Last week at Giant Eagle, I bought some colossal size fresh shrimp. I don't usually buy colossal-grade shrimp because they are typically imported from Thailand or Bangladesh or some other Asian country where they are farmed en masse. But these shrimp were caught wild in the good ol' U.S. of A and had a count of 10-15 per pound. I got 1 pound for the missus and I.
I wanted to do a grand presentation of some sort for these gigantors, so I looked through my spice cabinet to try something different. I have a whole set of spices from Penzey's that are just as much decoration for the top shelf of the spice cabinet as they are used. The lemon pepper spice caught my eye. I thought that adding some fresh cilantro to an olive oil-based marinade would work well.
I chopped up some cilantro, added it to some olive oil, chopped 2 garlic cloves, and added the lemon pepper to a bowl. After a good mix, I spooned this into a Ziploc bag and added the peeled/de-veined shrimp. After a quick shake, I let them marinade for 30 minutes.
While that was going on, I washed some dandelion greens and put them in some low boiling salted water to wilt them down for about 10 minutes, in order to get some of the bitterness out of them. Yes, I bought something that earlier in the summer I could have picked out of my yard and now I'm serving dandelion greens to my wife. After they wilted, I sauteed some olive oil in a skillet with some additional garlic. I added the wilted greens to the pan and sprinkled some salt and pepper on top.
I put the shrimp and the marinade into a skillet and cooked them on each side for 2 minutes. The dandelions were plated on a diagonal with the shrimp placed on the same diagonal line. I roasted some kale as an additional vegetable and also prepared some blackeyed peas sprinkled with cumin and tabasco sauce drops.
The shrimp were meaty and substantial. It will be hard to go back to the typical 31-40 count shrimp at the seafood counter.
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