Genius Shrimp and Grits
Every week, Food52's Senior Editor Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that are nothing short of genius.
Today: Shrimp and grits get to know each other better.
We outsiders must be told that shrimp and grits are an iconic partnership, a daily breakfast, and a soul-feeding staple.
We take the insiders’ word for it, we politely taste, and even like it — but we don’t innately understand why these two ingredients were born for each other, why there would be a whole cookbook written about their union, why the 1980s saw every nouveau Southern chef reimagining them as truffled shrimp with grits soufflé and the like.
Like peanut butter and jelly or radishes and butter, to the uninitiated, shrimp and grits might as well have been matched up at random — a lucky blind date.
Whether they were destined or not, the two came together in a particular place and time: here, it was coastal areas of the American South with ready access to fresh shrimp and cheap corn grits. To those who live there, it’s a perfect dish that couldn’t make more sense, or taste more like home.
The same could be said of the pair who created this genius version of the dish. Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock met in 1988 when she was 73 and he was 26.
Both were talented chefs with the preservation of Southern foodways at heart — they became best friends and cooking partners, wrote a cookbook together in 2003, and lived together for the last six years of her life. Writers named them the “Odd Couple of Southern Cooking”, but to anyone who met them or tasted their food, there was nothing odd about them at all.
Like many of the recipes in their book, this one is a little bit him and a little bit her — and that much better because of it. The method of cooking the grits is the one Peacock grew up with in Alabama, but of the shrimp paste, Peacock says, “I did not know such a thing existed until I met her.”
The first time he remembers making this dish with her was for her 75th birthday party in Seaside, Florida. At the time they were serving it in tiny portions for the cocktail party, with a pretty dollop of shrimp paste hovering on top of the creamy grits, a refined presentation of the Low Country specialty that Lewis had learned while cooking at Middleton Place outside of Charleston.
Over the years as they cooked together, however, the recipe evolved. They realized that the shrimp paste and grits, when stirred together completely (yes, more than we stirred in the photos) and left to rest for a few minutes, became something even more beguiling.
"Just give them a moment to get to know each other," Peacock explained to me over the phone. "You don’t want them to be strangers." On his menus at first Horseradish Grill in Atlanta and later Watershed in Decatur, Peacock called them just “Shrimp Grits”. The “and” is gone, and so is any sense of distance between the two fateful ingredients.
At Watershed, they served it as a starter with a long plank of buttered Pullman toast. Peacock loved that people began their meal by literally breaking bread and spooning up shrimp grits. The servers were trained to warn customers that the dish might not be what they were expecting. Rarely, a customer would reject the dish for philosophical reasons, and they’d dutifully take it back and feed it to someone in the kitchen.
But Peacock asserts, despite its controversial form, “It was the absolute, number one biggest selling thing on that menu, period,” and stayed on the menu after he left the restaurant in 2010 to work on The Alabama Project, a documentary on food as a vessel for memory for the elderly residents of Alabama (50 interviews down, 50 to go — learn more in this Splendid Table segment).
You might wonder why you’d want to take precious little shrimp and clobber them in a food processor, turning them into an unidentifiable pink paste. But they’re swirled with the buttery drippings from the pan, which have been deglazed with lemon, sherry, and cayenne, then whipped up with more butter still.
It makes a lovely spread for crackers and all-purpose flavor enhancer (just imagine folding it into risotto, saucing fish, or filling tea sandwiches with it). It’s really good.
But most importantly, stirred through the creamy grits, the shrimp paste goes further than a few handsome prawns piled on top ever could, pervading every spoonful with the pure essence of shrimp at its best and most seductive.
The shrimp paste may have come from Miss Lewis (as Peacock still calls her), but the Shrimp Grits are theirs — a product of their not-so-odd, but oddly perfect friendship.
Edna Lewis & Scott Peacock’s Shrimp Grits
Adapted very slightly from The Gift of Southern Cooking (Knopf, 2003)
Serves 6
For the shrimp paste:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1 pound fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined (Scott Peacock likes small, sweet ones like gulf shrimp, but get whatever is freshest)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup sherry
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Heat 6 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet until it is hot and foaming. Add the shrimp, salt, and pepper, and cook over high heat, stirring often, for 4-7 minutes, until the shrimp are pink and just cooked through.
Remove the skillet from the stove and use a slotted spoon or tongs to transfer the cooked shrimp to the bowl of a food processor with the blade attachment.
Return the skillet to the stove, and add the sherry, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. Cook over high heat until the liquid in the skillet is reduced to approximately 3 tablespoons and is quite syrupy. Immediately add this to the shrimp in the food processor, and process until the shrimp are thoroughly pureed.
With the motor running, add the remaining butter in pieces and process until thoroughly blended. Turn the food processor off and carefully taste the paste for seasoning, adding more salt, black pepper, sherry, lemon juice, or cayenne pepper as needed. Transfer the shrimp paste to a ceramic crock and allow to cool completely.
If not using right away, cover the shrimp paste and refrigerate for up to 1 week. Refrigerated shrimp paste should be allowed to return to room temperature before serving. If it is still too dry to spread, you may work in some softened butter and salt to taste until it is spreadable.
For the grits:
2 cups water
2 cups milk, or more
1 cup stone-ground or regular grits
Kosher salt
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Heat water and milk in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until just simmering.
While the milk and water are heating, put the grits in a large mixing bowl and cover with cool water. (If you are using regular grits, skip this step.) Stir the grits assertively so that the chaff floats to the top. Carefully skim the surface of the grits to remove the chaff. Drain the grits through a fine strainer, and stir them into the simmering water and milk. Cook, stirring often, until the grits are tender to the bite and have thickened to the consistency of thick oatmeal. Regular grits are done in about 20 minutes, but stone-ground grits require an hour or a little more to cook, and you will have to add additional milk and water as needed. As the grits thicken, stir them more often to keep them from sticking and scorching.
Stir in the cream and butter and season generously with salt to taste. Remove from heat and let rest, covered, until time to serve. If the grits become too thick as they cool, reheat them, stirring in a little extra water or milk to thin.
Top hot grits with a generous dollop of Shrimp Paste. Scott Peacock likes to stir it in thoroughly, then let it rest for 5-10 minutes for the flavors to get to know each other. For every cup of grits, stir in about 1/4 cup or more Shrimp Paste, and sprinkle some chopped fresh chives on top, if you like them. Serve as an appetizer, a supper dish with buttered toast, or a savory side dish.
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Got a genius recipe to share — from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what’s so smart about it) at kristen@food52.com.
Photos by James Ransom
This article originally appeared on Food52.com: Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock’s Shrimp Grits
