Shrimp

 

Despite the success of the movie 'District 9' or perhaps because of it, I still find the prawn appealing, however, these days I feel the name shrimp has a sweeter ring to it.

I couldn't possibly exhort the virtue of shrimp as well as Bubba in Forest Gump, so I'm not going to. You can watch for yourself.

How to describe shrimp? Sweet, of course, something I seem to adore in savoury foods. Tastes like the sea? Maybe, definitely fishy, but not to an extreme extent. When dashed with some soy sauce, they become even sweeter, the umami saltiness really highlighting the natural sweetness. As Bubba rhapsodizes above, the shrimp possesses an incredible versatility, from hot and spicy curries where it needs to compete with strong flavours to delicate pasta dishes, providing a meatiness and punch to gentle, creamy sauces.

I recall fond memories of eating the largest shrimp ever in Portugal. As an experimental teenage vegetarian, on holiday with my mum, dad and best friend, the shrimp was my ethical downfall. Presented whole in the shell with garlic butter, lemon and dusted with paprika, my dad still comments about the way I devoured them, tearing and ripping the flesh away and thoroughly enjoying them, combing the shells for any left over pieces missed and even crunching away on part of the tail. My vegetarian days were over. 

Of course, my mum and dad also like to tell the tale about the time we ate scampi in a picturesque, small fishing village called Porec in what is now Croatia. At 7 years old, I was truly horrified when the scampi arrived complete with shell, eyes and all. Being used to scampi arriving breaded and indeed not knowing there was any other way for it to be cooked, I screamed and threw a temper tantrum of immense gravity: there was no way I was going to eat this. 

After some gentle coaxing, I reluctantly tried and by the end of the meal I was checking everyone else's shells for discarded or missed flesh. So my love affair with crustaceans began.

Nigel Slater, in his book "Real Fast Food', has some excellent lists, the best of which is "a dozen ways to cheer up a bag of frozen prawns". This resonates so well with a British girl, as more often than not, those bags of tiny, peeled cooked prawns were the only shrimp we could get hold of, despite being an island, but you don't need me to tell you about the state of the fishing industry in the UK being in dire straits. Nigel suggested such wonderful ingenious ideas as sprinkling them with Pernod, marinating them in a mustard-y vinaigrette and sandwiching them between hot toast with butter, mango chutney and hot bacon. I used to like using them in a curry, trying to replicate the convenience meals we enjoyed so much in those days. I would use curry powder or paste mixed with some stock or water and add a little chutney to give it a tangy edge, maybe a tin of tomatoes or sometimes even a tin of tomato soup being used as the liquid base, the tiny, pale prawns just discernible in each fork full, tasteless and watery. But we loved it.

As raw, large shrimp became more available, we paid a pretty price in the supermarket Sainsbury's for them. Even the cashiers would look at them with disgust, often commenting "It's blue and it has eyes", as though they were gazing upon some revolting alien-like creature. The truth is, to many people, that's exactly what they are unless they are served shell-less, pink and cooked.

In Thailand, the shrimp were the size of lobsters and I chose them over the lobster and mud crab for my final meal on our last night. They were simply grilled over charcoal and presented with three Thai dipping sauces, one spicy and sweet with hints of chili, lemongrass and ginger, one coconut and one peanut with a little heat and tang from chili and lime juice. I simply peeled the prawns and dipped them into the sauces, sometimes I didn't even do that. The flesh was rubbery against my teeth, with a satisfying bite. They were eaten with a baked potato, fluffy and buttery and some cold vegetables. As I savoured my dinner, I thought "why can't all shrimp dinners be like this?"  I guess the answer is that most oceans and seas are not the same as the abundant waters around these tropical places, or, if they are, they are not appreciated in the same ways.