Food You Can Eat: Shrimp and Tomato Open-Face Sandwiches

I’ve been cooking for so long that I am usually “just okay” about the meals I make; it takes a lot to make me go hmmmm. The following is a winner (and a nice use of late garden tomatoes):

Ingredients

  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1¼ teaspoon salt
  • About 2/3 cup olive oil
  • 1 lb cooked shrimp (I only used ½ pound, it was just fine)
  • 4 thick slices crusty bread
  • 2 pints cherry tomatoes (I used a mix of cherry and plum from the garden)
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 1½ teaspoons smoked paprika
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon chili flakes
  • ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  • Chopped parsley

Directions

Make an aioli (do not cheat and use mayonnaise). Whisk together one clove grated garlic, 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, ¼ teaspoon salt. Stream in ½ cup olive oil, whisking until aioli is light and thickened. Whisk in the tablespoon of lemon juice and salt to taste. Set aside.

Season, peel, and de-vein the cooked shrimp with salt and set aside.

Fry both sides of 4 thick slices crusty bread in about 1/3 cup olive oil until golden brown and crisp, 1–2 minutes per side. Transfer to baking sheet.

Add remaining olive oil to a pan, adding the cherry tomatoes in a single layer – squish them down with a spatula. Cook until they blistered underneath, about 4 minutes. Add 3 grated garlic cloves, and the red wine vinegar, smoked paprika, ground cumin, chili flakes, and remaining salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have simmered down into a thick purée.

Spread a thick layer of aioli over bread slice. Spoon the tomato purée on next. Scatter the shrimp over the purée. Sprinkle with the grated Parmesan and pop under the broiler until lightly toasted, as little as 1 minute. Move to serving plates and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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About Elliecoo 565 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

5 Comments

  1. Fresh aioli is great, but I usually get impatient and start adding too much oil at once and the whole thing breaks and I’m left with salad dressing. Which is still OK for a sandwich sometimes, but not the same. It’s one of those things where I know what I’m supposed to do, but often don’t follow through all the way.

  2. It reads tasty… except for those with shellfish allergies.

    At work, we would sometimes have a party at the end of afternoon shift because, well, it’s not a bad thing to do on a Fri afternoon.

    One of my coworkers is allergic to shrimp (shellfish in general) and that day we had Indian/Hakka (Indianized Chinese) food.  The order included Shrimp pakora.  We told him to avoid this.  It seems he didn’t and he ate some.  About a 1/2 hour later, his room partner that evening found him wheezing and his face  swelled up 2X.  The supervisor called 911 and Mr Allergic To Shrimp ended up in the hospital where he got jabbed with an epipen.

    The next week management decreed no more take out and I saw something I’ve never seen before which was 30 people simultaneously roll their eyes in annoyance including Mr Allergic To Shrimp.

    To be fair, out of guilt we never ordered shrimp again.

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