Clay Pot Shrimp

Karides Güveç

 

Probably one of Turkey’s favourite clay-pot dishes. Restaurants typically serve this with small, rather flavourless shrimp – but if you search through the markets you can often find larger, fuller-flavoured shrip that will make this dish sing. You can use either tarragon or thyme to flavour the sauce. The two herbs tend to be used interchangeably in Turkey, depending which one is in season. But my favourite is with tarragon.

 

1 tsp                      olive oil

1                             onion, finely diced

3                             yellow bull horn chillis (çarlston bibier), finely diced

4 cloves                 garic, finely minced

½  tsp                    chilli powder (acı biber tozu)

1 tsp                      sugar

1 tbsp                    lemon juice (freshly squeezed)

2 x cans                 diced tomatoes

3 tbsp                    tomato paste (domades salçası)

3 sprigs                 fresh tarragon or thyme, leaves picked and roughly chopped

1 tsp                      salt

400g                      shrimp/prawns, shelled

100g                      kaşar cheese, grated (or substitue with parmesan)*

 

Pre heat the oven to 200C.

 

Heat the oil in  a pan, and stir in the onion, bull-horn chilli, garlic, and chill powder. Stir fry until the garlic begins to take some colour.

 

Stir in the lemon juice, sugar, tomatoes, tomato paste and tarragon, then simmer 25 minutes until thickened.

 

Add the salt, then toss in the shrimp and stir well.

 

Pour the mixture into an oven-proof bowl (a clay bowl is traditional in Turkey), and sprinkle cheese on top.

 

Bake 20min until the cheese is golden brown.

 

 SERVES: 4

 

 

 

*optional. I prefer cheeseless, but cheesy is pretty common in Turkey.