Any Excuse to Make Shrimp Cocktail by Alison Roman

a small NYE crew to eat my shrimp cocktail

Hello, and welcome to my Shrimp Confessional. I vow to tell the truth, and nothing but. 

Confession #1: My one and only excuse to make shrimp cocktail is the fact that this recipe exists in Nothing Fancy. There are no other excuses. Shrimp cocktail has always made my stomach do a tiny flip. I can tolerate shrimp when it’s warm, not when it’s cold. 

Confession #2: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually followed some of Molly Baz’s advice instead Alison Roman’s (smh). Alison’s instructions say to “peel, but not devein” the shrimp before boiling. She then tells us we can devein the shrimp if it reallllly grosses us out, but she promises it’s not a big deal. IDK about you, but eating poop is a big deal to me, so I had no choice but to devein the shrimp. But how to go about it? Alison seems to assume that readers already know their way around shrimp.

I received Molly’s “Cook This Book” for Christmas from my younger brother. I went to see if Molly had anything to say about shrimp, and lo and behold, she wrote a shrimp cocktail recipe as well. Reading her recipe sort of felt like cheating, but I truly needed to learn what to do. Molly's recipe includes a QR code that leads to a 45-second video demonstrating how to devein shrimp. It was all I needed to feel confident. (You know those YouTube how-to videos that spend the first few minutes just promoting their channel before they actually get to the part you were hoping to see? Well Molly’s video was not that, and I just want to say, thank you.)

I faced a moral dilemma. Molly says to devein, but not peel the shrimp before cooking. Alison literally says the opposite. What’s a dame to do? As I confessed earlier, I actually went with Molly on this one. To devein, she instructs us to take a sharp pair of kitchen scissors, cut a straight line down the shell on the shrimp’s back, and using a paper towel, pull out the vein from the head-end. After the shrimp is cooked, then you can remove the shells. This method worked well for me. 

Molly’s cooking method differs slightly, as well. She says to bring water to a boil, drop the shrimp in, cover the pot with a lid, and turn the heat off. After 4 minutes, the shrimp are ready. And she was right. Alison says to keep the water boiling and cook the shrimp without a lid. I’m sure it’d produce the same result, but if I’m going to cheat, I might as well cheat all the way. I still boiled the shrimp with a quartered onion and peppercorns per Alison’s recipe. I’m told that it added great flavor to the shrimp…

Confession #3: I didn’t taste the shrimp. I truly was not in the mood. Plus, there’s something about removing poop from a creature that removes its appetite appeal. Like I said, though, I’m told that they had a nice flavor, and the cocktail sauce seemed to be a hit, too. I used yuzu kosho as my hot sauce of choice, which prevented the tomato flavor from dominating the sauce. I also went with Alison’s directive to use Heinz ketchup, because why not. 

202 recipes cooked, 23 to go.

A Very Fine Spritz by Alison Roman

I tasted my first spritz ever in the hill country of Austria. Sounds idyllic, right? Not quite. Don’t get me wrong, an aperol spritz on a European afternoon is about as idyllic as it can get. But there were other factors swirling around my spritz that took away the awe of it all. 

First of all, I was extremely jetlagged. I was running on about 4 hours of sleep, which never feels good, and on top of that, was dealing with some pretty severe nausea and heat exhaustion. I wasn’t in Austria with my husband or friends who could cheer me up, either. I flew there with my coworkers. And let’s just say, they saw no need to comfort me. Only criticize. My stress levels were at an all-time high. I was there for a pretty cool reason, though. Our client wanted to create a commercial about the elderberries that they source for their natural supplement products. So we travelled with a film crew to capture the elderberry harvest. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but I spent most of it just trying to convince others that I sort of knew what I was doing. Which can be hard to do when you can’t even convince yourself. 

I look back on that experience and have so much more grace for myself than before. I was brand new to this role. This was my second shoot EVER, and it was in a foreign country that spoke a different language with coworkers who didn’t make my job easier. Amidst the 3:30am wake-up calls and the 14-hour shoot days, my only respite came in the form of spritz’s. The Austrians seem to offer them at every meal! And while my companions ordered beer, my stomach had way too many knots to handle a lager. So I ordered a spritz. 

My dear friend Madeline, who I mention quite a bit on this blog, helped me reclaim the beauty of a spritz shared with a friend. She loves to experiment with simple syrups, liquors and different kinds of bubbly. Madeline herself captures the spirit of very fine spritz. So it was only fitting to make her an Alison spritz when she and her husband Sam came over. 

Alison’s spritz is simple and flexible: one-third liquor, like Campari or Aperol (we chose Rinomato which is on the more bitter side of Amaro’s), one third sparkling water or wine, and one-third regular white wine. Oh, and lots of ice. It’s refreshing, delicious, not anything truly different from other spritz’s, but a nice ingredient ratio to go by. It was a gorgeous evening and we enjoyed our drinks in our sunlit apartment for what would be our last time together there. 

Very fine, indeed. 

128 recipes cooked, 97 to go.