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the Barbecue issue

Barbecue Shrimp by Tom Fitzmorris + photo by Romney Caruso

I f you took a poll among NewOrleanians as to what there favorite dish is, there’d be a variety of answers, but barbecue shrimp would com up — a lot. That’s no surprise — the dish is on many restaurant menus, and with good reason. But few would expected it to outpoll gumbo, crawfish bisque, or charbroiled oysters and other iconic New Orleans dishes. A fair amount of history lies behind the popularity of barbecue shrimp. Its ancestor appeared during the most fecund years of evolution for Creole and Cajun cookery,

from the last decades of the 1800s through the first years of the 1900s. The strongest force in those years was Italian, as large numbers of sailors, opera singers and cooks landed in New Orleans from Italy. Barbecue shrimp is a variation of the classic Italian dishes gamberi fra diavolo (shrimp in the style of the devil’s brother) and shrimp scampi. Both of those dishes are similar to barbecue shrimp, but the real dish and its misleading name were unknown until the 1950s. It was a long evolution.

More on that in a moment. But we must now say what barbecue shrimp is — and what it is not. Barbecue shrimp isn’t smoked or grilled. Nor is it served with anything even close to American barbecue sauce. Instead, what you get are big — but not too big — shrimp, usually served with the shells, heads, tails and claws still intact.They are cooked in a sauce that is mostly butter and black pepper. Beyond those main elements, the recipes for barbecue shrimp are quite varied. Among common ingredients in the sauce are garlic,

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MARCH | APRIL 2017