While we’re on a break from our San Francisco Food Tour of North Beach\Little Italy and Chinatown, we’re doing a lot of cooking at home. We got some wild shrimp, so we it made for a great dinner. Some people like using a paring knife, however I like using a pair of shrimp scissors to devine the shrimp. I just open up the shrimp and remove the vein, then cook the shrimp in some type of liquid. Shrimp cooks very quickly, so the trick is to not overcook the shrimp. When it changes to orange or red color and it starts to curl, it’s either done or very close to being done. If shrimp is overdone, it can get really dry.
If I’m going to shrimp in another recipe, such as in a sauce, I’ll either cook it in the sauce or if I’m cooking the shrimp before it goes into the sauce, I’ll cook the shrimp a little less than being done, as it will continue to cook after it goes into the sauce.
On our San Francisco Food Tours, we tend to see a lot of shrimp in Chinatown, as it tends to be part of a lot of traditional Chinese dishes. However, it’s used, wild shrimp is the type that I like to use the most.