Who Moved My Shrimp?

Seafood is tricky to source, especially when you live in the desert. I don’t often have the option of going down to the docks and dealing direct with fishermen or fishmongers. When I do travel to the coasts or the Gulf, and go right to the docks, I still don’t really know anyone or who is who and what is what. I am just another tourist making an effort and hoping to get lucky.

My parents used to vacation in Mexico, a roughly six hour drive from Phoenix, AZ in the 70’s and 80’s. They would bring back jumbo shrimp which, at that time, was cheap and plentiful. Over time, the bags and the shrimp themselves got progressively smaller. I started to hear the phrase “shrimped out” more and more often with regard to Gulf shrimp.

I used to stop in New Orleans or thereabouts to pick up shrimp when I was driving back from jobs in the Southern states back in the 90’s. I carried three ice chests and had my route back home centered on refilling the ice and driving as non-stop as possible. That shrimp also got increasingly small and spendy. I asked one fishmonger/shrimp peddler on the dock in Corpus Christi, TX if the Gulf was really “all shrimped out?” He said that was a factor, but the price spike was mostly because “the shrimpers are selling direct now to places like Omaha and Minneapolis where they can get triple the price for their catch.”

I have done airfreight for a living and I know that the mechanics and economics of shipping seafood—live OR frozen—are not that daunting. I have shipped live lobster and clams for a dinner party of 30 or more from Massachusetts to Arizona via air for less than $100.00. Now that globalized economy of scale had returned to bite me in the ass.

I go where my customers are moving to, so I don’t always know the area or the seasons and conditions for the local seafood offerings. I took a job to Houston, TX and was ready to go to nearby Galveston to fill my ice chests with shrimp after the job. A friend of the woman I moved told me “No fish from the Bay this week. The pollution advisories are up.” I knew that there were a lot of refineries and chemical processing in the area, but I did not know that the Bay was that polluted. This guy was a recreational fisherman, but his nonchalance about tailoring his hobby to the pollution advisories was telling…and discouraging. This was also years before the BP Oil Spill of 2010.

I saw something similarly affected by the global market on the other end of the country when I went in search of Alderwood Smoked Salmon on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. I took a job to Seattle and was advised by one of my crew who had lived in that area to check it out. “You can drive right up to the Indian fishing villages and buy it dirt cheap.” Again, I brought my ice chests, long unburdened by bounteous shrimp, and set off to get the deal.

Nope.

I drove all over Northern tip of the peninsula, by Sequim and Port Angeles, and found nada. The locals that I could get a word in edgewise either pointed me to the supermarket or said that they smoked the salmon for their own personal stock. When I actually went out on the dock, an unexpectedly large and commercial-looking dock for a “fishing village,” I did find a foreman of sorts who told me “Yeah, we ship most of that salmon to Japan. Who do you think built this dock?”

My busman’s holidays haven’t all been colored by failures and misjudgments. Some of my mistakes have proven surprisingly fortuitous. My first cross-country moving job in the mid-80’s took me to Albany, NY. I lived near there when I was a kid and I have zero food memories about it. What I did get from looking at the map though was my proximity to the New England shore. After I unloaded the truck I set out for Boston for lobster. I had no idea where I was going or how to get there. I hadn’t even considered where I was going to stay or park my truck. All I knew was that I had driven thousands of miles, much of it through grey, brown and oil-blackened snow to get here and I was gonna have some real lobster. Actually, I was gonna have a LOT of lobster. Big, fat, juicy, butter-bathed, fresh and CHEAP lobster!

I made it maybe fifty or so miles north of Albany past Saratoga Springs and decided to stop and get some food to tide me over until I got to the real food. I saw a tiny, nondescript looking roadside restaurant I could best describe as a Lobster-in-the-Box. The sign advertised “Fresh Seafood” and, despite my reservations and the overwhelming sense of incongruity, I knew I was only a few hours from the water, so it was, somehow, possible.

I had no problem parking in the near-empty lot and walked into the completely empty burger joint/lobster shack. My jaw dropped when I saw the menu listing for two large tails for five dollars. My cynicism was bringing to mind images of Three Mile Island lobster or maybe that weird, South American, lobster-esque stuff you get at Red Lobster.

It killed! Served in a paper basket with plastic cups of melted butter and plastic knife and fork, this was clearly someplace all about the food. Best of all was that my midday solitude allowed me to rumble and moan and mutter “Oh Godddaaaayyyyyyuuuummmm!” unfettered and unobserved. I was looking around through the windows for nearby hotels. There was a good chance I would not leave this place. The best lobster I have ever had…….came from burger shop in upstate New York.

I have some places that I admittedly go into with low expectations…and a suitcase full of Power Bars and canned sardines. If I go someplace like Cleveland, where all I can remember about it is that the river caught fire, I’m probably going to play it safe and try and live off of what’s in the hotel vending machine rather than sample the local fare. That is exactly how I felt about my trip to Atlantic City, NJ.

