April 09, 2010

Shrimp & Chive Dip


Ingredients:
8 oz small "salad" shrimp or medium shrimp, chopped
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons minced chives
2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/8 teaspoon celery seed
salt
white pepper


Directions:
In a food processor or blender (I used my Vitamix) blend together the garlic, shallot, mayo, sour cream, parsley, cream cheese, spices, zest, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, 1/4 cup shrimp and pulse until smooth. Pour into a medium bowl. Stir in the remaining shrimp. Refrigerate overnight before serving.

My thoughts:
When I was researching recipes for '50s night I read a lot of dip recipes. Books and books worth. While doing so, I was surprised at how many recipes called for seafood of some kind. Crab dip is popular here (witness the rise of the crab pretzel), occasionally I'll see a clam dip but I have never once been to a party where a dip was served with other kinds of seafood was involved. So either it is a retro thing or a regional thing or people are making shrimp, salmon, tuna, lobster and scallop dips and not inviting me over. As it turns out, shrimp dips are pretty good. A lot of the ones I came across called for tiny shrimp suspended in a creamy mixture and that sounded fine, but I had the idea to pulse some shrimp into the sour cream and cream cheese and spread that shrimp flavor throughout the whole dip. It really worked well, there were a few shrimp chunks for texture interest but the whole dip really tasted like shrimp, not plain dip with the occasional shrimp. The chives added a light onion flavor that complemented the shrimp and kept it fresh tasting.


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2 comments:

  1. My mother used to make a shrimp mousse that had a lot of similar ingredients and technique to your recipe, except she added gelatin and placed it in a mold until it set up. It was delicious and there was rarely a morsel of it leftover. I'll have to dig out that old recipe and give it a second life!

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  2. My mother-in-law has a great simple recipe for hot Onion Cheese Dip, but at our last gathering my own mother kicked it up a notch with lobster & shrimp. Very rich, but delicious! Now I'm all about the seafood dips :-)

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