Shrimp, with Crimini Mushrooms

Chef Jerry Gruber prepares Shrimp with Crimini Mushrooms in a Pork Loin Marinara Sauce

I’m going to make—this is a—it’s a marinara sauce but it’s a parmadora sauce, parmadora just means it's made of tomato sauce where in a Parmadora, we use fresh tomatoes also incorporated with your canned tomatoes. So I’m going to start up, get a little fire here, and again, we’re going to start over a little bit of olive oil, extra virgin. Now, what makes an extra virgin is this, if there’s two olive leaves growing to next to one another and the green olives are picked and they leave the other three and the olives ripen. The first tree is extra virgin, it’s like the first pressing of the grape. The second tree where they let the olives mature, that’s just olive oil or what they call virgin olive oil over sometimes but the real extra virgin is the first picking ,the first picking pressing of the olives which is really important. It’s like with wine in the first pressing of the grapes, it’s the best grape that is really the good wines. What they do a lot of times, they make meritage, they’ll take the pressings of two or three different wines and marry them together and they’ll come up with something good. Two buck chuck, that’s what happen. They just took a whole bunch of --I mean not ever heard it before but it worked—I mean it worked, its $2 or $3 here. Anyway, we’re going to cook our olive oil way a little bit, get it hot, and I just sliced some red unions and I’m going to—its about 2/3 of a big union, medium union. And with your garlic, got this funny stuff, it's messy you got paper all over but a good trick and just put it in a place in bag and then you just pound it a little it. It separates all the garlic from the husk and you pounded it enough, it will take the husk right of it. So you just take it and all the peals are always in the bag, so you don’t have to worry about it, you just take the clove out of the bag, like this and you just pressed down flat end of the garlic that you take from the bag, and the paper just pills right of in one piece, just like that. So it's actually very simple and in this way, the garlic you don’t use, it’s stored very nicely and a little zip lock bag where it doesn’t smell and yet its all ready to go next time. And where you’re chopping garlic, you want to put the garlic on the cutting board, take your flatty knife just like this. Look what happens, it flattens right out and you just go. It’s done, it’s already use to it, very simple. But let’s add a little more than that, I don’t think that’s going to work--I think we need about that much. That’s about six cloves chopped, if we’re measuring. But you know, I’ve always love the baking, this is large point, cooking is secondary. And in baking, if you make a mistake, you can’t fix it. If you’re cooking and you make a mistake, you can fix it. I use to have a little health food restaurant, natural food restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan in that early 70s, 1971, 1972 and you know we’re all hippies then coming in the morning at 6 o’clock in the morning. Everybody get started and you all…..you know, this is really a hippy thing. And then one day, we’re all busy hugging and everything and I was making creamy Italian flower soup and I don’t know what happened exactly but I just burned that soup so bad and just—you couldn’t taste it at first but the after taste you can really taste the burn. And they said, lunch is in 15 minutes and we don’t have a soup, what are we going to do? I said let me thing, so I went and I’ve got a bunch of Caraway seeds, the whole seed and a mortar and a pestle, do you know what a mortar and a pestle is? I’ll show you if I find one, here we are. This is a mortar and a pestle, and you just take the Caraway seeds and you grind them up like this and I took and ground of Caraway seeds and I took like four to five pounds of Swiss cheese, and I put the Caraway seeds and just Caraway, you can’t taste anything but the Caraway. If ever you had rye bread, you know those seeds in rye bread, those are Caraway seeds. So I took the Caraway seeds and the Swiss cheese and I put it in there and I called it—I said, we’re having Swiss in the rice soup today. Well, everyday for a month, three or four people are coming in and they go, “When are we going to have this Swiss and rice soup again?” I don’t want to say, “When I burn the soup next time.” But you can always save something you know if you’re cooking, if ever you’re baking then you make a mistake, you have to draw and start all over again. So we can change--like when we put to much salt on something like you’re making a sauce or a soup and you over salt, what you want to do, you want a peal a raw of potato and cut in quarters and put it in the soup. And as soon as that potato soft, you take it out of there, it will take about 80% of the salt out. So that’s just a little trick. And when you’re cutting, here’s as little trick, always got a towel or wet towel underneath your cutting board. In this way, the cutting board, this way it won’t slide, won’t slip away from you. And when you're through, you just take the wet towel, you wipe everything up. Well, little tricks you’ll find. This is coming along very well. Next, we’re going to pour these tomatoes now. These are just canned tomatoes in like a little tomato juice. And what I want to do, I want to just kind of get the seeds out of them. So I’m going to put it over here and I’m going to squeeze the tomatoes just enough to get the seeds out but these aren’t really bad. You could probably use the seeds but the seeds are just a little bit bitter. So if we can get the seeds out, it helps to get them out. You want just sweetest sauce you can make and probably you can put a little sugar on it to sweeten it out and a little wine. You know, when you’re cooking, I’ll tell you something really important about it cooking. Wine is a key not only to the cooking but to the enjoyment. A day without wine, a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. So cook with wine as you can, drink wine while you’re cooking, share wine with people that are there. