The Happy Home Cook: Shrimp Toast

The Happy Home Cook features cherished recipes of Filipino dishes from well-known foodies and contributors. If you have a recipe that you are proud of and would like to share, please send it along with a photo of the dish, your two-sentence bio and your picture to submissions@positivelyfilipino.com.

From the Let’s Cook with Nora Cookbook New Edition, updated by Nina Daza Puyat, this Shrimp Toast recipe is an all-time favorite appetizer. Nora’s daughter, Nina shared that she cooked this savory meal starter for the book launch in San Francisco, California early this year.

*Reprinted with permission from Let’s Cook with Nora, new edition updated by Nina Daza Puyat (Anvil Publishing).

(Photography by Pat Mateo)

Ingredients

½ kilo fresh small or medium shrimps

1 tsp. ginger juice (squeezed from grated fresh ginger)

1 tsp. rice wine

1 tsp. fine salt

¼ tsp. ground white pepper

1 egg white

1 tsp. cornstarch

6 slices day-old bread, trimmed and quartered into triangles

2      Tbsps. minced ham

2 Tbsps. chopped fresh parsley

1-2 cups cooking oil, for shallow frying 

Sweet Chili Sauce, for dipping

Procedure

1.    Peel shrimps. Reserve the heads and shells to make shrimp stock for another dish.

2.    Mince shrimps with a cleaver or a large knife. Transfer to a bowl then add in ginger juice, rice wine, salt, pepper, egg white and cornstarch. Mix well.  

3.    Spread about a teaspoon of the shrimp mixture on each bread triangle, flattening with the back of a teaspoon to cover the entire surface. Top with chopped ham and parsley. Press down lightly to make the ham and parsley stick to the shrimp mixture.

4.    Heat about 2-3 inches of oil in a wok or large frying pan. Fry the shrimp toasts shrimp-side down until golden brown. Flip to cook the other side. Remove with tongs then set on a plate lined with paper towels to remove excess oil.

5.    Serve Shrimp Toasts hot with sweet chili sauce.

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