Archives for the 'Seafood' Category
Switchin’ Bait
Down on the bayou, shrimp fishermen are picketing local processors who the shrimpers believe are “price-fixing [and] mislabeling imported shrimp as ‘domestic’”:
“Reboxing imports is probably happening, though I don’t have proof,” said Danny Babin, a shrimp processor from Houma, La., who represents processors on a recently empaneled state task force aimed at improving the shrimp industry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law Enforcement has been investigating the practice and said “indictments are expected in the near future,” but declined further comment.
Meanwhile a feature in the November ish of Men’s Health described the dirty and often unrefrigerated process in which foreign shrimp are cultivated and handled:
The bacterial menace was highlighted in 2005, when Mississippi State University researchers bought a variety of frozen, ready-to-eat shrimp products that were imported from four different countries. They found 162 different species of bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Vibrio. Many had become resistant to one or more antibiotics.
I don’t lose sleep over dirty food but certainly I will choose — and pay more for — a fresher and cleaner alternative if it’s available. I’d be happy to buy Gulf shrimp. My problem is I can’t find them here in Connecticut, only the ubiquitous Asian tiger prawns.
Fight the power, Louisiana shrimpers, but methinks you’re barking up the wrong tree. However they’ve done it (I’m going to guess through agreements with chain grocery stores), the Asian imports seem to have a corner on the market, at least in New England. My advice: Form your own co-operatives to bypass the processors and negotiate directly with those same chain stores. Nothing can be easier than marketing a clean, green, domestic product in modern America — especially to wealthy Yankees who’ve gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula.
Ask the Readers: What the Shell?
The family and I spent the holiday weekend in Boston where the missus PRed a half-marathon and I set new personal records in consumption: Legal Seafoods, The Barking Crab, Kingfish Hall. I can’t say I’m ever truly tired of seafood but it will be nice to go a couple of meals without having to rip the carapace off something.
One of the dinner specials at Todd English’s Kingfish was a pound of shrimp boiled with Old Bay, red potatoes, a half cob of corn, and a ham steak. The shrimp were served with everything except the heads so I sat there and methodically cleaned them, which brought me to this dilemma of decorum: is it gross to de-vein your shrimp at the table? The legs and tails have to go, obviously, but should you then just pop them in, predigested zooplankton and all?
Quick Bites: What Is Best in Life? Edition
The May/June issue of Yankee Magazine offers the best of New England plus their favorites for ethnic food. Alas, said lists are only available in the hard copy (remember those?). Console yourself with the best Ethnic Food Festivals in New England.
Meanwhile Coastal Living catalogs their favorite seafood dives. Gotta catch ‘em all!
Mack of All Trades
With Baylen about to be pinched for running strange meats across state lines, the WSJ suggests he may want to keester a fish before heading to federal prison:
When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, “I had a stack of macks.”
Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California’s Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel — the “mack” in prison lingo — was the standard currency.
“It’s the coin of the realm,” says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish.
And just like certain assets topping our government’s Xmas wish list, mackerel is valuable precisely because of its undesirability:
Unlike those more expensive delicacies, former prisoners say, the mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few — other than weight-lifters craving protein — want to eat it.
But piscine procurement in the penitentiary is not as easy as throwing an M-80 into a school of jumping baitfish. It seems the free market is discouraged on the inside almost as much as it is out here:
The Bureau of Prisons views any bartering among prisoners as fishy. “We are aware that inmates attempt to trade amongst themselves items that are purchased from the commissary,” says bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce in an email. She says guards respond by limiting the amount of goods prisoners can stockpile. Those who are caught bartering can end up in the “Special Housing Unit” — an isolation area also known as the “hole” — and could lose credit they get for good behavior.
Makes sense. The dampening of a trade economy never leads to privation and violence, right?
The Journal has the full story here.
