Cooking from “Everyone’s Table” by Gregory Gourdet
I love when dishes surprise me. When I found out we were having company for dinner I reached for one of my favorite new cookbooks: “Everyone’s Table” by Gregory Gourdet.
Every dish I’ve ever made from Chef Gourdet has been amazing.
It was a nice day out so I was looking for something with a bit of Summer and Spring flare.
Browsing through dish after amazing dish, I came upon a combination that didn’t ring a bell: watermelon and curry?
Shrimp with Curried Watermelon and Quick-Pickled Rind
I love making curries, so this recipe jumped out at me as something really interesting and challenging to try. I also really like that his red curry paste has a Thai influence to it with the ginger, lemongrass, and galangal.
A trip to the local Asian market for the lemongrass and galangal and the regular grocery store for shrimp, watermelon, and a few other ingredients.
This dish is definitely a labor of love, especially if you have to make the curry paste as well.
I started off by toasting the spices and peppers. I chose Japones peppers for their spice and flavors—I didn’t have a lot of options for dried peppers at my local grocery store.
Despite there being only a tablespoon of cumin, the whole house was filled with the smell of the roasting spice. All of our guests commented on how strongly it smelled. Surprisingly, this strong odor did not lead to an overpowering cumin flavor in the finished dish.
For a spice grinder, I pulled out my old coffee grinder that hadn’t seen use in a year and decided it was time to repurpose it.
The results were wonderful. Spicy, smoky, and full of flavor.
Next it was time to put together the “wet” ingredients for the curry paste. I ended up having to add a bit more water than recommended in the recipe to get this to form a nice consistency.
Shallot, ginger, galangal, lemongrass—all the things that make this red curry explode with Thai flavors.
Next up was treating the watermelon.
I had to be careful because we were going to save some of the rinds for pickling.
Peeling rind pieces after cutting was an interesting and difficult process. I attempted a variety of different cutting techniques to figure out how to safely extract the skin while leaving the rind intact.
The quick-pickling via rice vinegar and maple syrup provided a tangy, sweet, and fun treat to add to the dish.
After making the curry paste and the pickled watermelon rinds, it was time to assemble the curry.
There’s a wonderful part of the instructions in the recipe for the curry at the beginning where it says:
“Taste it—it’ll help you note the progress later.”
At first, the dish tastes like a spicy candied watermelon.
Later on, after cooking the watermelon down:
“Taste it again—it will have gone from a sort of spiced watermelon juice to a richer, more deeply flavored stew with a bit of heat and complexity from the curry paste.”
This transformation was mind-blowing. The watermelon cooked down to succulent bites full of umami that many guests mistaken for tomatoes.
Cooked up the shrimp nicely and simply seasoned with salt.
We chose to serve the dish over rice.
Plated it up with some of the quick-pickled watermelon, some cilantro, and a drizzle of olive oil and some of the pickling liquid.
The dish was spicy, umami, full of fun textures between the pickled rinds and soft bits of watermelon—out of this world delicious.
Such a fun dish to make and got to send some of the delicious curry paste home with our guests.
Can’t wait to try the next dish from Gregory.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
5 / 5 stars
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