Shrimp scampi has been on every Italian-American menu since approximately 1962, which means every chef who makes it carries the weight of a thousand mediocre versions. The garlic-scorched, butter-pooled, overcooked shrimp of a thousand hotel pans haunt the dish. Robbie Jester, who runs Pizzeria Mariana in Newark, Delaware, and also operates In Jest Private Chef and Events, decided the way through the haunting was technique specificity.
His shrimp went into a cold pan with the butter, the pan heated together so the butter basted the shrimp from below and the fat temperature climbed gradually — a bastardized beurre monté approach that keeps shrimp from seizing. Garlic went in at thirty seconds, not the beginning, to prevent scorching. White wine reduced by two-thirds before finishing butter was mounted off heat.
You can serve shrimp scampi from a hotel pan or you can serve it the way Jester does. The shrimp know the difference.