Green on Green Shrimp & Pots

For eons blue was my favorite color. I never wavered I just knew I liked blue, not green but blue. Never cobalt blue, navy blue or dark blue, but pale blue, sky blue, silver blue, turquoise blue, and so on. Years later I began to like a few greens. Never grass green, dark green, kelly green, or olive green, only pale green, mint green, chartreuse green, leaf green, and so on. I saw a subtle pattern in my likes, not saturated colors or warm colors, but muted cool colors were my fare.

The moat container in the first photo is 8 x 6.75 which includes the width of the moat which adds about an one inch to the width. It's layered with different green glazes, olive, mustard, blue greens, a dash of brown, and then some blue glass melted in the moat surrounding the bottom of the piece. I especially like all the greens layered together on one piece of pottery, the texture and the blue in the moat may distract from the piece, so I'd like to make another without those. The background green on the fern vase fired nicely; I was a bit worried at the look of the color before firing. Check out the surprise bottom to the vase. The vase is 9.75 x 7.25 x 3.5 inches. Unfortunately there is a bit of unglazed portion inside this fern vase, darn.

The turquoise leaf platter below is 8.5 x 7.5 x 1 inch and is one of my favorite blue colors. But when I compare the color of the leaf platter to the moat container and the fern vase, the blended colors seem more appealing to me now.

When I think about the colors and flavors of food, brash colors and harsh flavors have never appealed to me. I didn't want in your face colors, or in your palate flavors. Subtle blended flavors of various spices and herbs in the usual combinations; these complementary flavors and colors appealed to me over the years. Flash forward to recently. I've branched out, experimented, and blended glaze colors, and blended food, spices, and herbs in offbeat ways. I'm getting some satisfying results like the moat container and the fern vase and developed another new recipe which may be my best yet. I know I say that for every recipe, but sometimes when I let myself go with colors and foods groups I stumble upon wonderful.

Take one pound of fresh shrimp, clean and butterfly them and set them aside. Melt butter in a sauce pan and chop some cipollini onions and saute them till very soft Add the shrimp and saute them till pink on one side.

Flip them over and sprinkle generously with ground cumin, add 3/4 cup of canned tomatillo sauce, 2/3 cup loosely packed chopped cilantro and sprinkle a little Jamaican hot sauce over the top. Not too much, just enough for flavor.

Cover and cook till a fork inserted in the shrimp comes out easily. Serve with your favorite wild or brown rice, you need the rice so you can drizzle more of this green sauce over it. Add a refreshing side. In this case I've cut up some fresh juicy (green) cucumbers. I served the meal on one of my new speckled green plates just out of the kiln pictured above and below. The speckles come from the iron in the clay. I have a set of four of these which are more of a salad plate size of 6.25 inches square, but I wanted to combine more greens just for fun.

This plate is a different green, subtle, and not quite matching the food fare, but complementary just the same. Green on Green Shrimp, there you have it. If only I could get royalties for my recipes, yes some of those green ones. Oh and if you're a vegetarian, this sauce would be good with tofu and rice, don't you think? When I recover from basking in these colors and flavors, I will post more photos from this firing. In the meantime I'm going back to see if there's any sauce left in the pan, yes it really is that delicious. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.