Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Stir-Fried Shrimp with Tomato Sauce
Every recipe I've tried from Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges has been a knockout, including the steamed spicy eggplant I made earlier this year. The best version of this dish uses very little ingredients and can still create an inspired flavor combination. But this one for stir-fried shrimp with tomato sauce—well, it was just okay. I'm just trying to figure out what went so wrong.
I made one major mistake. Trying to be thrifty, I didn't use large shrimp like he specified. I only had medium frozen shrimp, which had to be thawed. Fresh, large shrimp would have been tastier, certainly, but it was too hard to not compare this sauce to the sweet and sour kind poured on fried things at bad Chinese restaurants. After a few shrimp I just got tired of that really syrupy taste.
Not surprisingly, the dish actually suggests making a second sauce—this one creamy and cold—to mix things up. But since I didn't want to invest in preparing two sauces, I just went for the one. That's the last time I mess up a Jean-Georges recipe.
About the author: Nick Kindelsperger is a freelance writer in Chicago. He is the co-founder of The Paupered Chef and spends most of his time playing with the new cooking gadgets he got from his wedding.