[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":397},["ShallowReactive",2],{"recipe:tomate-crevette":3,"recipe:country:belgium":180},{"slug":4,"title":5,"nativeName":6,"pronunciation":7,"countrySlug":8,"region":9,"emoji":10,"summary":11,"intro":12,"story":13,"whyThis":14,"tips":19,"substitutions":26,"variations":39,"serveWith":49,"storage":51,"faq":52,"equipment":68,"baseServings":73,"prepMinutes":74,"cookMinutes":75,"restMinutes":76,"difficulty":77,"course":78,"diet":80,"mainIngredients":84,"ingredients":89,"instructions":131,"nutrition":153,"images":161,"keywords":171,"publishedAt":178,"updatedAt":178,"authorSlug":179},"tomate-crevette","Tomate Crevette (Tomato Stuffed with North Sea Shrimp)","Tomaat garnaal \u002F tomate crevettes grises","toh-MAHT kruh-VET","belgium","The Belgian coast","🍅","A hollowed ripe tomato packed with tiny hand-peeled grey shrimp folded through lemony mayonnaise — the cold starter every Belgian brasserie serves from spring onwards.","Tomate crevette is a whole ripe tomato, hollowed and salted, filled to overflowing with North Sea grey shrimp bound in a lemony mayonnaise, with its lid perched back on top. It has four real ingredients and no cooking, which means everything depends on the quality of two of them: the tomato must be ripe enough to smell of tomato, and the shrimp must be the small, grey-brown, intensely sweet North Sea variety rather than the big pink ones. The mayonnaise is there to hold the shrimp together, not to dominate — you should taste shellfish and lemon first. Belgians eat it as a starter from late spring through summer, usually with a few fries alongside, which sounds odd until you have done it.","The shrimp at the centre of this dish is Crangon crangon, the North Sea grey shrimp, and it is a genuinely local product. They are caught in the shallow waters off the Belgian and Dutch coast, boiled on board within minutes of landing in the net, and sold cooked in their shells. In Oostduinkerke a handful of fishermen still catch them on horseback, dragging nets behind draught horses through the surf — a practice recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2013, and one of the very few places on earth where it survives.\n\nThe shrimp are also tiny, which creates the dish's one real economic fact: peeling them is slow, skilled handwork, and hand-peeled grey shrimp are expensive. Much of the commercial catch is shipped to Morocco or Poland for peeling and shipped back, a detail Belgians discuss with some discomfort. Coastal restaurants that advertise handgepelde garnalen are making a point about it, and charging accordingly. If you buy them shell-on and peel them yourself, you will understand the price within about ten minutes.\n\nThe dish itself belongs to the same brasserie repertoire as shrimp croquettes and cold seafood platters — cold starters that show off the North Sea without cooking it. It is unfussy in a way that leaves nowhere to hide. A pale winter tomato makes it watery and dull; too much mayonnaise makes it taste like a supermarket sandwich filling. Done with a proper summer tomato and enough shrimp to spill over the sides, it is one of the best things on any Belgian menu, and the version served with a cone of hot fries on the side is a specifically Belgian pleasure that no other country has thought to try.",[15,16,17,18],"Salts and drains the hollowed tomato so the filling does not slide out on a pool of tomato water.","Makes a mayonnaise light enough to coat the shrimp rather than smother them, with lemon leading.","Explains which shrimp to buy and what to do if grey shrimp are unavailable where you live.","Ten minutes of work, no cooking, and it looks like restaurant food on the plate.",[20,21,22,23,24,25],"Use tomatoes that are genuinely ripe and fragrant at the stem. A hard, pale tomato will make the whole dish taste of water and nothing else.","Salt the hollowed tomato shells and turn them upside down on kitchen paper for 15 minutes. This draws out the water that would otherwise thin the mayonnaise.","Buy grey shrimp already peeled if you can, but check they are stored cold and smell sweet rather than of ammonia.","Fold the mayonnaise through the shrimp gently with a spatula. Stirring hard breaks the delicate shrimp