Despite its name, this dish isn’t fiery hot, but the addition of a fair amount of paprika gives the shrimp a bright red color that makes people think they’re eating spicy food. The real key here is fresh paprika, not that tin you inherited from your mother. After you buy it, taste it; if it is hot, use half a teaspoon. You can let the shrimp sit in the spice paste for hours. (In fact, I like to dump both shrimp and paste into a covered plastic container, shake them together to coat the shrimp, then carry the container to a party and grill the shrimp there.) But you can also mix the two together right before cooking.
Recipe information
Yield
makes 4 servings
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Start a grill or preheat the broiler or oven. Make the fire as hot as it will get and put the rack close to the heat source.
Step 2
Mince the garlic with the salt; mix with the cayenne and paprika, then make into a paste with olive oil and lemon juice. Smear the paste on the shrimp. Grill, broil, or roast the shrimp, 2 to 3 minutes per side, turning them once. Serve immediately or at room temperature, with lemon wedges.
Variation
Step 3
You can take this dish in a completely different direction by substituting curry powder for the paprika, peanut oil for the olive oil, and lime juice for the lemon juice.
Shrimp
Step 4
Almost all shrimp are frozen before sale. So unless you’re in a hurry, you might as well buy them frozen and defrost them yourself; this will guarantee you that they are defrosted just before you cook them, therefore retaining peak quality.
Step 5
There are no universal standards for shrimp size; large and medium don’t mean much. Therefore, it pays to learn to judge shrimp size by the number per pound, as retailers do. Shrimp labeled 16/20, for example, contain sixteen to twenty per pound; those labeled U-20 require fewer (under) twenty to make a pound. Shrimp from fifteen to about thirty per pound usually give the best combination of flavor, ease (peeling tiny shrimp is a nuisance), and value (really big shrimp usually cost more than $15 a pound).
Step 6
On deveining: I don’t. You can, if you like, but it’s a thankless task, and there isn’t one person in a hundred who could blind-taste the difference between shrimp that have and have not been deveined.
