Bachelor, Meet Shrimp

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

It has been a while since I graced these pages with my favorite kind of cuisine, Louisiana and low-country food. In part that's been because I've tried to focus a bit more closely on the food or food-related concerns of bachelorhood. As someone said to me weeks ago, I might not be the best guy for writing this column because I don't cook like a typical bachelor, and my recipes are sometimes fancy. My response, however, is in the form of a question: who better to improve the culinary repertoire of the average bachelor than someone who is both a bachelor and obsessed with cooking good food? Can I get a witness? A hand clap? A swift kick in the buttocks?

The challenge of bachelor cooking is that recipes must be (a) simple; but (b) delicious and not seem simple. It's all about, in a sense, making things look and taste more complex than they actually are. I've gotten really good at this with food preparation, and so I like to share. Incidentally, I've also gotten good at making my home appear cleaner than it really is for guests (hint: try one of those "fabric fresheners" on the couch before guests arrive).

This week I'd like to introduce a very easy but very delicious recipe that is a great appetizer for supper or an excellent, light-ish meal for lunch: shrimp rémoulade. Shrimp rémoulade is basically a kind of salad you can find all over New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana. It has a spicy, tangy flavor that appeals to the lighter affinities of those who dislike heavy, meat-and-potatoes type cuisine, yet the chunky shrimp helps to appease the meat-eating carnivores among us. In other words, this dish seems to make just about everyone happy. Everyone, of course, except those who are allergic to shellfish. Don't serve this to them. They may turn red, swell up like a balloon, and need to be rushed to the emergency room. You don't want that.

Like a lot of Louisiana food, the rémoulade sauce is French in origin, but tastes nothing like it would in France. French rémoulade is basically a mayonnaise-based sauce served on fish, meat, and sometimes with French fries; it often has small pickles in it. As the sauce traveled to Denmark, the Danes added coriander, substituted cabbage for the pickles, and made it sweeter.

In Louisiana, though, the dominant rémoulade is made with oil, not mayo, and is reddish in color owing to the paprika and red pepper. Moreover, this dish needs to be prepared the day before you want to serve it, because you want the shrimp to slowly season in the rémoulade sauce. You also serve it chilled, which is something guests don't usually expect.

Serves/Makes: 8

• 1/4 cup Creole mustard (or Dijon mustard)
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1 cup finely chopped green onions
• 1 dash Tabasco sauce
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup mild prepared yellow mustard
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 eggs, room temp
• 1 lemon juiced
• 1 1/3 cup salad oil
• 80 medium shrimp, peeled, deveined and boiled