The Tinyness of Shrimp

Is there a food item more overrated than the shrimp? These decapod crustaceans are expensive and often frozen multiple times before you buy them from your fishmonger. My friend Tim is convinced that if they cost about .40 cents/lb. nobody would buy them. I'm not sure that's true since their unearned reputation as a luxury food item has gone unchecked for years. Shrimp farming has become a huge environmental issue in many countries as native reefs and habitat have been destroyed to make room for these "farms".

I remember as a kid on vacation in Florida eating amazing, huge, sweet shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico being sold by fishermen with coolers who had just returned from their day boats. I also remember buying so called "rock shrimp" while I lived in California which were cold water shrimp or maybe they were technically prawns. Either way these items seem to have disappeared.

There is some hope however...Recently a group of shrimp fishermen joined together founded a collective of sorts called Wild American Shrimp. This group claims that 85% of the shrimp on the US market is imported and pond raised. Wild American Shrimp are certified to meet specific criteria which include the environment, size specifications, flavor and texture. I'm not sure certification is really the answer for quality in the shrimp world but raising awareness about the realities of the industry seems to make sense. The missing link of quality though is the constant thawing and re-freezing which ultimately makes the flesh turn into mealy mush.

I've had the chance to taste a few of these certified varieties including the "Royal Red" and "Pink". They were both sweet, had great texture, and worked nicely on the grill or saute pan. Check out the site. http://www.wildamericanshrimp.com/main.html

Clinica del Dolor

Another long one...In 2000, I was down in Tuxtla, Mexico in the state of Chiapas on an important trip to visit some small cooperatives in the Zapatista-ish zone of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, specifically the town of Jaltenango. I'm not sure how much Zapatista activity was there but since we drove past the known conflict area of San Cristobal on the way I'm taking some liberties. On the night before our journey my colleague Andres and I met with some friends to have dinner at a Spanish restaurant I'd been to a few times in Tuxtla. The Casa Asador...it may still be there if it hasn't killed more than a few dozen locals and visitors and if it is still there it can kiss my asador.

We had some nice queso fundido con chorizo and champignons, great shrimp paella, and a few dozen Modelos and Herraduras. The food was delicious and lived up to all the bragging I had done earlier. We left at about 11:00 p.m. knowing an early start of 5:00 a.m. was required for us to arrive for our mid-day speeches in Jaltenango. When we arrived back at the Camino-Real that Monday evening, my home squad, the Buffalo Bills were on Monday Night Football at the hotel bar. YES!

Following the game Andres and I retired to a long night of agony. I got the hot stomach followed by gastric distress within a few hours while my friend was doubled over with cramping agony most of the evening. Funny enough when we met for our ridiculously early departure we initially had no idea of our respective suffering. I said simply "how are you brother?" which was met with a very green-faced reply "fuck, dude, not good".

Although I also felt pretty bad, I felt that I could power through it during the five hour drive. Andres however had no such pretension. We loaded into the new but extraordinarily crappy Geo Tracker and crossed our fingers. Up until this trip I really had no idea that my friend spoke spoke much Spanish. It turns out he was was pretty familiar with the words he directed at our driver..."senor, alto, emergencia!" This repeated chorus led to numerous rapid evacuations from the Tracker and extreme retching.

On my side, I was meditating/hallucinating in the front seat, and despite waves of nauseous dementia I thought I was cool. Ten or so stops later we arrived in Jaltenango. Andres was pretty exhausted but stable...I on the other had was catatonic. All the holding it in pretension was over. I was going to detonate. I walked into our hosts offices and proceeded to wretch loudly and strongly. I'm not going to lie: It was loud and scary and the indigenous people wrote a couple apocalyptic folk songs about what they heard.

When I emerged, a few people looked at my pale, bald head and screamed. This happens from time to time so wasn't that freaked out. When I saw a mirror a few hours later I realized the cause of the reaction. My eyelids and eyes were black as the force of my vomiting had caused a full rupture of the blood vessels around my eyes. Picture a goth Shrek and you've got the idea.

The Mexicans we were with were clearly freaked out and being a friendly bunch wanted to help out or at least make sure these two lame, sick gringos didn't die on their watch. Andres and I were dispatched to the rooms of our hotel; a pretty decent place with sinks, toilets, air conditioning and cable (OK HBO and 15 channels of static but whatever). We were visited periodically by concerned citizens. These were colleagues, mamas, cooks and delightfully a "doctor".

The doctor in question was an enourmous piece of humanity, he was no more than five feet tall and weighed in at 350 lbs. easily. He asked us how we felt respectively and said we probably needed some rest and antibiotics. Alberto Einstein in the house, pay attention. The kicker was his prescription/credentials which read: Clinica del Dolor. (The Pain Clinic) Like I'm taking advice/meds from a heart attack waiting to happen in the middle of Chiapas. Good times.

Moral of the story: my sickness ran its course and I was eating sopa de tortilla by nightfall. Andres, well he had to suffer a little bit longer...

The Bottomless Bowl

One of the best and worst things about traveling to a developing country is trying all the odd and occasionally frightening culinary finds and traditions. I had one of these experiences on a trip to Indonesia. This particular trip brought me to the Aceh Province in North Sumatra. The Acehnese are a proud people and take their Islam pretty seriously. As a result, after a hot day of travel over many hours of driving, finding a place for a decent meal accompanied by a cold beer can be challenging.

My traveling colleague, an enormous, sweaty, ill-tempered Dutchman was kind enough to direct our driver to an innocent looking roadside restaurant-gas station-mini mart. It was just past lunchtime and the sun was at its hottest point of the day. We walked into the sweltering dining room-motorbike-repair station-kitchen and I noticed that some of the lunch menu items were proudly displayed in large decorative bowls. The bowls were then placed inside a large glass display cabinet with sliding doors.

We ordered some rice dishes, some chicken curry, and some kind of bonefish curry. Our order was wheeled out a few minutes later on an elaborate cart in those fancy type bowls we had seen earlier. The food was actually pretty good though needed some liberal spicing up with the ubiquitous sambal sauce. We were pretty confident they had no alcohol in the joint but jokingly asked if they had any cold Bintang. By some miracle they did have the beer but it was so hot it could have passed for malt soup.

After we finished eating our rice and picking gingerly at the chicken and bony fish curries, the cart returned and the waiter-mechanic-head chef cleared our plates. What unfolded next was truly horrifying. The big bowls returned with the cart and our leftovers were scraped back into their respective bowls. I sort of thought maybe they didn't want to mix the food types because they would feed them to the local cats or maybe their goat or something. When we walked out we saw what really happened to our leftovers. They went back into the display cabinet and into their original bowls. No wonder there was not meat on that chicken. I was probably the fourth person to gnaw on that chicken leg that day.