13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than average single subject cookbook. Great Read., July 15, 2007
This review is from: Simply Shrimp: With 80 Globally Inspired Recipes (Hardcover)
`Simply Shrimp' by the very accomplished cookbook writer and teacher, James Peterson, is a follow-up to his similar `Simply Salmon'. Since this book reflects the fact that unlike salmon, shrimp appears in virtually every world cuisine, this is a far more interesting book from the point of view of the variety of flavors, dishes, and techniques presented. And, it may have, depending on the state of your knowledge, a few surprises for you regarding this favorite seafood.
One of the greatest things about shrimp is that among the shellfish, especially among the crustaceans, it is still thought of as an `expensive' and slightly exotic ingredient, even though, as Peterson points out, its price for both wild and farmed shrimp has dropped dramatically over the last 25 years. This means that for a third the cost of a comparable weight of lobster or crab, you can make a relatively exotic dish with an impressive ingredient.
The other side of the coin is that those TV ads for wild Gulf caught shrimp really have some substance to them. Just like wild versus farmed salmon, wild shrimp is far tastier than farmed shrimp (although the comparison on nutritional or mercury poisoning risks does not seem to be in play here). One may also take comfort in knowing that farmed shrimp tend also to have much less grit in their `vein' (actually, their gut) which is such a nuisance to remove.
This book may impress you, at the outset, as just another nice single subject cookbook, a genre which all too quickly finds its way to the bargain tables at Barnes and Noble and Borders. The fact that the author is maestro Peterson makes a terrific difference. For starters, I have simply enjoyed reading every one of Peterson's books. The man just writes well, a fine quality for a superior teacher, which he is. Then, there is his grasp of the subject and his point of view. Even if you never cook any of his recipes as he wrote them, you will invariably benefit from reading this book, the more so the more often you cook `freehand', without a recipe, based entirely on available ingredients and your knowledge of same. And, this is not simply because Peterson is quite precise about his explanation of cooking traditions. An example of this simple level of scholarship is where he correctly distinguishes the East Indian staple, ghee, from the French technique of clarified butter. The technique for making ghee cooks the butter longer than the French method, until you reach the stage of what the French call buerre noisette and the milk solids are caramelized, not just `separated'.
Beyond this level of accuracy, there is a thoughtfulness you rarely see in many other books. It is something he shares with Julia Child, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Paula Wolfert, Madhur Jaffrey, and Shirley Corriher and some others. It's the difference between wanting to read the book from cover to cover rather than simply pulling it off the shelf when you happen to be looking for a recipe.
Peterson makes a point of saying that his 80 recipes in this book are not a `complete' survey of shrimp dishes. Rather, they are a representative sample of the world's flavors in shrimp dishes. For example, there is not cioppino recipe (which includes shrimp with lots of other seafood) or a shrimp bisque recipe (although both recipes appear in the author's book `Splendid Soups'). This is more evidence that this is a real cook's cookbook, where the importance is less with the specific recipes than with the techniques, since the book does include a recipe for both a `seafood fricassee' similar to cioppino and a `shrimp bourride', a creamy saffron aioli soup very similar to a bisque.
Taking the emphasis on technique even further, the book is a treasure of truly excellent photographic tutorials on techniques, such as how to prepare an artichoke, how to smoke shrimp in a frying pan, and how to assemble and cook shrimp `Samosas'. Other sidebars explain many techniques where words alone are sufficient to make the technique clear. Some of these tutorials may have made their way over from Peterson's `Essentials of Cooking', but most, like the Samosas, are original to this book.
Since the book does aim at touching all the important flavor and technique bases, we discover a lot of great techniques we don't usually see on the Food Network. My favorite is the French stew that combines shrimp with chicken, as a way of extending the flavor of the `rare' shrimp with the bland but inexpensive chicken meat. Peterson is candid about the fact that the `classic' dish used crawfish, but that the principle works just as well with shrimp, especially since we landlocked Pennsylvanians simply can't find crawfish to save our souls!
Another thing which sets the book apart from a title in some common series of `The complete this or that...' is that while many recipes are relatively easy (as they should be, with the simplicity of cooking shrimp), many more require a fair bit of time and skill. This is due to the fact that like all crustaceans, a lot of the best taste from shrimp is in its shell. Thus, it takes time to coax it out.
Just as Peterson takes no shortcuts with his techniques, he also takes no shortcuts with the ingredients expected from the recipe's native culture. This means Peterson uses a fair share of rare and expensive ingredients such as caviar, galangal, Kaffir lime leaves, and truffles (I fondly recall Peterson confessing to Martha Stewart that he didn't make it as a restauranteur since he spent too much money on truffles).
But then, you buy this book primarily for its excellent ideas, good reading, and great tutorials. Far better than Peterson's books on salmon and duck!
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