Sheet Pan Shrimp Boil in Oven

The dogwoods on Cooper Street started blooming this week — white and pink against all that new green — and I spent the better part of Tuesday’s mail route walking slower than I needed to, just looking at them. I know my route well enough to walk it in my sleep, and I have walked it in most weathers over the last fifteen years on this particular stretch: in August heat that makes the asphalt soft, in January sleet that turns the sidewalks to glass, in the kind of October mornings that make you think Memphis might be the most beautiful city on earth. But April is something else. April forgives you for February.

The dogwoods put me in mind of Mama’s yard at the old house — the shotgun house on the street where I grew up, before they tore it down in ’94. She had a dogwood in the front yard that she’d planted the year I was born, and by the time I was big enough to sit on the porch steps by myself, that tree was already taller than I was. By the time I was fifteen and taller than nearly everything, the dogwood was the one thing I still had to look up to. Mama would come home from the Peabody in the evenings, still in her uniform, and sit on the porch in her good chair with a colander of butter beans in her lap, shelling them by feel the way she could do anything by feel, listening to the radio through the screen door, letting the day drain out of her. That dogwood kept her company. I like to think it still does, somewhere.

Marcus called on Wednesday. My third boy — he’ll be twenty-six in the fall, teaches music over at Westwood High — called to tell me he’s seeing somebody. A woman named Angela Foster. Social worker. Met her at some community arts event at the school, and from the way he talked about her, measured and careful and trying not to sound too much like himself, I could tell this one had gotten past his defenses. Marcus is a private person. He did not get that from me. He keeps things close, lets you know what he wants you to know and no more, which is the opposite of his mother, who has never had an unexpressed thought in her life. The fact that he called at all told me more than the words he used.

I asked him one question: “Is she kind?”

He said yes.

I said that’s all I need to know. And I meant it. I’ve lived long enough to understand that kindness is not a small thing. It is the whole thing. The rest — the looks, the ambition, the family background, the cooking ability, all the other questions Rosetta had lined up and ready to fire from the kitchen where she was very pointedly not listening — the rest you can work out. You cannot work out mean. You cannot soften a person who doesn’t have softness in them. But kindness? Kindness builds a house you can live in.

Rosetta, when Marcus hung up, had approximately seventeen follow-up questions. I said, “Woman, let the boy breathe.” She said, “I’m his mother. I don’t let anyone breathe.” Which is true and which is exactly why our children are the way they are: because Rosetta never let anyone coast, never let anyone slide, never let anything important go unexamined. I spent twenty-six years delivering her children into the world and watching her love them with the fierce, relentless love of someone who knows exactly how fast things can be taken from you. Marcus will bring this Angela around when he’s ready. And Rosetta will ask her seventeen questions. And I will stand in the kitchen and pretend I’m not listening.

I smoked a shoulder on Saturday — started the fire before four in the morning, sat with my coffee and watched the hickory smoke find its way out of the vents and disappear up into the dark — and by evening I had a platter of pulled pork on the picnic table and Tyrone was coming through the gate with a six-pack and a deck of cards, driving up from Raleigh because he said he could smell the smoke from I-40, which is not true but is the kind of thing Tyrone says. The Pattersons came over from next door. We ate on paper plates and played dominoes and the evening was exactly what an evening in April in Orange Mound is supposed to be: unhurried and warm and full of people I love. Rosetta ate one sandwich and called it good. I called it a standing ovation.

But here’s the thing about a week with dogwoods in it and a son calling to tell you something important: it puts you in a particular kind of mood. Not sad, exactly. Reflective, maybe. You start thinking about where things come from and where they’re going. You think about what gets passed down and how and whether you’re passing it down right.

I thought about Mama’s Friday nights.

In the house where I grew up, Friday nights had a smell. Not BBQ — BBQ was Uncle Clyde’s domain, and Uncle Clyde’s domain was the stand on Lamar and the backyard on the Fourth of July and, if you were lucky, your birthday. Weeknight cooking was Mama’s, and Friday night cooking was Mama at her most intentional, because Friday was the end of the week and the beginning of the rest, and Pearlie Mae Johnson believed in marking occasions. The occasion was surviving another week, and you celebrated it the same way you celebrated everything: by feeding people.

Friday nights, more often than not, meant fried shrimp.

Now, I want to be clear about something, because I know how I’ve been describing Mama’s cooking — the neck bones, the shoulder, the whole hog philosophy — and you might have gotten the impression that everything she made was a long project. Not so. Pearlie Mae could go low and slow when the occasion demanded. But she was also a woman who worked eight hours cleaning rooms at the Peabody Hotel and came home to cook for seven people, and she did not have the luxury of long projects on a Tuesday. She was efficient in a kitchen the way a surgeon is efficient: no wasted motion, no unnecessary steps, everything done with precision and purpose. And fried shrimp was her proof that fast could be perfect.

