Last week, I wrote a bit about a shrimp stock that Alon Shaya of Domenica prepared before our eyes at Avery Island. I couldn't wait to try his technique of "bashing around the shrimp heads" to extract more shrimpy flavor. So the first chance I got, this past Thursday's farmer's market, I bought some fresh jumbo shrimp to make a stock of my own.
When I get a hankering for something, I become a relentless researcher. In a way, it's a hindrance--I believe there is one perfect way to make what I want using the ingredients I already have, and I look through every book and website I can find, sure that it will appear. That rarely happens, but that's how I end up making my own versions of things. (Sometimes it would be nice to just look up a recipe and buy what it calls for, though.)
Paul has been busy lately re-seasoning the cast iron skillet, and it's more beautiful than ever; it's got that slick, midnight-black, nonstick coating that it never really achieved before the last time it got caught in a little flood in the basement. We were anxious to get some good cracklin' cornbread going in that thing, although we didn't have cracklins, we just had bacon. And I didn't have milk, I just had buttermilk. And I wanted a little tiny bit of sugar and some flour along with the cornmeal, so we didn't have to eat cornmeal hockey pucks. The search was on. I never found a recipe that used the exact size of skillet we possess (9") and hot bacon drippings and buttermilk, etc., so I ended up adapting John Besh's recipe from his book My New Orleans. Luckily--and it was truly lucky, because I never really know what's going to happen when I alter recipes for baked goods--it was just what we wanted. A little chewy, very savory, and crispy on the edges from the screaming hot skillet.
The oil spill outlook has got us all worried these days. How will our fishing families adapt? How will the restaurant industry fare? It's still too soon to tell. But plenty of fresh, local seafood is still available right now, at the west bank wharf, in supermarkets, and at farmer's markets. Paul went last Saturday to the Crescent City Farmer's Market downtown and bought several pounds of gorgeous, perfect shrimp from Clara Gerica of Gerica Seafood. Her husband, Pete, shrimps in Lake Pontchartrain and sends his evening catch to market with Clara, who says their lake shrimping is unaffected at this point. So to celebrate that fact, and to celebrate shrimp in general, I concocted a tapas-style menu of two iconic recipes (barbecued shrimp; shrimp and grits (pictured at left)) and one newcomer (the shrimp taco).