into mush.","Dress the shrimp no more than 30 minutes before serving. Left longer, they release liquid and the mayonnaise slackens.","Keep everything cold: chilled tomatoes, chilled shrimp, chilled bowl. This dish is only good when it is properly cold.",[27,31,35],{"original":28,"swap":29,"note":30},"North Sea grey shrimp","The smallest cooked cold-water shrimp you can find, such as Atlantic or Greenland prawns","Not the same sweetness, but the right size and texture. Avoid large tiger or king prawns entirely — they are too meaty and the balance collapses.",{"original":32,"swap":33,"note":34},"Homemade mayonnaise","Good jarred mayonnaise thinned with lemon juice and a spoonful of crème fraîche","Perfectly acceptable, and closer to what many brasseries use. Just lighten it — straight jarred mayonnaise is too stiff.",{"original":36,"swap":37,"note":38},"Whole tomato shells","Halved avocados, or the filling served in a glass","Both appear on Belgian menus. The avocado version is called avocat crevettes and follows exactly the same method.",[40,43,46],{"name":41,"description":42},"Avocat crevettes grises","The same shrimp mayonnaise piled into halved ripe avocado instead of tomato. Richer, and the standard alternative on the same brasserie menus.",{"name":44,"description":45},"Garnaalkroketten","The hot relative: the same grey shrimp bound in a stiff béchamel, breadcrumbed and deep-fried into croquettes, served with fried parsley and lemon.",{"name":47,"description":48},"Tomate crevette with egg","A finely chopped hard-boiled egg folded into the shrimp mayonnaise, which stretches expensive shrimp further and softens the texture.",[50],"A few crisp lettuce leaves, a lemon wedge, buttered brown bread — or, in Belgian fashion, a small cone of hot fries.","Assemble tomate crevette within an hour of serving; it does not hold. The shrimp release liquid into the mayonnaise as they sit and the salted tomato shell continues to weep, so a dish made in the morning for the evening will be swimming by dinner. You can hollow and salt the tomatoes and make the mayonnaise up to a day ahead and keep them separately in the fridge, then fold the shrimp through and fill at the last moment. Never freeze it — the shrimp turn woolly and the mayonnaise splits irreversibly.",[53,56,59,62,65],{"question":54,"answer":55},"What are grey shrimp and why are they expensive?","Grey shrimp, Crangon crangon, are small brown-grey shrimp caught in the shallow North Sea and boiled on the boat within minutes of landing. They are only two or three centimetres long, so peeling them is slow handwork that cannot be fully mechanised, and that labour is what drives the price. Their flavour is much sweeter and more concentrated than large warm-water prawns.",{"question":57,"answer":58},"Can I use regular pink prawns instead?","You can, but choose the smallest cold-water shrimp available rather than tiger or king prawns. Large prawns have a firm, meaty bite that overwhelms the tomato and turns the dish into a prawn cocktail. If small shrimp are all you can get, chop them roughly so the filling still has the right fine texture.",{"question":60,"answer":61},"Why is my filling watery?","Either the tomato shells were not salted and drained, or the dish sat too long after assembly. A hollowed tomato keeps releasing juice, so salt the inside, turn the shells upside down on kitchen paper for 15 minutes, and pat them dry before filling. Then dress the shrimp and assemble no more than half an hour before eating.",{"question":63,"answer":64},"What do Belgians serve with tomate crevette?","In brasseries it usually arrives on a lettuce leaf with a lemon wedge, sometimes with fried parsley on top, and very often with a small portion of hot fries on the side — the hot-cold contrast is a specifically Belgian habit. At home it is more likely to come with buttered brown bread as a light summer lunch.",{"question":66,"answer":67},"Can I make this dish in winter?","Technically yes, but it will not be good. The dish has no cooking and only a handful of ingredients, so a hard, underripe winter tomato has nowhere to hide and makes everything taste watery. If you must, use ripe vine or cocktail tomatoes stored at room temperature for a few days, or switch to the