Camarão à Coentrada com Alho Dourado

Shrimp and dry brine

• 800 g raw shell-on shrimp, 16/20 count, peeled and deveined, shells kept — yields ~600g peeled. Head-on if you can get them
• 6 g fine salt, for the dry brine
• 1.5 g bicarbonate of soda, for the dry brine

Shell oil

• 60 ml extra-virgin olive oil, a robust cooking oil; the shells come from the shrimp above

Pilaf rice

• 300 g long-grain rice, rinsed until the water runs clear
• 480 ml water
• 4 g fine salt
• 1 lemon peel, one strip, no pith

Golden garlic oil

• 80 ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 45 g garlic, about 8 large cloves — weigh them, clove size varies by a factor of two. Germ removed, sliced 1.5–2mm
• 2 g dried oregano, Greek or Sicilian on the branch, rubbed between the palms
• 1.5 g cumin seed, lightly crushed

Cilantro-lemon mojo

• 60 g fresh cilantro (coriander), leaves and tender upper stems, washed well ahead and dried thoroughly
• 5 g raw garlic, one clove, germ removed
• 1 untreated lemon, finely grated zest only
• 40 ml lemon juice, split: 20ml into the blender, 20ml at the finish
• 4 g fine salt
• 1 g black pepper, coarsely ground
• 1 small green chilli, deseeded — the Canarian edge(optional)
• 30 g ice cubes, two cubes
• 40 ml extra-virgin olive oil, streamed in at the end of blending

To finish

• 10 ml unfiltered finishing olive oil, grassy and peppery — the one place an expensive bottle earns its price
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges for the table

Peel and dry-brine the shrimp

1. 1

   Peel and devein the 800 g shell-on shrimp, keeping every shell (and head, if they came head-on) in a separate bowl. You should have roughly 600g of peeled shrimp.

   10m

   Tip: This is the clock that everything else runs against, so it goes first. If you only find peeled shrimp, buy frozen raw shell-on instead and thaw it overnight in the fridge: frozen-raw beats fresh-looking-but-pre-cooked every time.

2. 2

   Toss the peeled shrimp with the 6 g fine salt and 1.5 g bicarbonate of soda and refrigerate for 30 minutes, up to an hour.

   30m

   The salt partially dissolves myosin so the flesh holds its water under heat. The bicarbonate raises surface pH, which gives the snappy bite and accelerates Maillard browning, so you get colour in 60 seconds instead of 150. That difference is the whole reason the shrimp stay juicy. Past an hour the texture turns spongy and faintly soapy; set a timer.

   Shrimp Dry Brine (Salt + Baking Soda)

Shell oil (while the shrimp brine)

1. 3

   Put the reserved shells in a small saucepan with the 60 ml olive oil over medium heat and cook, pressing down with a spoon, for 5–6 minutes until the shells turn deep coral and the oil smells sweet and toasted. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing hard, and discard the shells. You should have about 50ml of orange oil.

   6mmedium

   Astaxanthin, the pigment that turns the oil coral, is fat-soluble and carries the roasted-crustacean aromatics with it. Peeled tails seared in a pan cannot generate that flavour; this is where the dish gets the umami and sweetness it otherwise has none of.

   Tip: If you skip this step, use plain olive oil and accept a flatter dish. Head-on shrimp roughly double the intensity of the oil.

Pilaf rice

1. 4

   Toast the 300 g rinsed rice in 15ml (1 tbsp) of the shell oil in a heavy pan for 2 minutes until the grains turn chalky-opaque. Add the 480 ml water, 4 g salt and 1 strip of lemon peel, bring to the boil, cover and drop to the lowest heat for 18 minutes. Rest off the heat, still covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork just before serving.

   30m

   The rice is not a side here. It is the sponge for a sauce that is mostly olive oil, so it has to be seasoned in its own right.

   Tip: Once rested it holds covered off the heat for well over an hour, so it can go on as early as you like.

Golden garlic oil

1. 5

   Split the 45 g garlic cloves, flick out any green germ, and slice them thin and even, 1.5–2mm.

   5m

   Uneven slices brown unevenly, and one scorched sliver poisons the whole batch with acrid pyrazines. The germ is genuinely bitter and concentrates as the slices brown; at 45 g of garlic that stops being a rounding error.

   Garlic-Oil Infusion (Two-Stage Method)
2. 6

   Put the slices in a small pan with the 80 ml olive oil, cold, and bring the heat up slowly to a lazy simmer: oil around 140–150°C, bubbling around the edges of the slices, not spitting. Cook 6–8 minutes until the slices are the colour of pale honey, then pull the pan off the heat immediately.

   8m140-150°C oil

   The slices carry over one full shade darker in the residual oil, so pull them early. Golden garlic is sweet, nutty and mellow; brown garlic is bitter, and there is no rescuing a bitter sauce with more lemon. When the fine fizz around the slices turns lazy and coarse, you have about ninety seconds left.

