If you love heat, you're gonna love Shrimp Sauce Piquant. Piquant translated from French means literally "pricking" and that is what this spicy sauce piquant is meant to do, prick the tongue.
Shrimp Sauce Piquant
Most of y'all know that I try to keep the Cajun and Creole recipes I feature here with a slight bite, knowing well that many people will take recipes very literally. It is certainly much easier to increase the heat to taste in a spicy recipe than it is to try to take it away!
So, I try to keep things on the lighter side of spicy here for the general public, and let the reader choose to increase to their own heat level. Sauce piquant is one exception.
While sauce piquant is closely related to its cousin, Shrimp Creole, with a few subtle differences, there is one major exception. It is intended to be a very highly spiced dish.
Chef Paul Prudhomme says "if you don't hover between pleasure and pain when you eat it, chances are you haven't made your sauce piquant hot enough!"
The best flavor for your piquant is going to come from using the freshest ingredients. Fresh Gulf shrimp and stock made from the heads and shells of them, and fresh garden tomatoes that have been slow roasted and pureed will make this dish shine. In a pinch though, commercial seafood, chicken, or even vegetable stock and canned tomato sauce will still make a mighty fine sauce piquant.
Sauce piquant should start with a roux, though it is a very small roux, say in comparison to a gumbo roux, and this is one of those old Cajun recipes that is not intended to be a rushed process. If you work away from home, it's a weekend dish for you, as the flavor of the piquant comes through slow cooking, and the staged periodic addition of the stock, a little at a time.
You add stock and then allow it to cook in a bit, before adding additional stock and then repeating the process. This really builds up the flavor and to me, is the secret to a good sauce piquant.
Besides shrimp, this basic sauce can also be used for other seafood such as crab or fish, and a variety of meats as well. The process is just slightly different, and of course, the stock varies depending on what protein you are using.
Chicken, duck, alligator, rabbit and even turtle are commonly used, but, unlike seafood, always brown meats first before starting the sauce.
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