Sometimes it’s all about the tomatoes.
Tomatoes and onions… And of course you have to peel a devein a few pounds of shrimp.
I really question this whole process of blanching, seeding and dicing tomatoes sometimes, and really want to use a can of Cento or something. Nonetheless! Blanch the tomotoes…
The skins peel right off…
Then dice them. After peeling the shrimp and peeling seeding and dicing the tomatoes, the hard work here is done.
Into a large dutch oven it all goes…
A few more ingredients at the standby: a bay leaf, some paprika, cayenne, a bit of tomato paste will do the trick. A pinch of sugar never hurts when it’s not the height of tomato season.
See, this all cooks down, the tomatoes dissolve and some carmelization starts to happen. (Did someone say Carmel?)
After it cooks down, which does not take an eternity, the tomato paste goes in with the peppers. The pepper and the paprika that is. Isn’t paprika a pepper?
Then some shrimp stock, here we’re using three cups.
After that cooks down, not quite a half hour, the shrimp go in. They release enough liquid that it’s quite alright to let the mixture get toward the thick side before adding them in.
The light also changed a bit, since it started pouring down rain outside.
But inside, everything was looking just fine.
