Rescued Recipe: Shrimp Martinique

 

I used to live in New Orleans.  I cut my teeth in the Chicago fine dining scene (and what a scene it was), but after 5 years, I wanted to try something different.  Also, I was really tired of snow.  So anyway, my wife and I moved to Louisiana, so I could learn traditional creole cuisine.  What I learned was interesting.  In Chicago, the top flight restaurants are the ones that are really worth going to.  Spiaggia, Alinea, Charlie Trotter's, Everest, these were the places that mattered.  In NOLA, that wasn't really the case.  The top flight places existed, sure: Restaurant August, for instance, or Riche at Harrah's.  However, they weren't of the same caliber.  Less pronounced culinary brilliance, fewer marquee ingredients, less expensive china, less polished service; they weren't bad, they just weren't on Chicago's level.  Only Restaurant R'evolution came close, in terms of elegance and opulence, but even then, Rick Tramonto's food is splashy, but he's not really known for subtlety or grace.  (Also, where did he come from?  Chicago, natch.)

What we learned was that ultra-luxe fine dining is best left in Chicago ( and NY, Paris, London, etc).  The New Orleans restaurants that really shined were the middle-of-the-road to cheap places.  From the boozy almost-pretentiousness of lunch at Commander's Palace (shrimp, stuffed with tasso, deep fried, tossed in Crystal hot sauce buerre blanc, and served with a dollop of pepper jelly and a blue martini) to the outright excess of Crabby Jack's (gigantic soft-shell po'boys and boudin plates), to the majestically gnarly Camellia grill, which was as if all Waffle Houses had a conclave and crowned a mad king (pecan pie crisped on a griddle glazed with burger grease and caramelized bits of sauerkraut and American cheese), to the frankly insane Jacques-imo's (where the sandwiches are deep fried, where the cheesecake is made with alligator, and where Godzilla squares off with fried green tomatoes), it is the non-super-fine-dining places that really shine with New Orleanian glitz, grease, and glitter.  (Sure, Commander's Palace may think they are ultra-fine dining, but what they are, in the words of a former colleague, is a bistro gone crazy.)

New Orleans can't compete on elegance, polish, luxury, or execution.  What it can and does compete on is charm, honesty, and outright fun.  So for this post I wanted to take a second to recognize one of my favorite now-shuttered restaurants in New Orleans, Martinique Bistro.  A humble little French place on Magazine Street, Martinique was simply fantastic.  It was one of a handful of restaurants that catered to an almost entirely local crowd, serving honest French food with a Caribbean flair.  (The opening chef, Hubert Sandot, was born in Madagascar and raised in Paris, but his father was from Martinique.)  They had decent French food of the humble variety: mussels with fennel and merguez, sausage en croute, a fine bouillabaisse made with local seafood, etc.  Great desserts, too.  They tended to incorporate tropical flavors, and did a nice Baked Alaska, individually portioned.  

The food wasn't necessarily creative or original, but, then, bistro food shouldn't be.  However, there was one dish where the chef/owner really seemed to let his Caribbean flag fly, and that was the signature entree, what I am here calling 'Shrimp Martinique.'  It wasn't listed like this on the menu.  To be honest, I don't remember how it was listed.  But it was a beautiful, simple dish, one that really felt like a traditional dish, even though it wasn't.  The best I can do for hypothetical menu copy would be this:

Shrimp Martinique
Jumbo Shrimp, Haricot Vert, Dried Mango, Curry Butter

It was simple, elemental, elegant, and delicious.  Since Martinique Bistro closed in 2015, I'm not sure there's anywhere in the world you can get this dish, so partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of COVID-induced boredom, I recreated it from memory, and offer the following recipe.

*A quick note on shrimp: I'm sure Martinique used Gulf shrimp, but since Charleston is a shrimp port, I got some from Tarvin Seafood in Mt. Pleasant.  The most important thing with shrimp isn't fresh vs. frozen, but whether it has an aggressive chemical wash.  Tarvin's shrimp isn't chem-treated at all, which makes it my go-to.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you know that bleach-y, plasticky aroma cheap shrimp has?  And that way of squeaking on your teeth?  That's chem wash.  It extends shelf life, improves water retention (to boost sale weight), and makes shrimp suck.  If you don't live near shrimp boats, you might not be able to source true chem-free shrimp, but some brands are less chem-y than others.  Sadly, trial and error is your best bet.

Shrimp Martinique (serves 4-5 as an appetizer, 2-3 as a generously portioned entree)

M.E.P.
30 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, lightly seasoned with salt and left standing for 5 minutes
12 oz. haricot vert (or nice, slim green beans), trimmed and tipped
4 slices dried mango, cut into julienne
1 large shallot, peeled and sliced
2 t. Madras curry powder, not too old (like, if you don't remember opening your packet, get more)
1/2 C white wine (cheap is fine, but nothing too oaky, no Kendall Jackson Chardonnay)
3 oz. unsalted butter, cold, diced
Kosher salt as needed
Neutral oil or olive oil, as needed

Method
1) Heat about a quart of water to a boil and pour over julienned mango.  Let stand 10 minutes and drain.
2) In boiling, salted water, blanch green beans until bright green and just starting to soften, under 2 minutes, then shock in ice water
3) Heat a thin film of oil in a saute pan, and sweat the shallot
4) When the shallot is translucent, add the shrimp
5) Saute the shrimp until it's about half cooked, then add the white wine and curry powder
6) When wine is cooked out almost completely, add the blanched beans and the butter
7) Swirl the butter in to emulsify, adding a few drops of water here and there as needed to avoid breaking it
8) Ideally, the butter should be fully emulsified right as the green beans are heated through and the shrimp are cooked.  If the sauce is a little too tight, add a drop of water.  If it's too loose, remove the shrimp to serving plates with tongs and reduce the sauce for another minute or so, until thick
9) Season to taste with salt (remember, the shrimp were already salted) and toss with the rehydrated mango julienne to finish

And there you go, a great, old New Orleans dish, gone but not necessarily forgotten.  Make way for the Rebirth!

-JS