She’d pick up a pound or two of shrimp from the fish market on Lamar on her way home from the bus stop. The man who ran it knew her — knew the whole neighborhood, had been there since before I was born — and he’d have them cleaned and deveined, because Mama had trained him to have them cleaned and deveined the same way she’d trained everyone in her orbit to do things properly. She’d soak them in buttermilk while she changed out of her uniform. Then the cornmeal dredge, seasoned with things she measured by feel and by memory. Then the cast iron, which she’d heat until the lard shimmered. Then the shrimp, in batches, quick and golden, pulled out and drained before they got the chance to get tough.

Twenty minutes, start to finish, if she wasn’t talking. Thirty if she was talking, which she usually was, because Mama cooked the way she did everything else: in relationship with whoever was in the room.

I was in the room as often as I could manage. I have told you about Uncle Clyde and the pit, and that education is real and it is the foundation of everything I know about BBQ. But before Clyde, before smoke and hickory and patience, there was Mama’s kitchen on a Friday night, and there was the smell of cornmeal hitting hot lard, and there was the way she’d put a shrimp in my mouth right off the paper towel and say, “Hot,” which was a warning and an invitation at the same time. I learned in that kitchen that food is not neutral. It does not just fill you. It tells you something. Mama’s fried shrimp told me that Friday had come, and we had made it, and we were together, and that was worth celebrating.

She still makes them sometimes, when her hands let her. I drove out to Whitehaven last month to see her — she’s eighty-nine and living at the facility there, which she has made her own with the force of her personality the way she made everything her own — and she said she’d been craving shrimp. I went to the grocery, got two pounds, came back to the little kitchen in her unit, and stood next to her while she directed. Her eyes aren’t what they were. Her hands shake. But the instructions were exact. The proportions were exact. She remembered every step the way you remember a prayer: not because you think about it, but because it’s in you.

Those shrimp tasted the same as they did in 1969.

Some things, friend, do not change. Some things were made right the first time, and the right answer is to leave them alone.

I made them this week. Came home from the route on Friday, changed out of my uniform, and made Pearlie Mae’s fried shrimp for Rosetta and myself, because the dogwoods were still blooming and Marcus had called about his girl and I was in the mood for something that tasted like where I came from. Rosetta ate half the platter and said nothing, which is a more eloquent compliment than anything she could have put in words. I ate the other half. My cholesterol, as she will tell you, is a matter of ongoing concern. My Friday nights, as I will tell you, are a matter of ongoing peace.

You want to know how Mama did it. Here it is.

Now, Pearlie Mae’s fried shrimp will always be the version I reach for when I need to stand in her kitchen again. But there are nights — good nights, tired nights, nights when Rosetta and I just want to sit down and eat with our hands like civilized people — when I lay it all out on a sheet pan and let the oven do the heavy lifting. Potatoes, corn, shrimp, Old Bay, and not a single thing to fuss over. You put it in, you take it out, you spread some butcher paper on the table, and you eat. That is a Friday night worth having.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 pounds small red potatoes
4 large ears corn
2 pounds large raw shrimp, shell on and deveined (thawed)
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
6 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning, divided (purchased or homemade)
3 teaspoons dried dill, divided
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander, divided
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
Black pepper
4 lemon wedges
Finely chopped parsley or chives, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Prep the potatoes and corn. Cut the potatoes in half (or into bite-sized pieces if using larger potatoes). Shuck the corn and cut it into 2-inch pieces.
Season and roast the potatoes. Place the potatoes in a large bowl and stir them together with: 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons Old Bay, 1/2 teaspoon coriander, 1 teaspoon dried dill, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and several grinds black pepper. Spread potatoes face down on the baking sheets and bake 10 minutes.
Add the corn. Meanwhile, in the same bowl stir together the corn with (same as last time!): 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons Old Bay, 1/2 teaspoon coriander, 1 teaspoon dried dill, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and several grinds black pepper. Remove the baking sheet from oven and flip the potatoes. Add the corn and bake an additional 12 minutes.
Add the shrimp. Meanwhile, in the same bowl stir together the thawed shrimp with (here we go again!): 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons Old Bay, 1/2 teaspoon coriander, 1 teaspoon dried dill, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and several grinds black pepper. Remove the sheet from the oven and turn the corn. Add the shrimp and bake an additional 10 minutes until shrimp is cooked through.
Serve and enjoy. Serve garnished with chopped parsley or chives, and a hearty squeeze from the lemon wedges. Allow to cool slightly. If desired, spread butcher paper or newspaper over your table and pour the shrimp boil on top — or serve right from the cooled baking sheets or a large platter. Enjoy by eating with your hands!

Nutrition (per serving)

Sheet Pan Shrimp Boil in Oven — Because Some Friday Nights Call for Something That Puts You Back Where You Came From