Shrimp Cooked in Lime Juice

• About 1/2 cup lime juice (3 or 4 limes)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon nam pla (fish sauce) or salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons neutral oil, like corn or grapeseed
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 1 1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled and, if you like, deveined, or 3 pounds head-on shrimp, unpeeled
• Minced fresh cilantro for garnish

1. Combine the lime juice, sugar, and nam pla.
2. Put the oil in a 10- or 12-inch skillet over high heat.
3. A minute later, add the garlic and hot pepper and cook just until the garlic begins to brown.
4. Immediately add the lime juice mixture all at once and cook until it reduces by half, or even more, 3 to 5 minutes; there should be only about 1/4 cup of liquid in the skillet, and it should be syrupy.
5. Add the shrimp and cook, still over high heat.
6. The shrimp will give off liquid of their own and begin to turn pink almost immediately.
7. After about 2 minutes of cooking, stir.
8. Continue cooking and stirring occasionally until all the shrimp are pink, about 2 minutes later.
9. Taste and adjust the seasoning, then garnish with cilantro.
10. Almost all shrimp are frozen before sale.
11. So unless youre in a hurry, you might as well buy them frozen and defrost them yourself; this will guarantee you that they are defrosted just before you cook them, therefore retaining peak quality.
12. There are no universal standards for shrimp size; large and medium dont mean much.
13. Therefore, it pays to learn to judge shrimp size by the number per pound, as retailers do.
14. Shrimp labeled 16/20, for example, contain sixteen to twenty per pound; those labeled U-20 require fewer (under) twenty to make a pound.
15. Shrimp from fifteen to about thirty per pound usually give the best combination of flavor, ease (peeling tiny shrimp is a nuisance), and value (really big shrimp usually cost more than $15 a pound).
16. On deveining: I dont.
17. You can, if you like, but its a thankless task, and there isnt one person in a hundred who could blind-taste the difference between shrimp that have and have not been deveined.

lime juice, sugar, fish sauce, neutral oil, garlic, hot red pepper, shrimp, fresh cilantro

Taken from www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/shrimp-cooked-in-lime-juice-386609 (may not work)