Kitchen Adventure: Peeling and Deveining Shrimp, MasterChef Style

For Catholics, the Lenten season comes with the customary seafood diet.  And for the Cookies, this is the only time I can coerce Hubby Cookie to have seafood instead of the usual meat dishes prepared in our kitchen.

Well, Hubby Cookie's aversion to seafood is not due to an allergy (which he claims to be so).  He's just too lazy peeling them and dealing with the nasty bones.  So whenever we go out for Chili Crabs, I crack the shells and get the flesh out for him.  I am not complaining, but as someone who loves seafood like me, it's just so frustrating to be shelling more than eating them.

So I made a win-win deal with Hubby Cookie.  I am making Garlic Butter Shrimps but with peeled shrimps.  And he gives his nod. :)

Since I am already going out of my way peeling the raw shrimps, I might as well go all the way and devein them as well - MasterChef style! :)  Here's the page from my MasterChef cookbook on how to do it.



At first, I though about leaving the tail for aesthetic effect, but I scrapped that, I might get scolded for leaving a bit of shell on the shrimp.  So, here's my peeled and deveined shrimps.

Peeled and Deveined Shrimps

And here's my Garlic Butter Shrimp!  Dinner was served and Hubby Cookie loved it! He actually went for seconds.  Heeee.. :D

Garlic Butter Shrimps ala Wifey Cookie

There's really no formal recipe for how I do it.  It's just a "cook-by-taste"  technique.  So it's basically coarsely chopped garlic and onion, butter, red chili flakes, and the star of the dish, the shrimps.  A pinch of sugar and salt, and a twist of pepper for some seasoning.

Singapore Adventure: MasterChef Cookie

Just when I thought all the birthday air has cleared after March, there is still room for one last birthday surprise from my Hubby Cookie after all. :)

Hubby Cookie knows how much of a fan I am of Gordon Ramsay and the show MasterChef.  So, he got me this...

MasterChef Cookbook
The Contestants and Judges of MasterChef and JoAnn Cianciulli

What a great finale to a fabulous series of birthday surprises! :)

I haven't started reading the book yet, but I have done a bit of peeking inside.  There are pages of photos from the MasterChef US show.  The recipes cooked up by the contestants can also be found inside grouped in chapters under Breakfast, Soups, Salads & Starters, Pasta, Poultry, Seafood, Meat, and Desserts.  I also saw pages on basic cooking techniques like chopping an onion (which was done as a challenge on the show's first few episodes), filleting salmon (which could have been helpful to Sharone Hakman during the wedding party episode), and poaching an egg (which show winner Whitney Miller did fantastically in one episode). 

At this point, I am so psyched to see if I can try one of the recipes in the book.  I'd probably give the pasta recipes a go.  Will post my attempts here so keep posted. :)