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Some like it hot: Spicy shrimp dish turns up the heat

By Mario Batali, Tribune Content Agency on

Rock shrimp tastes like lobster, but is in fact part of the shrimp family. Similar to lobster, they're harvested in water 120 to 240 feet deep. Its name coming from the rock-like hardness of its shell, the rock shrimp is cousin to brown, pink and white shrimp. Frozen or fresh, peeled and deveined or whole and headless, they're widely available. Ceci beans are as well, which makes rock shrimp and ceci one of my favorite go-to meals.

Ceci beans, also called garbanzo beans or chickpeas, are legumes usually sold dried or canned. Like most dried beans, they must be soaked before cooking. Chickpea flour, ground from dried beans, is the main ingredient in panissa, a flat pancake served both as antipasto and bread in Liguria, and in the Sicilian panelle dish. Always buy dried beans from a market with a good turnover; the older they are, the harder they are to get just right when cooking.

If you have ever eaten at Babbo, my flagship restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village, you might remember ceci beans served on bruschetta as an amuse-bouche while you scanned the menu. Remarkably receptive to flavorful concoctions, ceci beans are one of those recipe vessels that make it difficult to trace every ingredient; therefore, chefs love them.

In rock shrimp and ceci, the beans soak in all of the heat-infused olive oil from the hot finger chilies, both whole and thinly sliced. The acid from the lemon juice and fresh bite from the parsley also help break down that chili spice, disappearing into a whole marriage of a dish served at OTTO now.

Rock Shrimp and Ceci

Serves 4

 

1 pound fresh cleaned rock shrimp

1 pound canned chickpeas

3 ounces freshly peeled ginger

3 hot finger chilies, whole

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