Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 May 2004 13:25:32
Recently I sat outside on a sunny morning under my pet oak tree in my backyard and processed a mess of shrimp and squid.
See this: me comfortably settled in one of those sling chairs, the umbrella-foldy ones like you bring to watch football. I had a huge silver salad bowl in the grass on one side for the edible parts and an equally huge silver colander on the other. HUGE. You could bathe a baby in them, easy. In my lap I had the smaller bowl of little critters as they came from the sea. Shrimp, squid, little crabs, little fish. No bits of jellyfish though.
I'd pick up a squid, and gently pull and twist to strip the inedible bits out. Toss that stuff into the colander. Heads and tentacles and so on. They must be spawning soon. Half of them had what looked like roe forming, the other half had turgid white sacs of what looked like the milky sperm-carying stuff. There's a name for that I can't recall... "spelt"? I shall have to look it up.
The last part to do was to slip the pretty sparkly thing that corresponds to a cuttlebone out of its sheath, and to rub the edges of the skin to peel it off. They are shocked white, the little things, when they are caught, but you still see the color spots under the cellophane outer skin. There was very little ink, but of course I got some on my shirt. It washed out though. The balloony edible part I clipped in two with my beloved kitchen shears. I now have a nice little batch of squid in the freezer to batter and fry later. Hopefully when squeamish English visitors are here, lol.
I repeated this all morning, in the deep shade with alternating warm and cool breezes stirring my hair and keeping me comfy. I did the shrimp next.
You take for granted you'll be getting cut and poked when you work with shrimp, they have those spines on their heads. First you twist the head off, then you peel off at least the first few rings of shell on the tail. You needn't peel it all off though, usually if you pinch the last few centimeters of tail the meat will slide up out of it.
They had not been sized. I think they came from a hobbyist, a family trawling perhaps, not a professional necessarily, or they'd have been sorted for size. My welder neighbor works on the fisherman's boats and is given more seafood than he can handle in return, and so shared with me.
Next day I made a huge stirfry, if you can call it that -- minimal olive oil and a touch of butter for flavor in the big pan. Snow peas, sugar snaps, bell pepper, water chestnuts, cocktail corn, salt, black pepper, cayenne, sage, thyme. Cooked that a while -- not too long, I like the veggies still kicking. Then added the shrimp. They only take a few minutes to turn opaque pinky-white. Then they're ready. Family liked that amazing well. :)
Recently made some pralines too. Basically sugar and pecans, with a little cream to help the sugar melt. Boiled, bubbly, ready to solidify when it cools -- dropped on waxed paper -- good stuff. Of course there is no way they will ever equal Mamman's pralines. I don't so much carry on the torch of her fabulous recipes, as use them for inspiration. I'll never be able to exactly duplicate.
She's the one who taught me the measureless cooking. You know, a pinch of this and a handful of that and toss it in and boil/bake/saute/blanch until it looks right. I have found that the hollow of my cupped hand IS a teaspoon...