Boris Karloff’s Potted Shrimp

One of the bad habits I have as a person prone to clutter is over-buying of ingredients. I’m not as bad as the people in Marie Kondo’s book who buy thousands of toilet rolls or stockpile hundreds of toothbrushes, but I am certainly guilty of it to a lesser degree when it comes to foodstuffs.

So this week I’ve had a pack of brown shrimp haunting me every time I open the fridge with its impending use by date flashing in my mind in sync with the fridge light. It was an over-purchase when I made Tessie O’Shea’s Butt-Chive Cheese Shrimp (yes, that’s right BUTT-CHIVE!)

I’d been sooooooo busy swotting up on food health and safety issues before the impending visit of an Environmental Health Officer I just hadn’t had time to use up those shrimp.

I sometimes have a little beer bread pop-up shop at my nephew’s brewery and as I sell food to the public the council wanted to check on my food and safety knowledge. Despite being a terrible hoarder, the kitchen is the one place that is fairly organised so I just retook the food hygiene certificate, did some intense cleaning before the day…

chucked away anything from the fridge that looked dodgy and sorted out the baking shelves in the hall.

But I admit, the shrimp was one day past its best before date so I HID IT at the back of the fridge. Would it be my downfall?

No! The Environmental Health Officer didn’t look in the fridge. Phew. I passed with flying colours and made myself some potted shrimp to celebrate!

Because of the intense tidying, I couldn’t find the little Hastings pot that I discovered previously the shrimp fits so well in…

But this one did the job…

I’d read online that potted shrimp was nice with pasta. What a genteel idea! So that’s what I had for my tea and it was lovely. I just cooked some angel hair pasta and once it was drained, scooped out some of the potted shrimp and mixed it through, adding lots of black pepper. So good.

For 70g shrimp I used about 140g butter which was plenty to cover it (and made for a lovely buttery pasta sauce). I bumped up the spices from last time and although 70g shrimp is about 1/4 the amount in Boris’ recipe, I used half the amounts of mace and nutmeg for a nice spiced flavour.

A couple of nights later I used the rest of the potted shrimp in a risotto which was absolutely delicious too – I used this recipe, replacing the white wine with vermouth.

Here’s the recipe for Boris’ Potted Shrimp. From the Vincent Price Treasury of Great Recipes. Something Vincent and his wife Mary enjoyed chez Boris and Eve Karloff, and something me myself and I enjoyed for two spinster suppers with two portions of risotto left for a later date.

I feel like a domestic goddess!

Thanks Boris and thanks Vincent!