Fire up the grill because we need to cook the person who came up with this terrible pun! Or, you can fire up these shiso kebabs which I think would be much tastier.
Ingredients
- 12 shrimp
- 12 shiso leaves
- a few strips of kanpyo -- Kanpyo is a dried gourd that often comes pre-stewed and marinated in soy sauce, mirin and sugar, which is what we are using here.
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sake
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 slice ginger
- cooking oil
Method
- Wash and pat dry the shiso leaves.
- Peel the shrimp. You can remove the tails too, but I like to keep them on for aesthetics and I'm one of those people who eats the tails too. (There are others, right...?)
- Cut 12 kanpyo strips approximately the length of the shrimp.
- Now the rolling. Place a shrimp on a shiso leaf with its back towards the tip of the leaf. Place a strip of kanpyo tucked against its belly. Roll the leaf starting with the tip end. The stem end tends to be stiffer and more resistant to rolling.
- Stick a skewer through the roll, making sure to go through the shrimp harakiri style so everything is secure.
- Continue until you have 6 rolls on each skewer.
- Oil a grill and grill the skewers on medium heat. Flip them over after 2-3 minutes and grill the other side. You'll know they're done when the shrimp turn orange and opaque.
- Put soy sauce, sake, sugar and ginger in a small saucepan.
- Simmer this mixture until it thickens. It will be done when you see that moving the ginger around the pan produces a lot of bubbles, like when you make candy.
- Drizzle the soy syrup over the shiso kebabs.
This dish is nice to bring to a barbeque for something different than the usuals. The sweet soy syrup on the outside complements the sweet soy kanpyo on the inside and the texture contrast between the shrimp, kanpyo and shiso is great. Plus, you get to make a pun! Er, I mean, the downside is, you're tempted to make a pun...
