Spanish-Style Shrimp

How to prepare spanish-style shrimp

1. Clean the shrimp by removing heads and shells, leaving only the tail if desired. Discard the heads or freeze them for a future soup. Keep the shells.
2. Wash the shrimp around the head area and pat dry well with paper towels. Refrigerate until needed.
3. In a pan, gently heat the oil and add the shrimp shells. Fry the shells until they turn red (about 2 minutes), stirring to cook evenly.
4. Pour everything (oil and shells) into a blender and blend well until the shells are finely ground (30 seconds).
5. Strain the oil through a fine sieve (a tea strainer works), pressing on the shells to extract as much oil as possible.
6. Pour the warm oil into a small jar and add the whole garlic cloves and sliced ones. The oil will gently infuse from the sliced ones. The whole cloves will marinate slowly. Ideally, choose medium or small garlic cloves for the whole ones, as they will cook faster in the next step. Under no circumstances cut the cloves that are meant to be whole in the recipe. In case you get the idea to cut them lengthwise or crosswise... No! Please resist the urge.
8. Let the oil sit for at least 3 hours at room temperature. You can keep it longer in the refrigerator.
9. When you want to prepare the shrimp, pour the oil from the jar along with all the garlic into a wider pan (about 25 cm). Gently heat the oil and leave it on low heat for 5 minutes to cook the garlic. The oil must not get too hot during this time. Keep the heat as low as possible or move the pan to a smaller burner if necessary. Basically, the garlic just needs to "simmer" in oil, not fry. Let it doze off...
10. Meanwhile, sprinkle the shrimp with a little salt, plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and the smoked paprika (I know some don't like smoked paprika, but here the amount is small—I'm sure you'll like it). Mix well.
11. Add the shrimp to the oil. Now you can turn the heat to medium so the shrimp start to sizzle. Fry briefly, maximum 2 minutes per side, until the shrimp turn pink all over.
12. Add the lemon juice and stir.
14. Pour the entire contents of the pan into a bowl. Serve warm, drizzled with lemon juice and definitely with very fresh rustic bread or toasted bread, so you can enjoy the sauce at the bottom of the plate. You'll see how soft and sweet the garlic cloves are. You'll want to spread them on bread.
    * 150 ml of flavored oil is quite a lot to be consumed by 2 people at one meal, so inevitably you'll have quite a bit of this divine sauce left over. Here's what you'll do with it: keep it in the refrigerator until the next day when you'll use it to make a batch of pasta with oil, garlic, and peperoncino. Don't add the garlic from the recipe (the oil is already infused with garlic) or the basil (so as not to cover the shrimp flavor). Basically, heat the flavored oil, sauté the chili paste, add the cooked pasta, and stir, stir to coat with flavors, then finish with chopped parsley. Double pleasure!

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