Without Nuts

Coco shrimp

Shrimp perloo, also spelled purloo or pilau, is a Southern coco shrimp recipe that’s a lot like jambalaya. Rice, shrimp, bacon and vegetables in a one-pot dish. Recipe from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Heyser In Charleston, South Carolina, rice was once king.

Such a strange name, and spelling. It gets even stranger when you see it spelled purloo or perlo. But if you say it, and you’ve been exposed to the cooking of certain parts of the Middle East, India or East Africa, you’ll recognize that this is a version of pilau. And if you eat it, you will taste echoes of its more famous cousin, Louisiana jambalaya. The concept of a one-pot, rice-and-whatever dish exists wherever rice is grown, and in Senegal there is a dish known as jollof rice, with its own variations throughout that part of Africa.