Those aren't shrimp - they're wood lice, basically. They might be delicious, but considering they come from the Marianas trench you're not likely to ever know. I've had shrimp bigger than that. I worked above a fishmonger in Seattle that often had "Colossal shrimp" that, when cleaned and deveined, weighed more than a quarter pound each and were longer than my hand. They were live-caught about 200 miles away and pretty damn tasty. The farmed Thai shrimp aren't particularly noteworthy. If you really love shrimp they'll do - "what shrimp eaters eat when they're not eating shrimp." Gulf shrimp, likewise, aren't particularly interesting. Fresh tiger prawns can be delicious. You've probably only ever had frozen. Where it's really at, though, is spot prawns: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_f... http://hamahamaoysters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/s... Unlike gulf shrimp or tiger prawns, which are caught by big swath nets like krill, spot prawns are caught like lobsters. They're solitary little fuckers that wander around the bottom of the sea kicking ass until they screw up and become my dinner. They're covered in razor blades and their carapaces are tough as fuck. And you buy them live and you crack their heads off and you peel the carapace and OMFG they're fucking delicious. And beautiful, too. They're this lovely orangey-red with white spots after you cook them, and they're damn near honey-sweet. If you can't find spot prawns, rock shrimp are a distant second. Also cranky little fuckers that roam around beating up sea anemones, rock shrimp are almost always frozen in my experience and they're a pain in the ass to get out of the shell. I've never seen them un-processed. If you ever get a chance overseas, don't pass up this guy: http://www.rawfish.com.au/easy-moreton-bay-bugs-florentine-w... Moreton Bay Bugs, or slipper lobsters, are fucking delicious. Better even than spot prawns. Never tried them frozen; I find they're near-impossible to get in the US so I haven't tried. For the record, I find lobster to be highly overrated. Shrimp I didn't really care for until I had the real stuff. Kinda like seafood in general: growing up in New Mexico, the only thing worth eating is trout. Moving to Washington, I discovered that you can taste the difference in salmon not only in species, but in what fucking river they're caught in (Copper river is good but Yukon is where it's at).
As for Salmon (and most other fish), how tasty it is depends on it's marbling (much like meat). The colder the water, the higher the fat content. If that fat content is well distributed, then chances are you've got one tasty fish. I worked with a restaurant that used to serve wild caught Scottish Salmon and it was pretty darned good. They also served fresh mahi-mahi that they had flown to them from Hawaii. Also damned good, especially considering this was the midwest. I'll be on the look out for some slipper lobsters!
Seriously. Cocktail shrimp are like the chicken McNuggets of the sea. No, actually I guess that would be fish sticks. Which I kinda like. Damn, fish sticks sound good right now. >Much like Dom Perignon when it comes to champagne. -Strike that, DP can be damn good depending on vintage. >Lobster can be quite good it's just never that good. It's been marketed to us as the end all of food. You are aware, of course: http://www.cracked.com/article_17246_when-lobster-was-spam-5... I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Perrier Jouet. Partly because it's fucking delicious. Partly because their bottles are hand-painted. Partly because I saw this ad in Gourmet once: http://www.tattoo-passion.com/affiches_pub/new_pub_perrier_j... ...called up Perrier Jouet, asked if they had any promo materials for it, and they shipped me two giant posters.
