Shrimp with Corn and Basil (Page 322)

RECIPE #842

• Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

As I have mentioned before, I am deeply skeptical about buying seafood in land-locked Southern Indiana, but I have bought shrimp here before and they were tasty, so I decided to make this shrimp recipe from The Book last week. This recipe was incredibly simple. My special gentleman cut the kernels off of 2 ears of corn. Then we heated some butter, added the shrimp and corn, and cooked until the shrimp were cooked through. We then stirred in some chopped scallions and basil and seasoned with salt and pepper. That's it! It was a very nice summer recipe. The corn and the shrimp went well together, and in the time it took to cook the shrimp, the butter browned a bit, giving the dish a nice brown butter nuttiness. The basil and scallions were very tasty, and worked well with the simplicity of the dish. This was a simple 15 minute meal that my special gentleman and I both enjoyed. If you like shrimp and fresh summer flavors, you are sure to like it.

Here is the recipe.

A funny story I was reminded of today:

I grew up in Wisconsin, and when I was a child there, all the ATM machines were made by a company called TYME ("Take You Money Everywhere.") Their slogan was "TYME is money." We referred to these cash machines as "TYME machines," and I had never even heard them called anything else (the name ATM was completely foreign to me). I was totally oblivious to the fact that TYME was a brand of machine unique to Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I went to college at Stanford, and on my second day in sunny Northern California, I decided I needed to get some cash. So I asked some of my new college friends, "Do you know where the nearest TYME machine is?" My question was met with a terribly confused look. It had never occurred to me that "TYME machine," sounds just like "time machine," and it didn't occur to me at that moment either. So I had a conversation with this group of new Stanford friends that in my head translated to:

"Do you know where the nearest cash machine is?"
"The nearest what?"
"The nearest cash machine."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, I haven't seen one. Do you know where one is?"
"No..."
"Oh, OK. I just need some cash."
"From a cash machine?
"Well, yes."

but to them sounded more like:

"Do you know where the nearest time machine is?"
"The nearest what?"
"The nearest time machine."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, I haven't seen one. Do you know where one is?"
"No..."
"Oh, OK. I just need some cash."
"From a time machine?"
"Well, yes."

Confusion abounded. It turns out, I am not the only person from Wisconsin who has ever had this problem.