   Garlic-Oil Infusion (Two-Stage Method)
3. 7

   Lift out about a quarter of the slices, roughly two cloves' worth, onto paper towel. The rest stay in the oil.

   1m

   Tip: They crisp as they cool and go back over the dish at the end, as texture and as the visible ajillo element that searing in shell oil would otherwise take away.

4. 8

   Off the heat, while the oil is still around 100°C, stir in the 2 g dried oregano and 1.5 g crushed cumin seed for 30 seconds. Then let everything cool to below 50°C, about 10 minutes. Once cool, spoon off 15ml (1 tbsp) of the garlic oil into a small cup and keep it by the stove for the sear.

   10moff the heat

   Do not rush the cooling. Hot oil hitting cilantro in a blender is how you get a khaki sauce that tastes of cooked coriander.

   Garlic-Oil Infusion (Two-Stage Method)

   Tip: Dried oregano's carvacrol and thymol are fat-soluble and locked up in the dry leaf; thrown raw into a cold blender they taste dusty and hay-like. Thirty seconds in warm oil opens them completely.

Cilantro-lemon mojo

1. 9

   Into a blender go the 60 g cilantro leaves and tender stems, the cooled garlic slices still in the pan with all their oil, the 5 g raw garlic clove, the zest of 1 lemon, 20ml of the 40 ml lemon juice, the 4 g salt, 1 g black pepper, 1 deseeded green chilli if using, and the 30 g ice. Blend in short pulses, scraping down between them, and stop while you can still see flecks of green.

   2m

   Sustained blending heats the mixture past 40°C, which accelerates the polyphenol oxidase reaction that browns herb sauces, and over-shearing extracts bitter phenolics from the stems. The ice absorbs blade friction and thins the sauce to a spoonable, barely emulsified consistency.

   Cold Emulsified Raw-Herb Sauce

   Tip: The upper stems carry more of cilantro's aldehydes than the leaves do. They are the most underused part of the bunch.

2. 10

   With the motor on its lowest speed, stream in the 40 ml olive oil to bring it together. You should have about 250ml of sauce. Taste it cold: it should be aggressively salty and sharp. Leave it to stand 15–20 minutes while you sear.

   2m

   It will be diluted by 600g of shrimp and served against starch, so season it to taste slightly too intense on the spoon. Fifteen to twenty minutes lets the salt and garlic bleed into the oil; an hour dulls it from jade to olive.

   Cold Emulsified Raw-Herb Sauce

Sear, dress and serve

1. 11

   Take the shrimp out of the brine and pat them bone dry on paper towel, then pat again.

   2m

   Surface water has to boil off before the surface can brown, and every second spent doing that is a second the interior spends cooking. Wet shrimp is the single biggest cause of grey, steamed shrimp.

   Shrimp Dry Brine (Salt + Baking Soda)
2. 12

   Heat a 28–30cm heavy skillet properly over medium-high, add the remaining shell oil (about 35–40ml) and lay the 600g shrimp down in a single, uncrowded layer. Leave them 60–75 seconds, until the underside is spotted deep pink-brown and the edges have curled.

   1mmedium-high28-30cm heavy skillet

   600g is the ceiling for a 30cm pan. If they do not all fit with space between them, do two batches: crowding drops the pan below the browning threshold and you steam them grey. Do not fidget with them on the first side.

   Shrimp Searing & Doneness Control
3. 13

   Flip the shrimp and, as you do, spoon in the reserved 15ml garlic oil. Give them 30–45 seconds more and pull them at 50–52°C internal.

   1mmedium-high

   Carryover in the hot pan takes them to 54–57°C: opaque, juicy and still yielding. Without a probe, read the shape: a loose C is right, a tight O is overcooked.

   Shrimp Searing & Doneness Control

   Tip: The spoon of garlic oil is the one thing the shell-oil sear would otherwise lose. Garlic blooming in a hot pan is an aroma event, even though the bulk of the garlic arrives cold in the sauce a minute later.

4. 14

   Take the pan off the burner and wait 60 seconds, until it is below 70°C. Add the sauce and toss.

   1moff the heat

   This is the step that separates this dish from every version that adds the sauce to a hot pan. Heat on an already acidified herb sauce converts chlorophyll to olive-brown pheophytin, boils off the volatile aromatics and breaks the oil out of suspension into a greasy slick. Off the heat it stays green, clings and tastes of raw herb.

   Cold Emulsified Raw-Herb Sauce
5. 15

   Finish with the remaining 20ml lemon juice and the 10 ml raw finishing olive oil, stirred through.

   1m

   Tip: Late acid reads far brighter than acid that has sat in a blender, and the raw oil restores the peppery polyphenols the heat stripped out. Same lemon, two registers.

6. 16

   Fluff the rice and serve immediately: shrimp over the rice, the pan juices scraped out over the top, the reserved crisp garlic slices scattered over, 1 lemon, cut into wedges, alongside.

   2m

   Tip: Nothing in this dish survives sitting once it is assembled.