Martha Monday: Roasted Buffalo Shrimp

I'm not really a fan of shrimp.  I love it.  Don't get me wrong.  But every time I cook it at home it ends up in a watery mess.  It's probably because I'm cheap and I use the frozen stuff.  But, where I live, even the shrimp sold at the fish counter boldly claims to be "previously frozen."  There's just no way to get away from the frozen kind.

And then I read the book Cheap.  The author, Ellen Ruppel Shell, dedicates a whole chapter to the environmental devastation of shrimp farming in Thailand.  Which is where the majority of our frozen shrimp comes from.  Even with claims of sustainable farming stamped on the Whole Foods label, there is no way to know for sure whether anyone is really monitoring this kind of stuff.

Oh.  And my kids won't eat it.

So I am not really a fan of shrimp.

But the Martha Monday project this week was to make Roasted Buffalo Shrimp.  It looked really easy and I thought, "Why not?"  I could give shrimp another go.  After all, I do believe in making my kids try and retry foods they claim to hate.

It was pretty easy.  Shrimp is tossed in a fragrant sauce of spices, lemon zest, honey, and olive oil.  Then it is roasted at high heat on an already hot pan for five minutes.  Once out of the oven, it is served with a pucker-inducing dip of sour cream, lemon juice, and chopped celery leaves.

And?

They weren't bad.  I still had a bit of a watery mess left on my pan.  But most of the zesty sauce stuck to the shrimp and I really liked the dip.  The boys?  Well, Jonathan ate one.  Adam got one bite down, gagging all the way.  Ha ha!  I guess shrimp will have to stay in the refrigerated section at the store for a few more years.  Maybe by then they'll have figured out a cleaner and greener way to raise them!

Want the recipe?  Skip on over to the Martha and Me blog and you'll find it right here!