Supermarket sweep: Baby monster sightings around Big 8!

Remember I mentioned in my "meals for snow-sports champions" post that I went with medium shrimp instead of true langostino because I don't know if I can find them pre-decapitated (and also didn't want to spend the money for a test drive)?  I was doing some research for my co-worker's "man-shower" catering today in Big 8 supermarket (yelp review) on 16th and Washington, I found these babies in the freezer chest:  

I put a penny in the photo to give you a relative comparison on how big these are.  


4-6 count large shrimp (that's 4-6 shrimps/lb!).  Each box is 2 lb, so it has about 10/box.  All for $19.99!  I saw another brand with the same shrimp count for $1 less in the freezer.  The 6-8 count was $17.99.  This is the biggest I can find in the freezer section which usually carries the biggest shrimps.  Look at them giant "craniums" on the shrimps!  They make up 50% of the shrimp's entire body!  These heads would make great crustacean stocks... Terrible yield for flesh eater though!  If you just want to eat the meat, it may be worth buying the decapitated ones-- definitely less work and maybe cost less as well.  


As I mentioned in my paella post, the hardest part is not to find large shrimp, it's to find them with their heads and claws still intact so I can stage them fighting on the paella.  This is what I imagine the dialogue would look like during a fight:  


Shrimp A:  my powerful pincher will take you out!  
Shrimp B:  Oh yeah?  Sweeping tail attack!  *bend tail, and send flying rice to Shrimp A*  Shrimp A:  Aaahhh!!!!!  My eyes!  
Chorizo chunk:  Looks like I'm dead meat....  (ha.. get it?  Dead meat...)


(You can tell I'm really bored, and may have watched 1 too many episodes of pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh during my teenage years....)


I also mentioned that if there's any place that would sell these big guys, it'll be in the freezer section of an Asian supermarket.  Just as I predicted, I found these in the freezer section of an Asian supermarket.   (Ok, I said Chinatown supermarkets in the original post, and those who's familiar with Philly terrain would consider 16th and Washington South Philly or "Little Saigon*" if you're being really generous, considering east of Broad on Washington would always be more like "Little Saigon" than west of Broad.  In my defense, I have always envisioned East Asian supermarkets much like Big 8 would sell them.  So I back paddled a bit...  you have a problem with that?).  


One of these days I'll make paella again with giant head-on shrimps like this now that I know where to get them.  Is there any other odd items that an Asian supermarket don't sell? 


I wish I can find their bigger siblings though... in the freezer of course (and no, I'm not talking about lobsters here)!  I think I'll lose a fight to them if they're not already dead and frozen...  


*Disclaimer:  obviously, I don't mean to use "Little Saigon" in a derogatory way.  I use it in a way much like I use "Chinatown" to describe Chinese stores congregation.  There's a high concentration of vietnamese stores in the described area, so I call it "Little Saigon."  To be safe, maybe I should use "International District" much like Seattle uses it to describe the Pan-East-Asian congregation just northwest of Qwest Field...  


UPDATE:  As it turns out, these shrimps do have a bigger-than-normal craniums.  I was at a different store today and found some normal head size shrimps.  Those big-headed shrimps are called "big head shrimps" in Chinese, but I'm sure they're actually a different breed within the "shrimp" category.  The more you know...  (3/11)

From GastroLab with Love: Crustacean Stock two-ways (Pescatarian)

Some of my loyalest readers would notice that I have been making a lot of crustacean stock lately (see my pre-Mardi-Gras gumbo, my tom yum soup, and possibly the paella de mariscos).  Since this stock is very versatile for any seafood dishes, I figure I should post a how-to on making this stock.  The best crustacean stock I have ever had is the soup base for hae mee (wiki here, also called Penang Hae Mee to distinguish from its other brothers).  Naturally, I thought all you need to do is to simmer the shrimp heads for hours, a la making a chicken stock.  As an experiment, I tried throwing some uncooked shrimp heads in a stock pot with all the other stock ingredients and let it simmer for over 8 hours.  The result was a yellowish gray stock that tasted nothing like crustaceans with grayish color shrimp heads.  Stumped by these findings, I went to the intertubes to seek answers.  

Using hae mee stock as my gold standard, I looked for hae mee soup stock recipes.  I struck gold when I hit this blog entry.   In order to get that maroon color and rich soup base in the stock, the blog owner mentioned that the heads and shells would need to be slowly sauteed until they are crispy and turned color.  Very interesting indeed...

I decided to try out this tactic in my crustacean stock.  As I mentioned earlier, I made stocks in two different occasions in the near past.  The attack plans were different so I’ll post them both here.  

For my gumbo, I went with a low-and-slow approach with more crustacean variety, featuring shells and head from shrimp and the venerable dungeness crab hailed from the Pacific Northwest.  As a “citizen” of the fine Cascadia, I affectionately call them Dungies.  Dungies have very high meat yield-- well, for a crab anyways.  The all-mighty Alton Brown did a show on crabs and mentioned that Dungies can have up to 25% meat yield.  It certainly doesn’t look like much, but considering blue crabs only get up to 15%, the Dungies are the kings of crab-with-a-”C” meat in the lower 48 states.  

