Erica De Mane

I served my Sambuca shrimp along with a salad of string beans, shallots, and toasted almonds.

Recipe: Shrimp with Sambuca, Summer Garlic, and Basil

For years I’ve been spending occasional weekends at La Duchesse Anne, a boho inn in Mt. Tremper, New York, a town near Woodstock. It is one of the last or possibly the very last of the inns and restaurants in what was once called the French Catskills that were originally run by people from Brittany who came to New York in the 1940s and ’50s. Most of those people opened restaurants in Manhattan, but some who didn’t like the vibe there wound up clustered together in the rather run-down (at least today) mountainy resorts along Route 28.

Fifteen or so years ago, when I first visited the area, there were a handful of those cute French places left, but little by little they closed. La Duchesse Anne seems to be the one holdout. Its original owners packed it in a few years ago, but they leased the place to a young Breton chef named Fabrice. He and his wife, mini dog, giant cat, and now little boy moved in to get the place back on its feet. I was at first heartbroken by what he had done to the menu. Gone were the kidneys in mustard cream, sweetbreads sautéed in tons of butter, chicken gizzard salad (a great hangover helper—it was on the breakfast menu), crêpes with Gruyère, and the previous owners’ famous game dinners with platters of things like venison, house-made wild boar pâté, and ostrich. Those quirky French specialties were mostly replaced by more standard fare that you might find on a country club menu, such as seared salmon, roast chicken, and steaks. Everything was nicely done, and Fabrice does have more up-to-date ideas about vegetables, actually serving them in pieces and slightly crunchy (the old owners puréed every vegetable to death). I missed the old funky menu, but I liked Fabrice and the energy he brought to the place, so I’ve kept going up.

Fabrice does occasionally come up with something earthy, like the local chanterelle salad I ordered last time, which was loaded with flavor. And there’s one dish in particular I absolutely love, his snails sautéed in Pernod. It’s a lovely change from the usual ramekin of snails in garlic butter, a staple on the old menu. He sets the Pernod snails on a salad, and their anisey juices create a beautiful dressing for the greens. That is a really great flavor combination. Fabrice, now just give me back my sweetbreads, and I’ll be very happy.

I recreated Fabrice’s snails with Pernod at home, and they turned out very nicely, so I started playing theme-and-variation and came up with an Italianized version, substituting shrimp for the snails, Sambuca for the Pernod, and basil for the parsley.

The main difference between a French pastis like Pernod and an Italian anise liquor is sugar content. Sambuca and anisette are sweeter than Pernod or Ricard, so you will get a slight sweetness in this dish, which I really like. I prefer Sambuca to anisette, which I find just too sweet, so for cooking I’d go with the former.

This dish cooks in about two minutes, so have everything you’ll need right next to the stove, jack the flame to very high, and go for it.

Shrimp with Sambuca, Summer Garlic, and Basil

(Serves 4 as a first course or side dish)

Extra-virgin olive oil
1½ pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 fresh summer garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
A generous pinch of medium hot paprika, such as the Basque Piment d’Espelette
Salt
1 shot Sambuca
The juice from ½ lemon
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped

Choose a large heavy-bottomed skillet, and get it hot over high heat. Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. When the oil is just starting to smoke, add the shrimp, spreading them out as best you can in one layer. Let them sauté, without moving them around, for about 30 seconds. Then scatter the garlic over the top, and give the shrimp a flip with a big spatula. Season them with the paprika and some salt. Flip them again after about a minute. At this point they should be pink and tender and just a touch undercooked at the center. Add the Sambuca, and let it flame up and boil for a few seconds. Add the lemon juice, and give the skillet a shake. Pour the shrimp, with all the skillet juices, out onto a large serving platter. Scatter on the basil. Serve right away.