I cringe to remember those bacon-wrapped nineteen-seventies, when my mother stuffed mushrooms with a mixture of cream cheese, bacon and Worcestershire sauce.  In the nineteen-eighties, when “Foodie” became a noun, we began our holiday meals with her fig-studded chicken liver pate - a recipe considered then so delicious that a friend, who happened to be Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s personal chef at the time, took it back to Buckingham Palace to prepare for the Royals - but that’s a story for another article.  We ate that pate by the spoonful, probably even for breakfast on toast the next morning, and on sandwiches for lunch.  Still, something in that taste – the sherry, liver, or fig - is exhausting, and I am happy to never, ever have to eat it again. Of all the appetizer trials over the years, this shrimp dish endures in my family as the perfect starter to a large holiday meal, flavorful enough to support that first toast, but light enough not to ruin the turkey or the tenderloin to follow.  Quickly blanched shrimp are tossed with slices of lemon and onion, and then marinated in white vinegar, oil, celery seed, bay and pepper corns.

I know, there isn’t a sexy ingredient on the list.  Celery seed?  The last time you saw that was spilled in the back of your grandmother’s spice drawer, right?  The recipe doesn’t even call for olive oil, which, because those of us of a certain age can’t believe anything isn’t always better with olive oil, I’ve tried.  It didn’t work.  The dish was too heavy, and the life of the lemon and thinly sliced onion was shortened, smothered in an unwelcome olive taste.

No, there’s no goat cheese to crumble or exotic peppers to char, but the vibrancy and simplicity of these shrimp never tires.

How perfect is this recipe?  You make it two days ahead, longer if you want, or shorter, too.  This Thanksgiving we forgot, and threw it together that morning.  It was still delicious.  It doesn’t require a long list of ingredients, and, besides the shrimp, nothing is costly.

 

Mimi’s Shrimp

 

Serves 12 as an appetizer, but may be easily halved

 

5 lbs. shrimp

3 large onions

2 lemons

Marinade

1.5 cups vegetable oil

1 cup white vinegar

1 tbsp. salt

12 peppercorns

1 tbsp celery seed

1 tsp. sugar

6 bay leaves

 

Cook shrimp in lightly salted water just to cover.  Drain and then peel.  Thinly slice onions and lemons.  Toss all together lightly, and then lay out in a shallow ceramic dish.

Shake all the marinade ingredients together in a quart container, and then pour over shrimp.  This is best made two days in advance, regularly tossing the shrimp in the marinade.

To serve, put the whole recipe in a large, shallow bowl, showing off the lemon slices and bay leaves.  Or, you can also make individual servings, placing some shrimp, onion and lemon slice in a Boston lettuce leaf, making a platter of lettuce cups.