I first sauteed the heads and shells under medium to high heat in batches.  When I sauteed them, the hepatopancreas and what seems to be the “colorants” on the shell (I believe that’s astaxanthin, a carotenoid naturally present in crustaceans) start sticking to the sides of the pan.  

Much like the leftover sticky brown bits after browning a steak, this is the heart and soul of the crustacean stock.  My hypothesis is that the proteins and carbohydrates on the shells along with the astaxanthin come out of the shell and stick to the pan when seared under high heat.  These bits go through pyrolysis much like any other sauteing action.  There are other “colors” on crustaceans as well, but when it comes to toughing it out in the heat, astaxanthin is the strongest of all.  After heat treatment, all the other “colors”, which can be from proteins and other color bodies, would denature or decompose, leaving behind the bright red astaxanthin.  After further heating, the bits left behind would transition from more red to a more brownish hue.  

Interestingly, my family secret recipe for making the tomato, potato, and lean pork soup (other people’s recipes here, translation here.  Yes this is a more homey soup that most Hong Kongers know, love, and consider it “western”, you have a problem with that?) have a reddish hue with a decent tomato taste is sauteing the tomatoes before making the soup.  Tomatoes also contain carotenoids, most notably lycopene.  My brain is drawing some connections here...  

After sauteing, the shells, heads, and the leftover reddish-brown bits are all going into the stock pot along with some onions, celery, thyme, bay leaves and garlic.  To get the reddish-brown bits out, I poured water into the hot pan and scraped it gently.  The wash water along with the brown bits were all heading to the stock pot.  I filled the rest with water.  

I left it simmering for 7-8 hours (technically, it was 2 hours at night, let it sit overnight, then another 5-6 hours during the day... can’t leave the stove running overnight!).  This is the result:  

The stock has a reddish-brown hue to it.  Flavor-wise, it was a bit stronger than previous attempts.  After filtering out all the solids, here is the final result:

This picture shows the reddish-brown hue a lot better than the previous one.  The stock was mostly transparent once the finer solids settled.  

For my tom yum soup, I used a fast-and-furious approach because I wanted a stock quickly.  The aromatics team was a bit different for this soup because its destination was a Thai soup.  Here’s a group shot of all the ingredients (minus the bird’s eye chili.  I did not add that to the stock).  

Instead of celery, bay leaves, and thyme, this has galangal and lemon grass.  Onion is the common theme.  I think normally there wouldn’t be regular onion in this stock, but I don’t have green onion so regular onion would have to do in a pinch.  I first started sauteeing the shrimp head.  This time, the saute was done under high heat and high speed (~2 min):  

Then the rest of the aromatics...

I then added water.  You can see the reddish hue was already coming out.  Without the sauteing process, the stock would look nothing like this to start.  

About 30 minutes under high heat, the liquid level dropped significantly and the stock was more concentrated.  I would leave this on for longer but I really needed to eat at that point, so that would have to do.  

After filtering out the solids...

Here’s the final result:  

Putting the two stocks side by side...

The fast-and-furious method generates a “dirtier” stock (not that the stock needs more chastising, just that it’s not as transparent), whereas the low-and-slow method creates a more transparent stock.  Also, the fast-and-furious stock has less of a brownish hue (more orange) in comparison to the low-and-slow stock.  This may be due to less sauteing time and having less heads and shells to work with.  My bet is on all of the above.  In theory, we can add more heads and shells to the fast-and-furious stock, and use a lower heat to saute the heads so that more of those goodies can come out and stick to the pan.  The overall cooking time shouldn’t dictate the flavor as long as there’s enough heat to extract the flavor.  (see how to make a milky white fish soup here, translation here.  Use high heat and boil all the way to extract all the flavors!  And i don’t mean turning up the heat with the ladies on the side there.  I can’t control what other people put on their sites...)  

As I mentioned in the beginning, this stock is very versatile.  Besides seafood gumbo, tom yum soup, and paella de mariscos, it can be used in other shrimp or crab dishes such as crustacean bisque, seafood risotto, sauces for various seafood dishes, sundubu jjigae (Korean tofu stew), hae mee or other soup noodle dishes, or any other dishes that can use the rich shrimpy flavor.  It’s time to take back this stock and make it our own!  

Bon appetit!

Notes:  

1.  If you’re a meatetarian, consider adding chicken or pork to enhance the flavor.  Seafood and meat go very well together.  For low-and-slow, use the bones, and for fast-and-furious, use meat.

2.  You can skip the aromatics and herbs if you only desire a broth.  Those items add a lot of depth to the flavors so I wouldn’t necessarily skip them, but it would be OK to not add them.

3.  During my intertube searches, I noticed that there are successes in making shrimp broths or stocks without sauteing (see Emeril’s and Martha’s recipes, to boot).  However, I think the sauteing procedure enhances the flavor.  I would try it before knocking it.  

4.  Because Americans’ general aversion to looking dead animals in their eyes while eating, most American-run supermarkets do not sell head-on shrimps.  Asian supermarkets usually sell them loose in a seafood display case, or by the box/case in the freezer sections.  If none are available in your immediate area, consider asking your fish monger about getting some in, or buy them off the internet.  While it may seem like a pain to have to peel and and decapitate those shrimps, the payoff is worth the trouble.