Directions: |
Directions:Preheat the oven to 450 F. Place the shrimp, 3 tablespoons of the butter, the seasonings, and garlic in an ovenproof sauté pan or skillet large enough to hold the shrimp in one layer. Place the shrimp in the oven for 2 minutes. Turn the shrimp and return to the oven for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the shrimp from the oven and place over medium heat. Add the lemon juice and stir in the remaining butter, 1 tablespoon at a time.
To serve place the shrimp in a bowl and pour the sauce over the shrimp. Set out a basket of hot French bread. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: There is no barbecue aspect to the dish: no smoke, no grilling, no sauce that would fit anybody's definition of barbecue sauce. There are, fortunately, shrimp. We owe barbecue shrimp to Pascal Radosta, who made Pascal's Manale into an institution. In the early 1950s, a regular customer returned from Chicago with news of a great dish he'd had there. He described it as well as he could to Radosta, who tried to duplicate it. The dish that emerged was barbecue shrimp, and in short order it became the dominant dish at Manale's. At times, over half the restaurant's sales have been in that single dish. If I were making a list of the five best classic New Orleans dishes, barbecue shrimp would certainly be on it.It seems like an unlikely thing. Big shrimp, still with the heads on, are cooked in a tremendous amount of butter and black pepper. There is not, in the original recipe, a lot of garlic. (Garlic was out of vogue in the Fifties.) There is a good bit of paprika. The flavor is spicy but it's not an immediately spicy sensation. The main flavor is that of shrimp. That comes from the shrimp fat and shrimp essence that gets into the sauce as it cooks. The recipe for barbecue shrimp at Manale's is a secret. The key to it all is the shrimp. For a very long time, whenever any other restaurant attempted to serve barbecue shrimp, they intentionally tried to make it different from Manale's. This resulted in a lot of bad barbecue shrimp. The corner was turned when the talented Gerard Maras--now the ownerof Gerard's Downtown--reinvented barbecue shrimp at Mr. B's. His great touch was to add most of the butter at the end of the cooking proces, which gave not only a better appearance but better flavor. Since then, Chef Emeril added his own twist: make a sort of shrimp demi-glace out of the shrimp shells and heads, add that to the butter, and serve the shrimp peeled. That too is a big hit. And, of course, they're still great at Manale's.
***also look at Emeril's version with shelled shrimp at: http://www.labellecuisine.com/archives/seafood/Emeril's%20Barbecued%20Shrimp.htm***
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