avocado version instead.",[69,70,71,72],"Small sharp knife","Teaspoon or melon baller","Mixing bowl","Whisk",4,25,0,15,"easy",[79],"appetizer",[81,82,83],"pescatarian","gluten-free","dairy-free",[85,86,87,88],"tomato","shrimp","eggs","lemon",[90,95,99,104,107,109,111,115,119,125,127],{"ref":85,"qty":73,"unit":91,"name":92,"note":93,"group":94},"piece","large ripe tomatoes","ripe and fragrant, not firm and pale","For the tomatoes",{"qty":96,"unit":97,"name":98,"group":94},1,"tsp","fine salt, for drawing out the tomato water",{"ref":86,"qty":100,"unit":101,"name":102,"group":103},300,"g","cooked and peeled North Sea grey shrimp","For the filling",{"ref":87,"qty":96,"unit":91,"name":105,"group":106},"egg yolk, at room temperature","For the mayonnaise",{"qty":96,"unit":97,"name":108,"group":106},"Dijon mustard",{"ref":88,"qty":96,"unit":91,"name":110,"group":106},"lemon, half juiced and half cut into wedges",{"qty":112,"unit":113,"name":114,"group":106},150,"ml","neutral oil (sunflower or grapeseed)",{"ref":116,"qty":117,"unit":97,"name":118,"group":106},"white-pepper",0.25,"ground white pepper",{"ref":120,"qty":121,"unit":122,"name":123,"group":124},"parsley",2,"tbsp","flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped","To finish",{"qty":73,"unit":91,"name":126,"group":124},"crisp lettuce leaves, to sit the tomatoes on",{"qty":128,"unit":129,"name":130,"group":124},null,"to taste","salt",[132,136,140,144,147,150],{"title":133,"text":134,"tip":135},"Hollow the tomatoes","Slice the top centimetre off each of {qty:tomato} of tomatoes and keep the lids. Cut around the inside wall with a small sharp knife and scoop out the seeds and core with a teaspoon, leaving a shell about 1 cm thick that still stands up on its own.","Do not cut too close to the skin or the shell will collapse when you fill it.",{"title":137,"text":138,"timerSeconds":139},"Salt and drain them","Sprinkle the inside of each shell with the fine salt and stand them upside down on a double layer of kitchen paper for 15 minutes. A surprising amount of liquid will run out — this is what keeps the filling from sliding.",900,{"title":141,"text":142,"tip":143},"Whisk the mayonnaise","Whisk the egg yolk with the mustard, half the lemon juice, the white pepper and a pinch of salt. Add the oil drop by drop at first, whisking constantly, then in a thin steady stream once it thickens, until you have a mayonnaise that holds a soft peak.","Everything at room temperature. A fridge-cold yolk is the usual reason a mayonnaise refuses to come together.",{"title":145,"text":146},"Lighten and season it","Loosen the mayonnaise with the rest of the lemon juice and a teaspoon of cold water until it drops slowly off the whisk rather than clinging to it. Taste — it should be noticeably lemony, because the shrimp and tomato will mute it.",{"title":148,"text":149},"Fold in the shrimp","Tip {qty:shrimp} of shrimp into a cold bowl and fold in just enough mayonnaise to coat them — usually about two thirds of what you have made. Fold with a spatula in slow turns so the shrimp stay whole, then add the parsley and a final crack of pepper.",{"title":151,"text":152},"Fill and serve cold","Pat the tomato shells dry inside, sit each on a lettuce leaf, and heap the shrimp in so it mounds well above the rim. Lean the tomato lid against the side, add a lemon wedge, and serve straight away while everything is properly chilled.",{"calories":154,"protein":155,"carbs":156,"fat":157,"fiber":121,"sugar":158,"sodium":159,"estimated":160},340,18,7,27,5,890,true,[162,165,167,169],{"src":163,"alt":164},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftomate-crevette\u002Fhero.jpg","Ripe tomato hollowed and heaped with tiny grey shrimp in mayonnaise, lid leaning against the side",{"src":166,"alt":164},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftomate-crevette\u002Fhero-16x9.jpg",{"src":168,"alt":164},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftomate-crevette\u002Fhero-4x3.jpg",{"src":170,"alt":164},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftomate-crevette\u002Fhero-1x1.jpg",[172,173,174,175,176,177],"tomate crevette","tomaat garnaal","grey shrimp","belgian starter","north sea shrimp","cold 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