Shrimp and Raspberry Salad

The simplicity of Shrimp and Raspberry Salad lies it its delicate balance of contrasts:  creamy with crunchy with juicy, sweet against salty against tart, even red complementing green from their opposite sides of the color wheel.  In keeping with my general philosophy on salads, there’s nothing superfluous here; with just five ingredients, it has everything it needs to be complete.

When you take a salad – or any dish – and pare it down to just a few ingredients, each one has to bring something unique to the mix, and each must be flawless.   In this salad, the shrimp contributes meaty texture, briny flavor, and the protein that earns this salad its main-dish status.  Although you can probably find pre-cooked shrimp at the fish counter, I recommend poaching it yourself for the freshest flavor.  (See below for tips on poaching shrimp.)

The day I made this salad I made a special trip to an out-of-the-way farm stand to look for native raspberries.  This stand has had gorgeous red raspberries for the past few weeks, but on this day I hit the jackpot with not just red but also black raspberries.  Not to be confused with blackberries, black raspberries have hollow cores just like red raspberries, and a softer texture and sweeter flavor than blackberries. I’ve never seen them in a grocery store, but if you’re lucky enough to find some at a farm stand or farmer’s market, grab them.  In this salad the contrast of colors, with the glowing red and dark purple berries and the pale, peachy-pink shrimp on a bed of dark green leaves, is simply stunning,

(If you can’t find black raspberries, substitute blackberries, or use all red raspberries.)

A thick and syrupy, sweet/tart raspberry vinaigrette brings all of the flavors together.  For this easy dressing, use a good-quality raspberry vinegar, opaque with real fruit pulp, like this one.

Prep tips, making this ahead, and what to do with leftovers:

• The shrimp can be made ahead, and must be made far enough ahead to give it time to chill before serving (at least an hour or two).
• If you make more shrimp than you need for this salad (I always do), keep it for 2 or 3 days and enjoy it as shrimp cocktail, or add it as a garnish on top of seafood soups, on top of steak for a surf-n-turf, or in any other dish that calls for cooked shrimp.
• The vinaigrette will keep for a week, so make it ahead or keep leftovers within that timeframe.
• Assemble and dress the salad right before serving; never keep leftovers of a dressed salad.

To poach the shrimp:  Choose a saucepan or pot that’s large enough to hold the quantity of shrimp you want to cook in a single layer.  Fill the pot with 1 inch of water and bring it to a boil over high heat.  Add a few big pinches of kosher salt.  Reduce the heat to medium and add the peeled, deveined shrimp, spreading the shrimp out in a single layer.  The water should stop boiling immediately when you add the cold shrimp.   Heat the shrimp in the just-below-simmering water for 1 to 2 minutes, then turn each shrimp with tongs to cook the other side for an additional 2 minutes, or just until cooked through – that is when it’s pink-tinged on the edges and white through the center with no hints of blue, and has curled into a “C” shape.  Remove the shrimp from the water using the tongs.  Chill it until very cold before serving.

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