Link to the shrimp recipe (if I can get away with it.)

I know the NY Times occasionally objects when civilians link to their content, but I'm going to give this a try.

Here is a recipe I've been making for a really long time. I saw it in the Times, a Wednesday food section, and I had it tacked to the corkboard in my kitchen for years. Now I have it memorized (though I rarely trust my memory for recipes, since, as my recent birthday cake slip-up* indicates, I'm not that precise even when I have the text in front of me.) I believe (guessing, from the notes in my kitchen notebook) that I clipped this recipe about 1997 or so.

I made this tonight for friends, which was a bit of a risk - it's got very strong flavors, and I can imagine someone finding it inedible. Happily, both the shrimp devotee and the more hesitant friend loved it. Even Ian ate a bite!

I usually eat this with white rice, but was too lazy for rice tonight - I bought a baguette, which we made very short work of. We had green beans and asperagas, which was also well received. (I cut up some cucumbers for this kids, and that made me realize that some kind of cucumber side dish would be really good with this, to contrast the salty and sharp flavors. )

In related food news, Ian and I had a tremendously successful first trip to the Grand Everyday Fresh Mart in South Laurel. Large selection of very nice produce at low prices, first of all, which is what I was looking for. (Seriously - Driscoll strawberries for 2.19 instead of 2.59, grapes for .99 a pound instead of $1.99. Large (don't know the official designation, but they were BIG) shrimp for 4.99/pound )(cheaper if I had been prepared to deal with the heads, which I was not). Live crabs and lots of fish on ice, which, along with making me what to cook them, make the trip much more exciting for Ian. The prices are competitive with the PanAm Latin American market, but it's much bigger and the produce looks nicer. Like the PanAm, it's pretty chaotic, but that suits me fine.

*The cake mistake - I have a lovely recipe for pound cake, from this excellent book which I totally recommend. Yes, it's got some jello salads and some things which require cans of mushroom soup. So don't make those. Duh. The things that are good are really good, including the sour cream pound cake recipe, which is what I made for Eric's birthday Friday. I used yogurt instead of sour cream, and where the recipe calls for 6 eggs, I only remembered to put in 3. It's still absolutely delicious. It's just a little more, um, "substantial".