Cuban Entree
CAMARONES ENCHILADOS
INGREDIENTS
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons lime juice
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup fresh cilantro
4 garlic cloves
1 large onion
¼ cup fresh parsley
1 cubanelle, Anaheim pepper or yellow bell pepper
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon TabascoTM sauce
¾ cup tomato sauce
½ cup white wine
Makes 4 bowls. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add shrimp, lime juice, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix together with hand or fork until shrimp is thoroughly coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 1 hour. While shrimp marinates, mince cilantro, garlic cloves, onion and , parsley. Seed and dice cubanelle. Remove shrimp and keep marinade from mixing bowl.
Add olive oil, cubanelle, garlic, and onion to frying pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add cilantro, parsley, marinade, bay leaf, Tabasco sauce, tomato sauce, and white wine. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add shrimp and simmer for 5 or until shrimp turns pink or orange and is no longer translucent. Remove bay leaf. Goes well with rice.
TIDBITS
1) Nes Enchila sold shrimp on a stick from the back of his Chevy Camaro in the Little Miami section of Havana during the 1950s. His food was so good that the Spanish speaking people, of which there were many in Havana, would ask for two or “dos.”
2) In 1959, hungry Cuban revolutionaries hailed Nes as he drove by. Nes remembered how Dictator Bautista had just stiffed him on a big catering order and fed them all. Their energy restored, Castro and his men ousted Bautista in two days. Later, Castro invited the Russians over for Nes’s shrimp. They brought missiles with them and the world almost had a nuclear war. Nes’s food was that good.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 