Many of the best home cooks I know cook by instinct. They can tell by the way something smells, looks, feels or sounds how it will taste. They also have developed their own ways to do things. My dear mother-in-law is one of these cooks. Having raised three athletic sons, she has cooked…a lot and her shrimp are the best. She preps them so that the flesh of the shrimp curls outward but stays wonderfully tender. When I asked her about how she cuts her shrimp to achieve this, she carefully explained how to devein a shrimp. I explained that I have deveined many a shrimp but they never looked liked hers. A moment of silence followed. “Hmm…maybe I do cut the shrimp a little deeper than other people.” She then went straight into her kitchen to write out her recipe for me. Here it is, her ‘top secret formula’, generously described with lots of pictures to boot (my successful attempt is on the one with the purple plate!)

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