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Roasted Shrimp Salad with Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes and Avocado

Roasted Shrimp Salad with Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes and Avocado
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        Last Sunday, we gave a pool party for our god-daughter.  It’s an annual event to celebrate her birthday for the four of us who are called “The Uncles”.  Andrew and I and Terry and Shawn have watched Olivia grow up and we’ve been there for every birthday.  It’s the perfect time to break out the Rosé and the pool toys—this year a gigantic swan Olivia named “Gloria Swanson”.  It’s also the perfect occasion for this salad.   I was drawn to a recipe from Ann Burrell, the Food Network’s wild-haired woman who, it turns out, is a summer visitor to the Hamptons.  In her original recipe which appeared in Hamptons magazine, Ann used our perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes as the basis for a shrimp salad.  I took off from there.  First, I have to thank Ina Garten, who, as almost everybody knows, lives in the next town over full time.  From Ina, I learned that roasting shrimp is the best way to capture all their flavor.  Far superior to boiling shrimp, roasting them seems to bake all the flavor into the shrimp.  The tomatoes were a no-brainer. 

The Comfort family farm down the road has baskets of heirloom cherry tomatoes and plenty of beefsteak tomatoes too which I put into action. Since Olivia loves avocado, Andrew and I peeled and sliced 3 ripe avocados into the salad.  The final touch in Ann Burrell’s recipe called for Black Volcanic Salt.  Fortunately, Williams Sonoma sells this rare salt in a finishing salt selection.  If you can get your hands on it, please do.  Otherwise you can be forgiven for using any large grained salt like Fleur de Sel.  This salad is so simple to make, so satisfying to eat and so beautiful to look at that I’d recommend putting that bag of Costco shrimp you’ve got in the freezer to work this weekend.  Here’s the recipe:


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