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do that because everybody wants to get loosen up, the food taste better and they have a lot more fun. And what we’re doing now is the essence is to have fun that’s why you’re all here to have fun and maybe if I ;earn something, you never can tell. So I’m going to put this back in here—so I’ve got the seeds out of the tomatoes—and also if you’re using whole tomatoes, take it off for a seconds it’s getting hot. If you’re using whole tomatoes, you can take this tomatoes—I’m not going to do this it doesn’t really matter—you put a little x on the bottom like that and then you boil them just 30 to 40 seconds and then when you take it out, the skins are peel right of it, so you don’t have to use the skin. But these are babies, and these are vine ripe, and so I'm just going to use the skins anyway. So I want to cut up of few fresh tomatoes—in the mean time, these are Italian Mushrooms, a little Italian Mushrooms, it’s called, crimini mushrooms. And these mushrooms are absolutely wonderful. And I don’t like to use white mushrooms because I find that white mushrooms the kind of a—they are just kind of blunt, there’s nothing into them--porcinis, portabellos, shitake, morels, chanterelles—these are good mushrooms—I mean morels are kind of expensive, but you can get dried ones pretty reasonably. So we’re going to incorporate our mushrooms, we let them cook with the unions and garlic just a little bit. And again, I find that if you cut this even just slice some, but I like to cut them in quarters because they’re small and what it is when it have these little shape like this, it look really sexy, this is a sexy mushroom. So we want our food to be filled with love, and we want it to be sexy. So you know you find that’s like—if you have a date you know you might want to have the date over and cook for your date or for your spouse or whatever because you have the intimacy of the house and you can arrange the music and you can arrange the lighting and you don’t have to deal with pretentious waiters. So it’s a good deal whole around if you cooked at home and it cause about afford this much—you don’t have to tip. And you’ve got the wine and you don’t have to pay all that money for that wine, absolutely. So I’m going to stir this a little bit, oh this is becoming great, a little more olive oil. Now these, I think I’ll just dice these up a little bit, because they’re going to be just in the sauce—these don’t have to pretty but I’ll say it will be pretty in the end. When I’m working my family’s restaurant, it was so busy in Friday and Saturday nights where there is a line, it was in the basement. And there was line, it went all way around the block and it was two hour wait on Fridays and Saturdays. So my father got real smart and said, “ah, I'm going to build a place across the street to take the overflow.” So he build another restaurant directly across the street just to take the overflow on Friday and Saturday night. And he used some other food from the big restaurant and he took it across the street and serves it until the end of the last night. And then the little restaurant, strangely enough, Barbara Streisand, her first job was working for my father. And he her contract, he had 50% with this guy name Billy Winebarger, he’s one of Steve Win’s guys years ago. And they had the contract and my mother said, this is the best—she was a singer and an actress and my mother said, “this is the best voice I’ve heard in 50 years, don’t get rid of this girl, she’s the best keep this contract.” My father went, “She’s a hippy, she comes to work late everyday, she never combs here hair, she has holes in her clothes, he doesn’t have any shoes, what would I want to do anything to do with her for?” My mother said, “Listen to me…” So to make the long story short—of course, my father sold the contract and she moved on. And my mother said, “Remember Barbara?” Okay now, I think I'm going to put--this is just regular old tomato sauce, I’m going to put some tomato sauce on it and stir it around. What I’m making use is a basic marinara sauce with a few enhancement. When you change your recipe, your add to its sauce or make your own sauce out of it it’s called an enhancement. So you can do it really simple—I mean just put a few tomatoes in the sauce and a little bit of garlic and some fresh basil, let’s say, okay, that’s the sauce. But then you can get creative and you can make your own sauce and you can enhance it as much as you want. Put, add anything you want to it, and add, put what ever you want it doesn’t make any different. So I’m going to chopped a little more basil here, and try to time it like I’m looking at the water and I’ve got drop my pasta because you want the pasta and the sauce kind of finish at the same time otherwise you guys are going to have cold pasta. So I’m going to put more basil in here, it's becoming great. Now, let’s add this some of this nice