Recipe below: Shrimp Salad with Ceci, Thyme, and Chives
One of my favorite categories of Italian food is cold seafood salads, insalate di mare, the kind you find on antipasto tables in Southern Italy, made with calamari, shrimp, octopus, clams, mussels, and sometimes scallops. They always seem glamorous, even a little magical, glistening with olive oil and studded with bits of fresh herbs and possibly a scattering of good capers or olives, smelling of the sea. I can never resist them when they appear before me looking beautiful. If you want to drink a lot of good Southern Italian white wine, such as a Fiano di Avellino, Greco di Tufo, Falanghina, Carricante, or Vermentino, seafood salad is what you want to have with it.
You don’t see these salads around New York much anymore, and when you do they’re often at Little Italy types of places where the seafood is rubbery and loaded with rancid garlic and subpar olive oil. This makes me so sad. Prepared with thought and care, these salads are exquisite. All you have to do is have your culinary brain turned to “pay attention” mode. First, and most important, choose ultrafresh seafood. Second, make sure you don’t overcook it. Third, add seasonings that make sense. For instance, bad garlic or too much garlic won’t ever make sense, and neither will low-rent olive oil or crappy olives. Other than that, you can really play around.
This time I decided to focus on herbs. Thyme and chives are two perennials that come up early in my garden. Chives seemed like a good idea because stronger oniony things such as shallot or red onion can get too strong when they sit in olive oil for a while. This is important since these salads are usually made ahead and chilled. I chose thyme over the Italian oregano I also have coming up because I wanted a gentler overall feel.
My family always served an insalata di frutti di mare, a mixed seafood salad, on Christmas eve, usually spooned over friselle, the hard black pepper and lard biscuits popular in Puglia and Campania (not to be confused with the hard, flat, split bagel-shaped things that also go by that name, although those are also used for this purpose). The olive oil, lemon, and seafood juices mingle and soak into the hard bread, softening it, combining for a lovely texture and flavor. Friselle are not easy to find anymore (although Di Palo’s in Little Italy often carries them), so I served this with bruschetta rubbed with garlic and olive oil.
You can leave the chickpeas out if you like, but I needed a way to stretch a few pounds of shrimp for an unexpected last minute crowd. If you decide to leave out the ceci, you might want to add calamari. Choose ones on the small side, cut them into rings, and poach them the same way you do the shrimp (but separately). They’ll probably take about a minute less.
Shrimp Salad with Ceci, Thyme, and Chives
For the poached shrimp:
4 fresh bay leaves
Sea salt
A few thyme sprigs
A drizzle of rice wine vinegar
A big splash of dry vermouth
Sugar
2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined (I left their tails on, but that’s up to you)
Plus:
2 cups cooked chickpeas
3 tender inner celery stalks, cut into small dice, including the leaves, lightly chopped
6 long chives, chopped (if they have flowers, you can include those too)
8 long thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
A handful of Italian parsley leaves, lightly chopped
¼ cup Sicilian salt-packed capers, soaked in several changes of water and then rinsed
Sea salt
Black pepper
2 teaspoons of white miso, dissolved in 2 tablespoons of hot water
Extra-virgin olive oil (I used Benza Taggiasca oil from Liguria, a brand I love; I get it from Gustiamo)
The juice and zest from 1 large lemon
To poach the shrimp, set up a large pot of water (about as much as you’d want for a pound of pasta), add the bay leaves, salt, thyme sprigs, rice wine vinegar, vermouth, and a little sugar. Bring it to a boil, and let it bubble for about 3 minutes to meld all the flavors. Add the shrimp. The temperature will immediately go down. Let the heat come back up. When you see little bubbles on the surface, not a hard boil, turn off the flame, and let the shrimp cook gently in the waning heat for about 2 minutes. That should be enough to make it perfectly tender. Drain the shrimp into a colander, and then spread it out on paper towels to cool slightly. Refrigerate to cool further.
To assemble the salad, get out a large, wide, pretty serving bowl. Add the shrimp and the chickpeas. Add the celery, chives, thyme, parsley, and capers. Season with salt and black pepper. Combine the miso, about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the lemon juice and zest, and mix well. Pour that over the salad, and toss gently with your hands.
Chill for about an hour. Now taste for seasoning, adding more salt, black pepper, olive oil, or lemon if needed.
Erica De Mane 