Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 12, 2007 at 2:30 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
My family travels several months out of the year, and it is unusual for all of us to be in the same place at the same time. While we travel light, the one item we always have space for is a bottle of my mom’s hae bee hiam or chili shrimp paste. It doesn’t look like much, and it doesn’t even sound like much, but when you arrive in a foreign country and the weather’s cold, the stores are closed, and you’re just not up to greasy take-out…this stuff is ambrosia over plain white rice.
Essentially a meal of just a condiment on carbs, I’ve had concerned housemates insist on my “eating properly." But I’ve turned down expensed sashimi dinners just because I knew I had a bottle of this in the fridge and was craving a taste of home. Made from a pounded and dry-fried concoction of dried baby shrimp, chili, candlenuts, shallots, belacan (fermented shrimp paste), and a touch of sugar, it’s considered the ultimate condiment—priceless because it’s tedious to prepare, chockful of shrimp, and completely reliant on the cook’s experience and “aggak” (estimation) skills to achieve the perfect balance of sweetness, savory-ness, briney pungence, and blistering heat.
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, October 19, 2007 at 6:00 PM
The shrimp in Zach's photo of a giant pan of paella look like they're simultaneously searching the sky for a UFO...or someone to save them from becoming part of a tasty dish.
Ah, too late—they're dead. And sooo delicious!
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 26, 2007 at 6:14 PM
Inspired by a LA-area chain called Killer Shrimp that serves nothing but the eponymous dish, Jaden of Steamy Kitchen shares her recipe for Killer Cajun Crawfish. I was planning on having just a grilled cheese sandwich and chorizo for dinner, but how can I now that I've got crawfish on the brain? Life is so hard.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 23, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Walter Nicholls in the Washington Post discovered three young guys interested in saving the aquatic world one fresh indoor-farmed shrimp at a time. The trio "thinks its technologically advanced system of producing a sustainable supply of fresh shrimp year-round in a non-polluting environment may represent the future source of America's favorite seafood."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 9, 2007 at 11:50 AM
In the NY Times, Melissa Clark realizes no one she knows actually knows what shrimp scampi is and so she figures it out for herself:
Scampi are in fact tiny, lobster-like crustaceans with pale pink shells (also called langoustines). One traditional way of preparing them in Italy, [Lidia] Bastianich writes, is to sauté them with olive oil, garlic, onion and white wine. Italian cooks in the United States swapped shrimp for scampi, but kept both names. Thus the dish was born, along with inevitable variations like adding tomatoes, breadcrumbs, or, as Ms. Bastianich does, tarragon.
As I saw it, this meant I was free to interpret shrimp scampi pretty much any way I wanted. And I wanted my scampi to be something buttery and rich, with pan drippings intense enough to act as a sauce for pasta, or to make a tasty bread sop reminiscent of the other dish I associate with melted butter and garlic: escargots à la bourguignonne. If I could come up with a scampi sauce as addictive as snail butter, I’d be one very happy.