canned tomatoes that I squeeze the seeds out of it, and put those in here. You kind of want to break them up with your hand a little bit and then you still have sauce, if it's too thick, you can dilute it a little bit, put your sauce in. This is working—I’m going to put a little bit of lemon juice in this without the seed. This is a seasoning I like a lot, it’s called Irene’s seasoning, are there brands somewhere around here—I’ll show you later the seasoning. And this is just a seasoning salt, I’m now putting it in, nothing special. We’re going to have plenty of sauce, I’m going to put it back and let just start simmer in a minute. Now, this is Port wine, you can use any kind of wine you want but it doesn’t matter whether it’s red or white. I like—I don’t drink much white wine, I just like red wine. So I’m feeling to—this is my own personal thing so I used it. I used a lot of red wine and a little Tabasco, that’s good in everything and a little bit of it here, not much just a little bit. This is just chicken stock, we’re going to add a little chicken stock to it, we want to thin it out a little bit. Now, we’re going to take these lovely fresh tomatoes and put these in like so, put a little more basil and let’s put it on back stove for a minute. We’ll keep it on low and simmer it. Now in the front, I think we’ll cook the most important ingredient and that’s the shrimp. One thing you want to try is clean up a little bit, while you’re cooking does it makes everything a lot easier but the best laid plans of mice and men often go straight. So a lot of times, you can really clean up as much as you like to. But you can always do this, you can always change cutting boards, you can always turn your cutting board over and use the other side so now, we have a fresh cutting board. And when you’re working with chicken always change your cutting board or wash your cutting board because the way to get salmonella its not actually from the chicken you get it, it’s from the juice that’s left in the cutting board like you’re going to cut something else and the juice that you’ve left in that cutting board and that’s how you get salmonella, when you cut a tomato, you want a salad or something and there will be bacteria right in there and that’s really easy. There’s no more trick from the pork because we’ve got rid that pretty much but there’s still is salmonella. So that’s just a little to it. I’m going to finish this sauce off at the end which is a little butter and a little more fresh tomato. But in the meantime, I know it needs a little salt, and I know it needs a little pepper. I’m going to just—you don’t mind if I just check it for a second, let me see if it’s working. Sometimes the magic works and when it does—its more fun when it doesn’t. Now, what I have here just regular shrimp, these are big—I mean small shrimp does a—there are big count. These are like 26 to 30 then 31 to 35 and what that means, you have to count, it needs that many at a pound. If it says U15, it means there’s 15 or less shrimp in the pound. If it’s 16 to 20 are pretty popular count or 21 to 25 or we’re just going to add a shrimp. If you’re boiling shrimp, keep bringing the water to a boiled make sure you season the water, have the shrimp boil on it, cut up some lemon and put it on it, some basil leaves make sure that there’s something in there, its not just water because the water will draw all the flavor out of the shrimp if you don’t add to it. And you put the shrimp in, as soon as the water comes back to a boil or the shrimp at the top again, cut it off, throw in the sink and put ice on it. Do not overcook your shrimp. And with sautéing shrimp, you want to sauté shrimps a little bit about three quarters of the way it done so if you take them off they will finish all by themselves and then they won’t get over cooked. So I’m going to cook this about three quarters of the way. This is for flavor and for show—Yes? They’ve been deveined, they are peeled and deveined, they’re have been sliced. Why do you leave the tails on the shrimp? They make them look bigger, that why. So if you take a little shrimp with a tail on it, the answer is much more into it, a big shrimp. But it easier to take the tail off—I think they cost more with the tail on, because when you're deveining them, you know the deveined just goes like this you can take all the tail off. Now, this look perfect to me, so guess what? I’m going to take them off. This is a very nice cognac and I’m just going to get a little effects here. Doesn’t that look pretty? Yeah, and we have put a little flavor but what happens, all the alcohol burns out so you can’t get loaded. Okay, well just take those off, our sauce is working good This is spinach and chives linguine and I’m going to make all of it. Even though we don’t have enough shrimp, everybody will get to taste the pasta in our plates. So let’s add all these to the water, let’s get it cracking. It will take about three minutes to cook 3-5 minutes in here. And now, we’ll play with our sauce a little more, I’ll bring it back to the front. This sauce is so great; you better lock the door so nobody else can get in. Now, I’m going to finish this sauce just a little bit of butter and then I’m using all these butters. Dad and I use all these butter, this is for the bananas foster. So—and butter gives everything a sheen, it's not especially healthy but it makes everything taste so much better, it's like bacon. If you have any food that you put bacon into it it’s going to taste better because bacon just taste good you know