Les crevettes bien habillées – Crevettes enroulées de nouilles soba et sauce pimentée à la grenade

Well here I am again with shrimps…when we cook we all find our inspiration from different sources, it can be our moms, grandmothers, books, chefs, travels, anything. For this particular recipe, I inspired myself from one of Alain Ducasse’s recipes that I twisted around quite a bit, but I kept his idea of wrapping the soba around the shrimps. Isn’t this a great idea? What I love about Alain Ducasse or Christophe Megel is that they mastered the art (it truly is an art) of blending contemporary influences with classical cuisine which awaken all your senses into a taste bud ecstasy.

At first, I thought it sounded strange, borderline unappealing, then after looking at it, and reading the recipe a little longer, I realized that this would be an amazing little appetizer. I made my own dipping sauce with pomegranate, chilis and garlic, and I could not get enough of those shrimps. Now, the original recipe deep fries the shrimps, I somehow refuse to deep fry anything, you can do it, if you want but I have a little “mental blockage” with fried food, so the devil did not manage to make me deep fried this, even if Alain does. Désolée Alain, je n’aime pas la friture! I am sure he would understand!

What I love about this recipe is its composition of textures and flavors.

The soba get a very pleasant crunchy bite due to the batter where ice cubes have been added at end of the process, they melted in the mixture, it helped make the batter light therefore give a particular crunchiness to the soba. There is a feast going on in your palate at first bite, and it’s such an exciting sensation!

Ingredients for about 10 shrimps

  • 10 shrimps, deveined
  • 2.11 oz (or 60 g) regular soba or green tea soba
  • 1/3 cup (or 75 g) cornstarch
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup (or 100 g) flour
  • 1/3 cup (or 75 g) water
  • 1/3 (or 75 g) cup ice cubes
  • salt and pepper

For the pomegranate-chili dipping sauce

  • 1/2 cup pure unsweetened pomegranate juice
  • 2 tbs pomegranate glaze
  • 1 tbs honey
  • 2 tbs rice vinegar
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 chili, finely diced
  • salt

Preparation

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add soba, cook for a few minutes until still a little crunchy, then remove from heat, drain and place in chilled water. Let cool, drain and set aside.

Dip shrimps in corn starch.

In a mixing bowl, mix egg with flour and water, stir well. Add ice cubes and keep stirring until they dissolve.

Dip soba in batter, remove excess batter and wrap around the shrimps.

Heat olive oil in a pan (enough to get 2 mm of oil in the pan), then add shrimps, let them brown on all surfaces. When cooked removefrom pan, and pat dry with a paper towel to remove excess oil. Serve hot with dipping sauce.

For the dipping sauce

Mix all ingredients together except the garlic and chili and cook for a few minutes until the honey is dissolved and the sauce has a little reduced. Let it cool, then add chili and garlic.