Oh! That reminds me: Shrimp Dejonghe?< absolutefutility >
The scallop post below reminded me of a shrimp dish (you could make it with scallops) that I recently heard about and want to try. I'm just not sure I "get the point" of the dish.
The dish is called "Shrimp Dejonghe", and that can be spelled "De Jonghe" and "deJonghe" and is pronounced like "dijon".
The recipe is actually very simple. You take shrimp, peeled, deveined, tail-off, and mix it with a "filling" of vast quantities of butter, garlic, shallots, brandy, and bread crumbs that are all mixed until they form a crispy paste.
Then the whole thing is packed into a baking dish and baked until the shrimp are done and the butter is melted and everything smells like garlic.
And then what?
The recipe says you can spread it on bread, serve it with pasta or rice...but why? This just seems like a Shrimp Scampi with extra steps. What is the benefit to adding the bread crumbs? Is there some novelty I'm missing that you'd get from lumping a crusty shrimp onto a piece of bread?
Now, if you minced the shrimp or crab or scallops or lobster or oysters or, hell, even just fish...and made into into a paste THEN I could see the benefit of spreading it onto bread or crackers. But the recipe leaves them whole. So...