Plate O’ Shrimp

A recent outing to a place that carries decent if inconsistent seafood yielded a dozen littleneck clams and a bag of wild Pacific shrimp. Our seafood options are limited up here, so I was thinking of ways to mix up what we can get that is both tasty and defensible. So on the ride home I did some thinking, and then some more once safely back in the kitchen. The results were quite good, and paved the way for a very compelling meal the following night. The difference between good and great food often lies in saving bits and pieces from previous meals.

I rinsed the clams and tossed them in a pot with garlic, herbs, and white wine to steam. Once open, I strained the pot liquor into a saucepan that had leftover smoked chicken-miso stock in it, and served the clams in that with chopped herbs as a first course.

Meanwhile, the shrimp had been sitting, still in their shells, in a bowl with soy sauce, fish sauce, smoked paprika, cider vinegar, salt, palm sugar, and garlic. I removed them from the marinade (saving it, of course) and threw them in the iron skillet. Once pink, I added a jigger of absinthe diluted with a bit of sake (since it’s not such a good idea to add 66% alcohol to a hot pan on a fire) and let it burn off:

And I served them with more of this red cabbage-carrot slaw that has evolved into a wonderful pickled salad sort of condiment on top of homemade quasi-tortillas and with roasted squash. I poured the rest of the marinade into the hot pan to make a good sauce. The borage is still going strong, so I picked some flowers for garnish. The absinthe (local, of course) added this wonderful licoricey-herbal overtone to the shrimp; it was assertive and yet completely transparent at the same time. A shelled shrimp with slaw wrapped in a piece of tortilla made for a pretty superb bite of dinner.

The next day, armed with all of the shrimp shells dutifully saved in a container, a block of firm tofu, and a lingering dissatisfaction at the abject gringo lameness of my tortillas, I set about making something new and better. For the new Chronogram article I reviewed some restaurants, among which Twisted Soul in Poughkeepsie. Lee cooks expertly remixed global street food with a deeply soulful groove and it made an impression. Specifically, his arepas: small corn cakes traditional in Venezuela and Colombia with lots of variations. His are crispy outside, creamy inside, and small enough to make for tapas-sized bites. Toppings include pulled pork and three treatments of tofu, so that idea was my jumping-off point.

Now I don’t know shit about arepas; I’ve never eaten them prior to trying his last summer. But I read about them some, and learned that they’re made from masarepa, a pre-cooked corn flour which I do not own, and have no desire to buy, since conventionally-farmed corn is a bane. But I wanted to make them. So I took some of the locally grown and milled organic corn flour, added a bit of the coarse polenta for texture, and pre-cooked it my damn self like it was polenta. Now I realize that after the Confederate Tea Party wins big on Tuesday we’ll all have to start calling polenta “grits,” but that’s how I did it. Best of all, I included a quick stock made from the shrimp shells in the cooking liquid, so it became like a stealthy postmodern shrimp and grits riff that I assimilated into my pinko, atheist, America-hating dinner. When Sarah Palin’s Facebook page is President, I’ll be first up against the wall. But until then, I’m going to eat well.

So I poured the creamy corn mush out onto a cutting board to cool and spread it into a roughly rectangular shape. Those jars in the background are some of the 25 quarts of pure, local, biodynamic applesauce I canned this weekend. Ingredient: apples. 6.25 gallons of it.

While it cooled, I gave the tofu a very nice char in the skillet with some coconut oil, then deglazed it with honey and more of the shrimp shell stock. I whisked up a tropical sort of sauce with peanut butter, olive oil, sesame oil, homemade sambal, cider vinegar, and shrimp stock. And I cut the cornmeal slab into squares and browned them in more of the coconut oil. So: more slaw–better with each passing day–then tofu, sauce, pickled black radish, and parsley on crispy, creamy corn cakes with the specter of absinthey shrimp hovering over it all like a spooky ghost.

This was the kid’s plate; grownups got more, and lots more of the nuclear sambal:

Seriously.

To drink, a 2009 Glenora Riesling. I’m learning a bit about the wines of the Finger Lakes, and Riesling is definitely something that does well up there. This was roughly Spätlese in sweetness, though maybe a tad more, and was bell-balanced with acidity. The fruit was pleasant, and also well-integrated, though not so citrusy as German examples. The classic petroleum note that makes German Riesling so elegant and mysterious was missing. I’m going to try socking a few of these away for a while to see if time adds any more complexity; my guess is that it could benefit from a couple of years at least.

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2 Comments

  1. November 2, 2010

    You do make me laugh. My understanding is that anything masa-beginning is nixtamalized first so the middle- and south Americans are not walking around in a pellagra-induced gambol. I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting too on the corny front, mainly because I grew a lot of different kinds and I can grind my own. Two years ago I made my own posole, which was fun, though rather laborious. But yeah, I see you’re narrowing your circle tighter and tighter…a good thing if the revolution does happen and we can’t buy anything not redolent of jet fuel fumes. Though I suppose it’ll be an interesting day if we can grow shreemps in the Hudson valley, or littleneck clams in Lk Michigan.

  2. Peter
    November 4, 2010

    Evidently masarepa is not nixtamalized. I have no problem with my lame gringo knockoffs-they were really good–and this cornmeal/flour is amazing. The seafood thing is an ongoing issue here. I’m not thrilled about it.

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