This dish is linked to two Sicilian cities on the Mediterranean coast, each of great historical importance, Sciacca and Ribera, hence the name of the dish.
Sciacca is the second most important fishing port in Sicily, and it is here that the famous pink shrimp is caught. It is a crustacean that is found in the depths around the Graham bank, famous for the events of the early nineteenth century concerning the Ferdinandea island, the island that appeared a couple of times and then returned to sink into the sea.
Ferdinandea Island is still disputed by several European countris although it does not exist today and owes its name to the ruler Barbone who planted a flag of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies there.
The other Sicilian city is Ribera where there is a millenial tradition of oranges, the Riberelle, which had been brought by the Arabs and grown in the Verdura Valley.
This dish takes these two gastronomic products from these two cities and blends them in a marriage of flavours: a peasant winter salad made of oranges and fennel placed on a pink shrimp base.
Pink shrimp raw recipe with frozen Riberella salad:
Ingredients:
- Pink shrimp flavour of Sciacca 60 gr
- Fennel 30 gr
- PDO Ribera Oranges 30 gr
- Spring onion 10 gr
- Wild fennel 1 stalk
- Pomegranate juice 100 ml
- Seeds of pomegranate
- Sugar 30 gr
Ingredients for the fennel sorbet:
- Fennel 600 gr
- Sugar 140 gr
- Lemon 1\2
- Pinch salt
- Tufts of fennel
To prepare the base, the pink shrimp disc with the flavour of Sciacca, take the pink shrimps and peel them, taking care to remove the intestines from the larger shrimps. Then spread the shrimp on a layer of foodwrap and cover with another layer and beat with a meat mallet to form a flat disc.
At this point freeze the film with the beaten shrimp.
To transform pomegranate juice into pomegranate syrup, put the juice with 30 grams of sugar in a saucepan and reduce by a third until you obtain the consistency of a syrup.
To prepare the fennel sorbet we must cut the fennel into squares, mix it with all the other ingredients and put everything under vacuum to macerate for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, whisk everything and put it in the freezer. Then you need to repeat the operation: get it out of the freezer, blend and refreeze so that the mixture remains grainy.
And now let's move on to a not secondary aspect to make all diners happy : the presentation of the dish.
Take the disc of shrimp from the freezer and remove one side of the foodwrap, place that unwrapped side on the platter and remove the opposite foodwrap layer.
Cut the fennel very thin with a kitchen mandolin and soak them in cold water for a few minutes. Drain the fennel and season with the finely chopped onion, oranges, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.
Then cut the oranges 'vivo', that is, removing the peel and then removing the segments of the oranges themselves from the fibrous part that surrounds them.
Place this salad on the pink shrimp and garnish with wild fennel leaves.
Take the sorbet out of the freezer and, if too hard frozen, blend it and make a quenelle with a spoon by putting it on the opposite side of the salad.
Decorate the dish with the tip of a teaspoon of pomegranate syrup.
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