Chef Desautel's Boiled Shrimp

By Lolis Eric Elie

Every time we film a scene at the seafood dock, I get hungry for boiled seafood. Even though the scene of Sonny and Linh at the dock in episode 2 does not really feature seafood, my response is Pavlovian.

It seems shrimp are always in season in Louisiana. If it's not brown shrimp season, it's white shrimp season; and if it's neither of those seasons, fishermen go further out into the Gulf of Mexico to federal waters and shrimp there.

In Louisiana, seafood markets and even supermarkets sell boiled shrimp, crabs and crawfish, and most of the time we buy them from one of these places rather than boil our own. When we were putting together our cookbook, 'Treme: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans,' Randy Fertel allowed us to use Ruth Fertel's recipe for shrimp remoulade. The recipe called for boiled shrimp, with no particular instruction about the shrimp--it was assumed they would either be bought already boiled, or boiled using a commercial seafood boil.

Our chef, Janette Desautel, created a boiled shrimp recipe for those who didn't have ready access to boiled shrimp or the traditional Louisiana seasoning. Here it is. For Ruth's Remoulade recipe, you'll have to wait for the cookbook.