I’m making 52 sandwiches this year as part of my hobby blog and I’m teeming with contenders for breakfast, beef, and veggie sandwiches—but what about seafood?
Week two focused on the king of seafood sandwiches, the lobster roll, then there was the less glamorous but mainstay tuna sandwich hold the mayo. I think it’s time for a shrimp sandwich; something hot and dippable.
I take my inspiration from the Chinese dim sum feature, shrimp toast, but I’m not someone who deep fries anything, let alone a sandwich. Enter Martha Stewart’s Japanese shrimp toast, which serves as a guide and I add my own twist.
I start with my flavour base: a tablespoon of white miso, a teaspoon of minced ginger, a minced clove of garlic, a teaspoon of minced green onion for the flavour base and another teaspoon set aside for the garnish. Fresh lime for brightness.
I coarsely chop a dozen cooked shrimp which will become the star of this show, and add that, along with my flavour base, into the food processor. Don’t forget to squeeze the juice of one lime into that.
Whirl that into a paste.
I’m looking at this paste and decide it needs a binder, so I add a healthy tablespoon of mayo, then spread that paste onto a slice of crusty bread (Italian, sourdough all good).
Now for the tricky part: place the shrimp toast paste side down into a hot non-stick fry pan at medium-high temperature, ensuring the paste doesn’t slip away from the bread. In all shrimp toast recipes that I’ve read, they call for a lot of oil. With this sandwich, I use about 4 tablespoons of grapeseed oil—much less than the rest, but still a lot in my books.
Once the shrimp paste turns golden, carefully flip it so the toast can get golden too.
When this sandwich is ready (it doesn’t take long on the stovetop) I want to serve it with a side dip, so I make one out of the juice of one meyer lemon, 1/3 cup tamari, and a half teaspoon of wasabi paste for a heat kick; green onion for garnish.
My shrimp toast is ready for plating.
It’s salty, savoury, and thanks to the fry treatment, rich at the same time. Like many sandwiches, the sum is definitely greater than the parts. Sliced in strips with the dip it could double as an excellent appetizer course.
Trish Hennessy
A Year in Sandwiches 