Watusi!
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September 8, 2003
Cactus
She's a woman with a big leg.
Scottsdale, Arizona - November 2001

Gambas al Ajillo - Banja's been training for this walkover the last few weeks. This means that most night's she's off wandering around town for hours on end after work, and doesn't finally get to sit down until well after 8:00. So, mixed with the fact that I, theoretically have all the time in the world, I get to do most of the cooking. Sometimes it's sort of a drag, sure, but all in all I don't mind doing it. I get to set things on fire, and cut other things to bits. It's fun, really, especially considering my attraction to shiny metal objects.

I'm not sure what happened last week, exactly. Maybe it was because she was patient enough to deal with my parents travelling across the country, only to then drive for another hour on a perfectly good Sunday afternoon, ignoring all thoughts of a map, to go taste and buy Kendall-Jackson wines. Maybe it was because she'd been working so hard lately and needed something other than ramen for dinner. Maybe it was because I had a couple too many glasses of St. Ides. Whatever it was, I gave up on looking for work, packed up my things, stomped out of the coffee shop, bought a pound of shrimp, and came home saying "Dammit," to the dog's hopeful dismay as I threw them into the fridge to wait as I tried to come up with something to do with this $4.75 investment.

Then, I got it. There are all these tapas restaurants around The Mission. We never go to them, but they're there, teasing. Oh, how I long for the halcyon days of the late 90s, happily dropping hundreds at ņ on mysterious gambas al ajillo, and more mysterious women in short skirts and men's shoes. Those were the days.

We had the shrimp. We had a recent windfall of high-end bread (I'm talking the jaguar of crusty bread). We had the tempranillo, and for some reason I bought about ten thousand heads of garlic a couple days ago (ANOTHER NOTCH!). It was clear. We're having tapas for dinner. I ran off to get some mushrooms.

This was good. It had been a while since I cheffed up anything new and challenging. I'd never cooked these before, and with the pricetag at the restarants, there had to be some trick involved. There was no trick. Just an expensive scam.

It's so easy, and so incredibly tasty, it's sad. Check this out:

    Gambas Al Ajillo (Shrimp in Garlic Sauce), Serves 4 (or 2)
  • 3/4 pound medium (31/35) shrimp, shelled and deveined.
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons sherry or brandy
  • 6 cloves of garlic, sliced. Add more if you're feeling saucy.
  • 1 or 2 chiles, seeds removed, well chopped (I like firey food, too, but the heat gets in the way in this dish, so you need to seed the peppers)
  • 1 Tablespoon, chopped parsley
  • lime juice
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • 1 Frying Pan

  1. In the frying pan, heat the oil and then add garlic and peppers.
  2. Cook until the garlic is golden and the whole thing is fragrant. Do not burn.
  3. Add shrimp, salt, and pepper. Cook until shrimp is pink and curled up, about 45 seconds.
  4. Add sherry, cook another 15 seconds.
  5. Move to a plate, garnish with parsley, squeeze lime juice over, serve with bread and wine.
For champiņones al ajillo, replace shrmip with 1 pound of thick sliced mushrooms, and cook until they're just about done before adding the booze.
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