Hi Everyone,
Do you like Bajan-style fish cakes? Do you like Trini-style salt fish accras? Do you like dried shrimp? If your response is check, check, check or yes, yes, yes, then you will be making these dried shrimp “cakes” this very weekend!
The other day I felt like eating some hot (temperature and heat), well-seasoned Bajan fish cakes but couldn’t because the process of soaking the salt fish to remove excess salt would take way too long and I had a craving for a savoury snack. Pronto! I opened the refrigerator and pulled one of the cooling drawers to see what I could rustle up quickly. I stared long and hard at the packet of dried shrimp at the back of the drawer, frowning, thinking… man this is the same kind of seafood preservation just like salt fish, has excellent umami flavour, they should make good salt fish-like cakes. The selling point for me is that I knew in mere 10 minutes, I could rehydrate the shrimp and remove some of the excess salt. And that is exactly what I set about doing.
I was already familiar with the flavour of dried shrimp in fried foods such as fritters and accras. Dried shrimp is a key ingredient in Brazil’s Acarajé (a black-eye peas and dried shrimp fritter with roots in African cuisine), which I made and shared with you a few years ago. So I already had an idea of the flavour profile, this time though, it was going to be different. The Acarajé batter is made up primarily of skinned black-eye peas with the dried shrimp playing a minor but important role. However, in this shrimp cake, the dried shrimp was going to be the main ingredient, and it worked! The dried shrimp stepped out on its own in this fritter-cake. For so long, dried shrimp has been accustomed to only being in the background of the dishes, in which it is used/added, not any more. Not when prepared like fritters or fritter-cakes.