03 May 2010

Jumbo Shrimp


(Frozen Jumbo Shrimp, image courtesy Food Mayhem 2010)

I was peeling some shrimp last night to sauté in garlic and extra virgin olive oil. It has been steamy hot lately, the great slump into the long season of simmering heat here that always starts a few weeks before the building HVAC is cut over to chill water from hot.
 
The windows are open and the fans are running and my skin was moist with a sheen of sweat under a t-shirt that felt too thick for comfort.
 
Hence the shrimp, and the feeling I was back in Florida, on the Red Neck Riviera or in the house in Jacksonville, where the temperature hung in the air almost visible and alligators were real.
 
The shrimp had been around for a while, frozen, of course. Bags of them had been on sale at the Commissary and were an impulse buy. A pal sniffed when I talked about using them for hors d’oeurves for some holiday event, remarking on the appalling labor conditions in the shrimping industry.
 
It was a point I had to agree with, and thus the bag lingered in the freezer in solidarity with the workers overseas. Then, late in the afternoon with the sun shimmering down on the balcony, my son announced that he might be available for dinner should I wish to cook. A review of what was available yielded the bag, and I looked at the label.
 
Jumbo shrimp. One of those terms of improbability we accept without questions. I rolled the term around on my tongue for a while, enjoying the oxymoron. Then I considered the real possibility that I was the moron. These shrimp came from overseas somewhere- Gulf of Thailand, maybe, but the domestic industry is in big trouble.
 
In addition to problems with overproduction, now there is the oil contamination. A pal down in Pensacola wrote his weekly update, and mentioned that his son had gone down to the fishmonger to get some oysters for a mid afternoon Sunday snack. He reported the store was mobbed with folks panicking because of the possible total wipe-out of the Gulf ecosystem.
 
He summed it up by saying “ Yo dudes, momma nature always fixes herself, without human intervention.”
 
My pal is a hard-headed and practical guy, and if things were normal I would completely agree. But I also know that the relentless onslaught of Man can throw even a gigantic natural system out of whack. Like fish factories that vacuum the sea of biomass, or the implacable Soviets who managed to transform the Aral Sea from a fertile fishing ground to an acidic desert.
 
I don’t know what to think, or how many impossible things to believe before breakfast anymore. I put the shrimp on to simmer, thinking they might be the last I cook for a long while, and reviewed the rest of the mail I had been too lazy to open on the long still afternoon.
 
I get a lot of mail from across the spectrum, left to right, some of it well considered, and some verging on severe psychological problems. I don’t mind. The delete key works just fine.
 
The last one was so crazy that I had to stop and think about it for a moment, with the smell of fresh crushed garlic wafting in the humid air out of the kitchen. I read it again:
 
“US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig…A Kremlin report is circulating that North Korea torpedoed the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform… built and financed by South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd…causing loss of life and billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States…”

There was a link to one of those places you shouldn’t go, and of course I went.
 
There was a long article there filled with alleged facts and hallucinogenic assertions about a North Korean merchant ship out of Cuba, and a YUGO-class mini-sub. It was a slick piece of paranoia that culminated in assessment that the President was considering the nuclear option against Pyongyang.
 
If I had to guess, it looked like a classic bit of Russian disinformation- like the old favorite that AIDS was a CIA plot. Taken with the fact that the North Koreans may very well have conducted an unprovoked attack on a South Korean destroyer a month ago, there is that little kernel of “maybe” that opens doubt and helps build a legend.
 
There are a lot of people ready to accept the looniest things.
 
I decided not to believe in that impossible thing, since it would clearly spoil my dinner. I summoned my son, who was processing three entirely separate sporting events on the big screen, and a Mel Gibson hallucination on a fourth channel.
 
We enjoyed the shrimp, which cooked down small.
 
Since we may be a bit short on fresh and frozen for the immediate and middle future, it might be time to stock up on canned shrimp while it is still on the shelves at the Commissary. It could be a finite resource. Accordingly, I am appending another recipe received fortuitously from a pal in Alaska:



“Canned Shrimp Alison:”

Ingredients:
1 cup flaked coconut (sweetened is ok)
1 tsp curry powder
(2) 8 oz pkg of cream cheese, softened
(2) 6 oz can of shrimp, rinsed and drained
a bit of finely chopped onion (I used the white parts of 2 green onions)
 
Wheat Thin-brand Tomato Basil Crackers
 
1. Most complicated step:  combine coconut with curry powder, mix really well, spread on plain cookie sheet and roast for 5 minutes at 325 degrees.
2. Mix the coconut, cream cheese and onion together first, then mix in shrimp.
3. Serve on the crackers.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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