And now, for my only claim to hip hip histoire – Big Pimpin’s controversial sample of Khosara Khosara, an Egyptian song composed in 1957 by Baligh Hamdi and made very, very famous by the iconic Abdel Halim Hafiz. Imagine you’re 13 and discovering big girl radio (shoutout 106KMEL) and you and Mama Mona hear the first couple seconds of.. a Hafiz song? I actually distinctly remember my mom saying ‘wooooow I love this song I haven’t heard it in-‘ before Jay-Z cut her off.

The controversy came when my brother-in-law Jay and Timbaland paid EMI Arabia $100,000 for the sample and still got sued by everybody and they auntie to cut a little slice of that Big Pimpin’ check! In court, Jay even claimed he ‘didn’t know it was a sample’ but don’t y’all worry I had called him and told him about it so we’re all good now.

Anyway, let’s make some shrimps. This takes literally 20 minutes to come together so by the time this Hafiz song is over you’ll be done!

Recipe

1. Everything for the marinade goes in the food processor. There’s no measurements because I don’t measure. Just throw some of everything in and whir and taste it.
2. Now, adjust for balance. If it’s too sharp, try a little honey and cumin. If it’s just dull, add salt and lemon juice to brighten. If you made it too spicy by accident, add olive oil and cilantro. This is how you’re gonna learn to taste your way through food!
3. Marinate your shrimps – peeled and DEVEINED. That means you CHECKED the shrimps for veins – the little black lines at the back of them. If they are not deveined, run a knife along the big curve gently and then pull the vein out. This can be a 30 minute marinade or something you do a couple hours or the night before, whatever you want.
4. If in a cast iron pan: heat that thing up and throw down some neutral high smoke oil like grapeseed oil. Pull a shrimp out of the marinade with a pair of tongs and shake off excess marinade and lay the shrimp on the pan ONE BY ONE. Don’t just dump the whole bowl in the pan because they won’t get caramelized and nice.
5. It takes literally 2-3 minutes to cook shrimp so you want to move pretty quickly. By the time you have laid down a panful of them, the first one you added to the pan probably has enough color on it, so you can start checking and turning until they are cooked. Remove and serve!

If you’re going to grill them: place them on skewers and put the skewers on a hot oiled grill for 3 minutes per side.