the 1980s, when "Foodie" became a noun, we began our holiday meals with her fig-studded chicken liver pate — a recipe considered then so delicious that a friend, who happened to be Prince Charles and Lady Diana's personal chef at the time, took it back to Buckingham Palace to prepare for the Royals — but that's a story for another article. We ate that pate by the spoonful, probably even for breakfast on toast the next morning, and on sandwiches for lunch. Still, something in that taste — the sherry, liver, or fig — is exhausting, and I am happy to never, ever have to eat it again.
Of all the appetizer trials over the years, this shrimp dish remains for my family the perfect starter to a large gathering, like, let's say, The Super Bowl? — flavorful enough to support that first drink, but light enough not to ruin all that follows.
Quickly blanched shrimp are tossed with slices of lemon and onion, and then marinated in white vinegar, oil, celery seed, bay and pepper corns. I know, there isn't a sexy ingredient on the list. Celery seed? The last time you saw that it was spilled in the back of your grandmother's spice drawer, right? The recipe doesn't even call for olive oil, which, because those of us of a certain age can't believe anything isn't always better with olive oil, I've tried. It didn't work. The dish was too heavy, and the life of the lemon and thinly sliced onion was shortened, smothered in an unwelcome olive taste.
There's no goat cheese to crumble or exotic peppers to char, but the vibrancy and simplicity of these shrimp never tires.
How perfect is this recipe? You make it two days ahead, longer if you want, or shorter, too. This Thanksgiving we forgot, and threw it together that morning. It was still delicious. It doesn't require a long list of ingredients, and, besides the shrimp, nothing is costly.
My only warning is, men, watch your shirts. Into the lustrous beauty of this Matisse-like platter — pink, yellow and white ripples dotted with dark green bay leaves — I see men leaning, their first drink half empty, their tastes suddenly alert to the cool, lemony arcs of pure protein. Their hand starts moving from platter to mouth with a new velocity. At the same time they have initiated a debate about which desert island Bill Belichick should be exiled to. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth, the men are aware only of how profound their new frustration is for the sweat-shirted coach, how comforting is this crowd circled round a bowl of shrimp, eloquently analyzing Belichick's deficiencies together, and how luscious and lean is what they're eating. Only the dry cleaner will see this moment as a tragedy, because the men will be too happy comforting their football woes with the crisp bite of these cold crustaceans to notice the trail of oil dribbling down their fronts.
The "Food for Thought" column runs weekly in the Times' Living section and is written by Heather Atwood, an author and mother from Rockport. Questions and comments can be sent to Heather at heatheraa@aol.com.
Mimi's Shrimp
Serves 12 as an appetizer, but may be easily halved
Ingredients
5 lbs. shrimp
3 large onions
2 lemons
Marinade
1.5 cups vegetable oil
1 cup white vinegar
1 tbsp. salt
12 peppercorns
1 tbsp celery seed
1 tsp. sugar
6 bay leaves
Cook shrimp in lightly salted water just to cover. Drain and then peel. Thinly slice onions and lemons. Toss all together lightly, and then lay out in a shallow ceramic dish.
Shake all the marinade ingredients together in a quart container, and then pour over shrimp. This is best made two days in advance, regularly tossing the shrimp in the marinade.
To serve, put the whole recipe in a large, shallow bowl, showing off the lemon slices and bay leaves. Or, you can also make individual servings, placing some shrimp, onion and lemon slice in a Boston lettuce leaf, making a platter of lettuce cups.
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