Asian style pepper gambas

  • Yield:2 larger servings or 4
  • Time:
    30 mins show details

Absolutely delicious ! But hard to describe... I'd say it is a nice balance between spicy, salty, umami, sweet and sour.

Feel free to adjust the ingredients of the sauce to your taste (I am a sucker for garlic but that might not be your case). The quantities are quite approximative anyway because I tend to just follow my instinct when making the sauce.

Pairs wonderfully well with noodles and a glass of Gewurztraminer vendanges tardives.

Tags: Asian, salty, sour, seafood, spicy, sweet, umami

Ingredients

  • 8
    gambas, large
  • For the sauce
  • 10
    garlic cloves
  • 5 centiliters
    fish sauce
  • 5 centiliters
    lemon juice, or lime juice
  • 5 centiliters
    xaoxing wine, or xeres, mirin, white whine, even marsala could do
  • 2 teaspoons
    honey
  • 3 teaspoons
    ground pepper, freshly ground if possible
  • 1 teaspoon
    espelette pepper optional
  • Other
  • coriander
  • ginger
  • olive oil, a good quantity
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Equipment

  • frying pan or wok, but really, any pan large enough to spread the shrimps on is fine.
  • paper towel
  • knife
  • cutting board
  • kitchen scissors

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Preparation

  1. 5 mins

    Prepare the sauce. Peel and chop the garlic cloves and mix with the rest of the ingredients. Set aside.

  2. 15 mins

    Prepare the shrimps (optional). With a pair of scissors, remove the whiskers and legs, and slightly trim the tail. With a knife, slice the back of the shrimp and remove the vein (do not slice in half, just run your knife until you can get the vein out). Also slightly slice the belly of the shrimp, so that the shrimp can absorb more sauce while cooking. Then rinse the shrimps and dry them well with some paper towel.

    Note : If you are too lazy to properly deal with the shrimp, at least make sure they are clean and dry them with paper towel to facilitate the pan frying stage.

  3. 1 min

    Cut the ginger into slices of 2 to 3 mm thick.

  4. 3 mins

    Heat a frying pan with a good centimeter or more of olive oil on high heat.

  5. 2 mins

    Put the ginger in and fry it until almost dry (it should look dry and be less bubbly).

  6. 2 mins

    At this stage, the oil should be pretty hot. If it is not, wait for a couple of minutes. Then add the shrimps and fry them until cooked (the shell will have small brown spots, the shrimps will be uniformly pink and well coiled).

  7. 2 mins

    Add the sauce mix and reduce the heat to medium. Cook a few more minutes until the sauce thickens and coats the shrimps.

  8. Add coriander and serve.

Notes

I like to serve this with either rice or noodles. When serving with noodles, I remove the shrimps from the pan before I add the coriander and stir fry my noodles in the remaining sauce. I serve them with coriander, some peanut butter (magic ingredient !), grated carots seasoned with a mix of vinegar and sugar, and of course the shrimps. And don't forget that glass of Gewurztraminer if you can get your hands on some !

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