1. I didn't know that about the history of lobsters. thanks. 2. Is that Audrey Tautou? Dom Perignon Story: I had no idea how to pop the question to my wife (then girlfriend). I walked around for at least a week with the ring in my pocket in hopes that serendipity would lend me a hand. It never did. My girlfriend and I had recently put a deposit down on a small apartment in a historic home in downtown Ann Arbor. It was under major renovations and we were to be the first couple that would ever live there. We were excited. We would occasionally decide to see if the door to the place was open and sneak in and go upstairs and hang out in our future apartment amongst the construction rubble. At the time I was managing a restaurant, working 70 hours a week and pulling in $35k a year. Not exactly rolling in cash. I finally came up with an idea on how I was going to propose to her. I went to the property management company and got their permission to set up a table in our future apartment, with a white table cloth, candles, strawberries, truffles and of course a bottle of Champagne. The day before I was to propose marriage, one of my regulars came in to the restaurant. I told him about my plan and he congratulated me and asked "what type of Champagne are you using"? I said proudly, "Cliquot" and he said, "no you're not". The morning of the proposal, he walked in to the restaurant and handed me a brown grocery bag and said, "congrats, here... do it right". In the bag was a bottle of 1990 Dom Perignon. -It was one of the nicest gestures I've encountered. Later on my girlfriend and I got in my car to go to my parent's house for dinner. I was about to suggest that we stop by our future apartment to see if we could sneak in, when she said, "why don't we stop by the apartment" -THERE you are serendipity! Of course the door was open. We walked up the stairs, she opened the door and saw the table with the lit candles, the strawberries and the Champagne on ice surrounded by the 2x4's and table saws of the construction. She closed the door quickly thinking she walked in on someone else's romantic experience and turned to me guiltily. I was already on one knee. She said yes and we drank the best bottle of Champagne I'll ever have and watched the longest sunset in the history of sunsets. It was awesome. But no bottle will ever taste that good again, nor should it. I became good friends with the man that gifted us the bottle and I credit him for many of the successes I've had in life. He acted as a mentor to me when I was younger. Writing this now makes me realize that I should do the same for someone that I find promise in, it made a tremendous difference. Biggest lesson he taught me, "you create your own luck in life". -So damn true. Anyways, that's my Dom Perignon story.
All I did in that post was talk about shrimp. How does having an opinion about shrimp equate with "an interesting life?" One need not be a trend setter in order to eat shrimp - Forrest Gump indicates the opposite, in fact. Robert McKee points out in "Story" that a good storyteller can hold you in thrall as he discusses his commute while a bad storyteller can bore you as he describes the death of his children in a fiery car accident. You're not noticing the shrimp, you're noticing the way I describe them. That's not part of "an interesting life." That's part of "sharing my life in an interesting way." And frankly, it offends me that people presume that because I can relate stories in an interesting way, they might be untrue. It's shrimp. If it's boring, why talk about it? And if it's interesting, why presume it's a lie?
I worked above a fishmonger in Seattle It's just amusing that many of your stories have some comment about you working/meeting someone from X. I'm relatively young, so in comparison I swear it seems like you've traveled the world twice already.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worstof/comments/p9pa3/woody_harrels... http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/pdqwm/drama_... The full elaboration of the story is I worked for an acoustical consulting firm that had its offices in the Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle. Our office was formerly Tyson Seafoods. There were a few businesses in there that weren't related to fishing, ours was one of them. It gave me a chance to buy fresh, delicious fish from people who knew their seafood. I guess "fishmonger" is an exotic term but "fish dealer" is just weird. The market in question: http://wildsalmonseafood.com/ My advice? Focus on the stuff that's interesting, avoid the stuff that's boring and you, too will lead a life so interesting that people won't believe it's true.
As for the fishmonger/office, must have smelled something fierce.
Know what stinks? Seagull poop. Keep the seagulls away and you're fine. I used to go out to the end of the pier to eat my lunch and read a book - it was fabulous. Now I ride past the redondo pier on my bike and HOLY FUCKING SHIT does it stink. They've got a jetty where the sea birds just sort of sit and crap all day and that fucker reeks a quarter mile upwind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp They are the guys with the fastest punch in the animal kingdom: Although it happens rarely, some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon. They are much tastier than your average shrimp. I went to a buffet in China where they were live. You put them in a bowl, put a lid on it, and boiled them at your table. -Can't beat that for fresh. http://geniuscook.com/how-to-cook-simmered-mantis-shrimp-red...
I saw one that a local fish store had captured successfully. It had kicked hard enough that the guy needed stitches to his finger. They're mean little fuckers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezRCQZgVEec&feature=chann... And apparently quite common off the california coast. The fact that they aren't harvested says a lot about the difficulty...
Ah. tWas a comment: http://hubski.com/pub?id=2656