North Shore Garlic Shrimp

Kahuku on Oahu's North Shore has been farming shrimp in brackish ponds since the 1970s, and by the 1990s the trucks parked along Kamehameha Highway had turned it into a pilgrimage. Giovanni's is the one everyone names. The formula is not complicated — flour-dusted shrimp, shell on, cooked in a pan of butter with a truly indefensible amount of garlic — and every attempt to make it elegant makes it worse.

Shell on is not optional. The shells hold the meat from overcooking, they carry the garlic butter to your hands, and they're where most of the flavor in the pan comes from. Cut the backs open so the garlic gets inside. Doing it in cast iron on the grate instead of on a stove gets you two things a truck doesn't have: real fire under the pan, and a handful of kiawe chips putting light smoke into the butter.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs large shrimp (16-20 count), shell on, backs cut open and deveined
• 1 whole head of garlic, minced — about 1/3 cup, and no, that isn't a typo
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, seasoned with 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp paprika
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp cayenne, or more
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2 cups cooked white rice, and a lot of napkins

Cook Sequence

1. Pat the shrimp bone dry, toss in the seasoned flour, and shake off everything loose. Wet shrimp will not brown and clumped flour turns to paste in the butter.
2. Cast iron on the grate over a hot direct bed, 375-400°F on the pan. Chips on the coals now so the smoke is rolling before anything goes in.
3. Olive oil and half the butter in. When the foam subsides, shrimp down in one layer — work in two batches rather than crowding.
4. 2 minutes a side. The shell should go orange and the flour edges gold. Pull the shrimp to a bowl the moment they curl into a loose C.
5. Drop the heat by sliding the pan to the cool side. Rest of the butter in, then all the garlic and the cayenne. 60-90 seconds, stirring constantly — you want it blond and fragrant, never brown. Burnt garlic ends the dish.
6. Shrimp back in, toss to coat, squeeze the lemon over, and pull the pan off the fire immediately.
7. Two scoops rice, shrimp and every drop of pan butter over the top. Peel at the table.

Round Out the Plate

• Hawaiian Mac Salad — the truck plate, completed
• Cucumber Salad — something cold against a cup of butter