Tonight’s cookout has so many fun things going on, I barely know where to start!
For quite awhile I’ve been trying to figure out a way to bring my beloved vegan shrimp to the grill. As you might recall, I put some on the smoker over the winter, and while that was pretty good, I knew the grill would really make the flavors sing. I had a theory that quick-cooking the shrimp (we used Sophie’s Kitchen’s version today) over a super-hot grill would give them the charcoal smokiness I was looking for without completely drying the shrimp out, and I was dying to give it a try. But how?
Last week, it finally came to me. Why not shrimp skewers? And why not alternate the shrimp with cherry tomatoes to allow the flavors to mingle and (I hoped) help keep the shrimp nice and moist? Surely the juice from the cherry tomatoes would do the trick nicely while still allowing the outside of the shrimp to char.
So with that thought at the top of my mind, I prepared three skewers’ worth of vegany shrimpy goodness tonight. I started each skewer with a piece of shrimp, then a cherry tomato, until I ran out of real estate, usually about 14 pieces in (seven shrimp, seven tomatoes). I lightly dusted the skewers with Old Bay seasoning and then put them on the grill to cook alongside the English peas I’d already been warming up (as you might recall from springtimes past, that’s a favorite side item around these parts). Here’s how they looked all suited up on the grill:
Since I had the Old Bay out already, I got to thinking: Wouldn’t it be fun to concoct an aioli-style dip with a hint of the seaside? So I got to work making a quick-and-dirty sauce that I’m calling Old Bay-oli. I confess I didn’t measure as closely as I ought to have tonight, but if you combine:
½ cup mayonnaise (we used Just Mayo)
¼ cup ketchup
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Old Bay
Then that should get you pretty close. I’ll update the recipe when I measure properly!
Once the vegan mac and cheese was ready inside (I’d set the Le Creuset to boil when I put the peas on the grill and had set the cooked macaroni aside until the skewers were finished cooking), it was time to remove everything from the grill. I brought the skewers to the table with much fanfare – to be fair, there was also a lot of fanfare regarding the peas – and then unveiled the Old Bay-oli, which proved to be the belle of the ball. We both loved the mingling of flavors in the sauce and were thrilled with how nicely it played with the shrimp!
And by the way, the shrimp turned out perfectly well on the grill – much better than it did on the smoker! The tomatoes did their job in terms of adding another layer of flavor to the shrimp, and the shrimp held up great on the skewers themselves. We devoured all three skewers, I am not ashamed to say, and there wasn’t a molecule of Old Bay-oli left by the end of the meal either. In fact, there wasn’t anything left over after we were finished eating! A true sign of a successful Sunday cookout.
:)