Fried Shrimp Tacos @LucyBurdette #ADishtoDieFor

LUCY BURDETTE: One of our very favorite places to eat when we're in Key West is the Fish Camp on Geiger Key. (See pic above for the dinner I usually order.) It's eleven miles north of Key West, but it feels like another world. It's also the setting for several scenes in Key West food critic mystery #12, A DISH TO DIE FOR. 

Until you have a chance to get there yourself, here's my attempt to recreate their shrimp tacos. (I used taco shells in this iteration, but next time I'd use either small corn or flour tortillas and heat them briefly in the oven.)

Ingredients

About four large shrimp per person

2 tablespoons flour mixed with half a teaspoon smoked paprika and half a teaspoon cumin

2 tablespoons Panko crumbs

One egg

Peel and devein the shrimp and pat them dry.

Mix the flour and spices with the Panko crumbs and whip the egg. In a large frying pan, heat sunflower or canola oil until shimmering. 

Dip each shrimp into the egg followed by the flour mixture and drop them into the simmering oil. Cook until browned and pink through. (This shouldn't take more than a few minutes.) Drain on paper towels.

Serve on corn tortillas or taco shells with cole slaw, or chopped vegetable salad with corn, black beans, red peppers and avocado, 

Or pico de Gallo, sour cream, and shredded cheese, with black beans and yellow rice if you wish. (See top picture: That's how the Fish Camp serves it!)

A DISH TO DIE FOR, #12 in the Key West food critic mystery series, will be out on August 9. 

Kirkus Reviews said: 

“Key West food critic Hayley Snow proves once again that she understands crime as well as cuisine. A suitably steamy background for a complex tale of murder and deceit.” 

 A DISH TO DIE FOR is now available for preorder wherever books are sold

About A Dish to Die For:

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

 When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

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