Shrimp Cocktail still served at the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino |
Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger had been writing individually until they got
together to write the Skylar Drake Murder Mystery series, hard-boiled tales
based in Hollywood in 1955. Learn more about them at their individual websites.
Desert Ice is the third hard-boiled Skylar Drake Murder
Mystery. A murder in L.A. takes Drake to Las Vegas in search of answers. Since
much of mid-1950s Las Vegas was demolished and reclaimed for more modern
building, it was obvious we needed to go there to research Sin City ourselves.
At that time, the mob was alive and well. The locals
welcomed the gangsters to the open city. This allowed them to enter the city
and do what they did best, operate gambling and prostitution establishments—
legally. They may have been criminals in other parts of the country but the
minute they set foot in Nevada, they became legitimate and very successful
businessmen.
While there, we had the opportunity to interview
several professors at UNLV as well as researchers of old Las Vegas. Among the people we spoke to who lived
in Las Vegas during the 1950s were the daughter of a mobster and a dancer. The
subjects that kept cropping up during our interviews were the Mob and (believe
it not) Shrimp Cocktail.
We learned that Shrimp Cocktail was introduced to Las
Vegas by Italo Ghelfi, a restaurant/bar owner from San Francisco. He and his
partners were lured to Las Vegas to buy the Western Hotel then owned by Emilio
"Gomba" Giorgetti. Giorgetti controlled illegal slot operations,
liquor sales and a number of powerful politicians. When this reputed mob boss
was subpoenaed to appear before the Kefauver Committee on organized crime, he
decided to leave town—fast.
Giorgetti sold the hotel to the partnership.
Two years later the Western was sold, and the
partnership opened the Golden Gate Casino on the main floor of the Sal Sagev
Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas spelled backwards). To attract gamblers he introduced
and sold the "Original Shrimp Cocktail” for fifty cents. It was small
salad shrimp with cocktail sauce served in a tulip glass. Tourists and locals
couldn't get enough of it. Successful? Ghelfi managed the casino for forty
years.
Keep in mind Ghelfi not only displaced a mobster from
Las Vegas, he also began the shrimp cocktail tradition that still thrives.
With this in mind, we had to include it in our story.
Skylar Drake, along with an FBI agent and three female Pinkerton detectives,
enjoy the appetizer as the mystery begins to intensify in Las Vegas. The
Pinkerton detectives are from other parts of the country, so the idea of shrimp
in a tulip glass with delicious sauce does tend to preoccupy them when off
duty— so to speak.
Las Vegas made Shrimp Cocktail popular in the western
states in the 1950s. People who visited Sin City would return home wanting the
tasty shrimp.
Shrimp
Cocktail
for the shrimp:
8 cups water
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 medium lemon, thinly sliced
3 fresh Italian parsley sprigs
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
1-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 pounds (21/25-count) shrimp, peeled except for the
tails and deveined
for the cocktail sauce:
1-1/2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup prepared horseradish
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more
as needed
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
Combine all the ingredients for the shrimp except the
shrimp in a 4-quart pot over high heat and bring to a boil.
Add the shrimp, stir, and remove the pan from the
heat. Cover with a tight fitting lid and let sit until the shrimp are opaque
and just cooked through, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with
paper towels and set it aside.
Drain the shrimp in a strainer and transfer them to
the baking sheet, arranging in a single layer. Be sure to remove and discard any
solids from the poaching liquid that have stuck to the shrimp (discard the
contents in the strainer as well). Let sit until cooled to room temperature,
about 10 minutes.
Transfer the shrimp to a large bowl and cover with
plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour and up to 1 day. Meanwhile,
make the cocktail sauce:
Stir all the ingredients together in a medium bowl.
Taste and season with more pepper as needed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap
and chill until ready to serve. Serve the shrimp with the sauce for dipping.
Desert Ice
In 1955, a missing Marine and stolen diamonds lead
Private Eye Skylar Drake to Sin City, where the women are beautiful and almost
everything is legal—except murder.
The FBI and a Las Vegas crime boss force him to
choose between the right and wrong side of the law. All the while, government
secrets, sordid lies and trickery block his efforts to solve the case.
Common sense tells him to go back to L.A. but his gut
tells him to find his fellow Marine.
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1 comment:
Thank you, Lois, for hosting us. It's ironic that Shrimp Cocktail was instrumental in ridding a 1955 Las Vegas of a mobster.
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