Shrimp sandwich

We were really hungry yet sleepy last night. It was 11:30 pm and raining outside. I asked him, "Grocery store?", and he said, "Okay". The 24-h grocery store across our apartment is a real life saver, I tell you. There are countless times when we think of the store as our bigger fridge placed 10-m away from our room. Anyway, I`ve been wanting to make a shrimp sandwich, supposedly for our "let`s have a picnic near the river someday" plan. It turned out that someday is last night, at our bedroom, not the river.
So, we got home with the ingredients I needed. He started nibbling the potato chips we bought until I scolded him, "Stop eating! Wait until the sandwich is done!".  
I love you, sweetie.

Now, here is how our sandwiches are made.

Start by preparing mushroom and shrimp.
Lightly wash shiitake mushroom, cut the stem (don`t throw it away!), and slice them up.

Deshell and devein the shrimp. Tell you what, I just started to devein my shrimp only recently and it was a real shocking experience when I first time saw what`s inside the "vein". It`s not vein, though, it`s the intestine.  Go figure yourself if you haven`t done so. You will never ever ever cook your shrimp without deveining them first again, unless you`re a brave person.

So I got hungrier and dizzier with the shrimp cleaning process, but I finished it.
See honey? This shows how much I love you. You do remember the Zara sweater we saw last week, right? 


Now, drizzle some olive oil or heat some butter (low saturated fat for me, please) on your pan and dump in the mushroom first. I love the nutty and meaty smell of shiitake mushroom when they are sauteed. Keep sauteing until the mushrooms shrinks, then set them aside.


Use the same oil and pan and throw in the shrimp. I still don`t know how to tackle this, but I always find the shrimps releasing water during sauteing even though I have wiped off the water after washing shrimp. So what I do is, I just let them get steamed a bit with the water coming out, let it evaporates, and increase the heat to caramelize the shrimp.

After the shrimp is done, turn down the heat a bit, and put back the mushroom to the pan. 
Then, add your favorite sauce and seasoning. Mine was soy sauce, pepper, and salt. I was too sleepy to go crazy. Keep stirring up until shrimp and mushroom are evenly coated with the sauce. Be careful, though, the soy sauce thickens fast, thus it gets burned fast too.

Now the bread. I had my bread toasted for this sandwich. But if you just want regular bread, go for it. You can go stack up your sandwich.
I actually thought of mixing tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, cayenne pepper, and black pepper for the sauce, but I just found last night that I only have a tiny drop of mayonnaise left. So I just squeezed it out from the tube directly to the sandwich.
From the bottom is: bread-lettuce-sliced tomato-sauce-shrimp and mushroom-sauce-lettuce-bread

We had an energy boost and went to bed feeling full. Don`t do this, I warn you.

Ingredients:
Bread
Shiitake mushroom, sliced
Shrimp, deshelled and deveined
Lettuce
Tomato
Soy sauce
Salt and pepper

Baking (if you want toast and you don`t have toaster):
Remove bread crust before baking
180 C for 15 minutes