Turkish Baked Shrimp Guvec with Peppers, Eggplant, and Mushrooms
Eggplant, red peppers, and mushrooms cooked down with tomato, garlic, and paprika, then baked with shrimp folded through and a thin veil of melting cheese browned on top.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Guvec is the name of both the clay pot and whatever goes into it, and in Turkish seaside restaurants the shrimp version turns up on every table, arriving in a little earthenware dish so hot it is still moving. I make it in a skillet and finish it in the oven, which gets you to the same place. What I like about the method is the order of operations. Everything except the shrimp is cooked properly first, in a pan, until the vegetables have surrendered, and the shrimp only meet the heat for the last few minutes.
That order is also why it eats well. Eggplant that has been given real time goes creamy and takes on the flavor of the tomato and the paprika, mushrooms give up their water and then brown, and peppers turn soft and sweet at the edges. Against all that soft, the shrimp are firm and slightly sweet and pop between your teeth. The cheese on top is only a thin scattering, enough to brown and pull a little, and the lemon squeezed over at the table cuts a line straight through the middle of it.
This is my dish for the evening when I want dinner to feel like an occasion without doing anything difficult. It takes about an hour, most of which is the vegetables cooking down while I get on with other things, and the last ten minutes in the oven give me time to set the table. It also scales up easily, so I make a double batch in a large baking dish when people are coming, and I put lemon wedges and a bowl of chopped parsley out and let everyone finish their own.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lb large shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails off
- 1 medium eggplant (about 11 oz), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 2 red bell peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
- 9 oz cremini mushrooms, quartered
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 small onion, halved and sliced thin
- 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 cup coarsely grated kasar or low-moisture mozzarella
- 1 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
- 1/4 tsp Turkish pul biber or cayenne
- 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, plus wedges to serve
- 1/3 tsp fine sea salt
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Brown the eggplant: Heat 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the eggplant cubes in one layer with a pinch of the salt and leave them alone for 3 minutes, until the undersides are properly dark. Toss and cook 4 minutes more. They will drink up the oil at first and then release it again as they soften, which is the sign to move on.
- Add the peppers, mushrooms, and onion: Add the remaining 1/2 tbsp of oil, then the peppers, mushrooms, and onion. Cook over medium-high heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. The mushrooms will give up a pool of liquid and you want to keep going until that liquid has boiled away and the pan is sizzling again rather than steaming.
- Build the sauce: Clear a space in the middle, add the garlic, paprika, cayenne, and tomato paste, and stir them together in the bare pan for 45 seconds until the paste darkens a shade and smells toasted. Add the cherry tomatoes and the rest of the salt, stir everything together, and cook 5 minutes more, pressing the tomatoes with a spoon until they burst and their juice thickens around the vegetables. Heat the oven to 425°F.
- Fold in the shrimp: Pat the shrimp dry, season them with the black pepper, and fold them through the vegetables so most of them are half buried. Scatter the cheese over the surface in a thin, uneven layer. It should look patchy rather than blanketed, since you want browned spots and not a lid.
- Bake and finish: Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the shrimp are opaque all the way through and curled into loose Cs and the cheese is bubbling and browned in places. A tight little O means they have gone a minute too far. Take the pan out, add the lemon juice, scatter the parsley over the top, and bring it to the table in the pan with lemon wedges.
Variations
- Zucchini and green pepper: Swap the mushrooms for a diced zucchini and use long green Turkish peppers in place of one of the red bells for a lighter, greener pan.
- With white beans: Stir a cup of drained cannellini beans in with the tomatoes for a heartier dish that stretches to five or six people.
- Chicken guvec: Use bite-sized pieces of boneless chicken thigh in place of the shrimp, browned at the start rather than added at the end, and cooked through to 175°F.
- Cheeseless, with yogurt: Leave the cheese off and spoon cold garlicky yogurt over each portion at the table, which is closer to how eggplant is served in a lot of Turkish homes.
Storage & Leftovers
It keeps three days in a sealed container in the refrigerator, and the vegetable base is arguably better on day two once the paprika and tomato have settled into the eggplant. The shrimp are the part that suffers, so if you know in advance that you are cooking for leftovers, undercook them slightly.
Reheat covered in a 325°F oven for about 12 minutes, or in a skillet over medium-low with a splash of water and a lid. Both are gentler on the shrimp than a microwave, which tends to turn them rubbery in about forty seconds. Fresh lemon over the top on the second night is not optional as far as I am concerned.
The vegetable base freezes well on its own for up to three months, without the shrimp or the cheese. Thaw it overnight, warm it in a skillet until it sizzles, then fold in fresh shrimp, top with cheese, and give it its ten minutes in the oven. That is close enough to the original that nobody at my table has ever remarked on it.
Notes & Tips
- Dry the shrimp properly: Shrimp straight from the bag carry a surprising amount of water, and that water dilutes the sauce and steams the cheese. Two minutes with a towel changes the finished dish.
- Cook the tomato paste: Thirty to sixty seconds in the hot dry part of the pan takes the tinny edge off it and deepens the color of the whole dish. Straight from the tube into liquid, it tastes flat.
- Watch for the C: A perfectly cooked shrimp is a loose letter C. A tight O is overcooked. Pull the pan when most of them are still slightly open and the residual heat will do the rest.
- Scatter the cheese, do not blanket it: You are after browned patches with sauce bubbling up between them. A solid layer traps steam and the top goes pale and slack instead of blistered.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The shrimp, the eggplant, and the peppers each carry a different part of this dish. The shrimp bring nearly all the protein, the eggplant and peppers bring the bulk and the fiber, and the tomato and olive oil bind the two together into something that eats like a full plate.
- Shrimp cook in minutes and stay firm and sweet, and a portion this size carries a dense amount of protein along with selenium and the mineral iodine that shellfish are one of the few reliable sources of.
- Eggplant is mostly water and structure, which is why it collapses so completely once it is properly cooked, and the fiber left behind is what gives the sauce its body without anything being thickened.
- Red peppers turn sweet and slack in the pan and hold onto a good deal of their vitamin C even after the oven, and their color comes from carotenoids that the olive oil in the pan helps you take up.
- Paprika, garlic, and pul biber are doing the seasoning here rather than salt, and the lemon squeezed over at the table is what keeps a dish this soft and savory from tasting heavy.
- As you eat, notice the difference between the vegetables that have gone completely soft and the shrimp that have not, and let the pan sit in front of you for a minute before you start, while it is still ticking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a clay pot?
No. An ovenproof skillet or a shallow ceramic baking dish both work. Clay holds heat longer, which is why restaurant versions are still spitting when they land in front of you, but it makes no difference to the flavor. What matters far more is a wide pan, so the vegetables brown rather than stew.
Can I use frozen shrimp?
Yes, and I usually do. Thaw them in a colander under cold running water for about five minutes, then dry them thoroughly on a towel. Wet shrimp will water down the sauce in the oven and never take on any color.
My eggplant stayed spongy. What happened?
It came off the heat too early. Eggplant has two stages, and the first one, where it soaks up every drop of oil and stays squeaky, is the one people mistake for done. Keep going until the cubes slump and a spoon crushes one easily. Adding more oil at that point does not help, and time does.
What cheese should I use?
Kasar is the Turkish one, a firm yellow sheep or cow cheese that melts smoothly. Low-moisture mozzarella is the easiest substitute and behaves almost identically. Avoid anything very salty or very soft, since a small amount is meant to brown in patches rather than run everywhere.