its just—you fry your bacon an put it in a sauce, you put it in a dish or whatever its going to make the taste better because it can put the salt on it, puts the fat in it, outs all those horrible things for you—bacon is part of the best thing that you can eat. They can be bit on a salad, they can be in anything. It enhances the flavor, it brings out the natural flavor and adds a little bit of its own. So let’s see-- I think I’ll put it in just a plate here. Again, your serving plates it's nice, you eat with your eyes first, then you smell it then you taste it. So make sure everything really looks pretty—don’t just throw it on your plate, make it gorgeous—let’s see if I’ve got a good one—how about this one right here. So while I’m waiting for the pasta, because I started a little late. Again, timing, if you know your foods are ready to eat in 5 minutes, drives the pasta. If you don’t have 12 other things you’re doing at the same time— I have salt in the water; you can put oil in your water. If you want to put oil in your water but you don’t need a oil, and what happens when you rinse the pasta, when you throw it in the colander, that oil all runs off anyway. So what you really want to do is take that hot pasta, put it in a colander, don’t rinse it just put a little olive oil while it’s in the colander after the water is drained of it. That’s how I do it. Well, there’s a lot of chef put oil in the water because they think that pasta won’t stick together in the water. It won’t stick together if you play with it; if you keep flaring with it then it will be okay. Okay, I’m just going to add a little more basil for the final presentation and almost time to eat, it’s getting very close. I guarantee you you’re going to love this sauce. But I’m going to taste it one more time just to make sure, it might need a little more wine, maybe just a little—a little brown sugar, I’m just going to put a little bit of sugar on it, not the whole left, just a tiny bit because tomatoes can be a little bitter unless they are really, really ripe. So again, I roll the basil leaf a little bit which and a little chef finality which is going to cut it purely--trying not to cut our finger. So we have this and then we have this and let’s get a little tomato. So cooking can be fun, as well as a special experience and it can be very sexy too. So, this is why in the last 10 years, you see what happened to cooking all of a sudden cooks were the least appreciated, least underpaid professions there was—now, all of a sudden, we have celebrity shows, we have Emerald and we have Bobby, we have all these guys. Emerald is not sexy at all— Yeah, but I mean he has become you know a household name, whereas just before I mean, --and they are low paid, exactly. What happens to it's TV is like this poker thing. Poker was dying Vegas, other poker places, they are closed, and all of a sudden, they put it on TV, and I guess it’s the biggest hottest thing there is Vegas now, it's poker. So it just shows you, I mean it’s all cyclical, it all goes in cycles this what happens. Clue the tooth, al dente, al dente means, just little bit chewy. So, we’re going to take our little bit chewy stuff before it boils over again and we’re going to out it right here and strain it all. I’m going to put a little olive oil on it now that it is drained, get all that water out of it, just a little olive oil, like so. So it’s perfect, I can turn the fire off now. Well, let’s take our lovely pasta, over through here. And we’re just going to take some out just like this, put it right in the middle of the plate, we’re going to turn it just a little bit, so we get a nice mount, like so. Now, it’s a good thing if you toss your pasta right in the sauce but for effect, I’m going to put the sauce on top, I’m not going toss it in the sauce. See if we’ve got a nice plate on, how about this one right here? Oh because there's starch in the water, because it boil all over. So there was all starch. So this is our crimini sauce and it’s just—I’m going to put a little shrimp in here but for just this presentation, I kind of want to put the shrimp so you can see them, like this. And I’m going to try to get them all going in the same direction. Drooling is allowed, it's like when I was in New Orleans, I was there for three years, I worked under a famous New Orleans restaurant, I was the sue chef and they used to have the same—they use to say, Dunkin is legal up to the knuckles because everything they do, they took of French bread and they dunk the French bread in it. So the essence of their cooking is sauces and stuffings. But it’s grate food, it’s great food. That was one of the best kept secrets on the planet was New Orleans. The music and the food— Cajun, oh my God, I love to cook Cajun. So let’s put one on the top too. Now, I’m just going to put a little more sauce on it. It's going in the wrong way, come here. Now, I’m just going to wipe the plate off a little bit. Now, and then I'm going to put garnish here and make it beautiful. So now, we take our fresh tomatoes; put a few fresh tomatoes in here, like this. And now, we take a beautiful basil and put it on top and now we take our chef and we’re going to put it around the plate like this, a little on top. And then some people don’t like cheese with seafood because they say it you know it doesn’t go together like milk and meat but I was like just a little bit of parmesan cheese, not to much, you don’t want to hurt it but just enough. So we have crimini mushrooms and shrimp over spinach linguine and that’s it!