I was wrong.

I was so depressed by the empty, Vegas-like glitz of the Boardwalk and the Third-World squalor west of it that I almost forgot that I was on the shore. This was one of those places to hit and split, not hang around and vacation in. I don’t drink or gamble or care much for magicians or Elvis impersonators, so the casinos don’t do much for me. I cruised the boardwalk and tried to find someplace with some stellar piece of seafood to salvage my otherwise altogether disheartening adventure.

The best I could find was an Irish sports bar with an intriguing food menu on the window. I sifted through appetizers and combo plates and finally settled on the shrimp Scampi, raw oyster and raw clam entrees. The server thought I mis-ordered and explained that all three were full size (and full price) entrees. I told her that that was fine, explaining my harrowing journey from the desert through thousands of miles of hostile terrain just to get here and check out their oyster shooters. “And please hold the sides on two of the three orders.”

When the server brought out the oysters I scanned the tray full of large and luscious looking pearls of saltwater kissed splendor and asked

“Could I get some horseradish with these oysters, please?”  

“Those are the clams, sweetie. They’re Jersey Top Necks.”

I had never seen clams this size before. I have had rubbery little marble-sized steamers and painfully spendy, quarter-sized Ipswich clams at a trendy raw bar but nothing that even came close to these succulent looking behemoths. The only give away—once I knew to look for it—was the shell. The clams themselves were at least 2-3” in diameter and ¾” thick. They were radiantly pink and moist with a mild but singular taste redolent with the taste of fresh seawater.

 Every bite served as a cascade of cleansing sunshine to wash away the bitter taste of driving through Philadelphia and thoughts of Donald Trump and the traumatic experience of having to drive through Texas…again. Every minor wafting touch of sea air stocked my store of endorphins and made me almost ready for the next day’s flight home. Every time I think of this trip, with all its horrors and pitfalls and close calls and disappointments, my first, and main memory is those Jersey Top Necks.

That is powerful testimony.

Pan Seared Sea Scallops on Fettuccine Alfredo

We remember the winners most. No matter how many dishes we have burned, over-salted, under-spiced or mis-concocted, we remember that one thing we made that one time that everyone loved!  We remember the failures so that we don’t repeat them. Those memories live in the part of the brain that processes fear and pain and the lasting shame that results from “trying something different” and serving it to unforgiving dinner guests. They share quarters with the smells of burning things, the rattles of rattlesnakes and the now unmistakable taste of fish past its prime.

The successes live in a different part of our memory. The part that is reward giving and pleasure seeking and infallibly dopamine dispensing at the first whiff of fresh baked bread or cinnamon buns. The recipe for our best dish may be fairly simple, but the recipe for a memorable food experience is a complex mix of setting, smells, company, comfort and context. They, more than the dish itself, are what we try to recreate. These are the one-offs, the transcendent meals, and the rarest of rare moments when the Universe conspires to insure our success and we produce more than just a memorable meal; we produce…a legend!

My legendary meal was sea scallops on fettuccine Alfredo. The food came out well, the scallops a firm-fleshed perfect medium of a taste somewhere between shrimp and lobster and the fettuccine rich and dense but not impenetrably so. It was all the other factors, like appearance, presentation, intimate setting and context (competitive) that worked to produce a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I would be more than willing to chalk the positive reviews it received up to the power of the accompanying wine were it not for getting the same accolades from my non-imbibing girlfriend at the time. More convincingly, even when said girlfriend became an ex, her memory of the meal as legendary remained unchanged.

I have severe insecurities as a dinner host. So severe that I wind up cooking four or more main courses (surf, turf, pork AND fowl) to hedge my bets against having that one guest who can’t find something they like. Most of my recipes are for 100 or more, so you can see where this can become problematic. The first thing I usually hear is, “Just how many people are you expecting?”

I had invited two other couples over for a partly social/partly business dinner and was discussing my main course, fallback, failsafe and Plan B dishes with my girlfriend. Her advice was that, as this was a smaller, more subdued, formal affair, I should forego my usual bacchanalian orgy of an every trick in my bag menu and opt for the more traditional route of a single entrée. A single, and suitably stellar entrée. “Why don’t you do that scallops and pasta thing?”

Sea scallops are fairly easy to cook. They sauté quickly and easily like a shrimp scampi. If I had to go with one entrée, this was a good bet, especially with a good review behind my earlier efforts. Likewise with the fettuccine, providing I paid attention and didn’t scald the Alfredo sauce.

My personal twist is to run the washed and dried scallops through an egg wash and roll them in almond meal before frying in bacon grease. Instead of wrapping the scallops in that bacon, which I think is a little overkill taste-wise, I let them pick up the bacon flavor in the sauté. Bacon and almonds make for an exquisitely balanced mix of singular flavors that work in concert to complement the scallops without overpowering them. Just a hint of the sweet and nutty with a whisper of salty and smoke-hued bacon. I crumble the bacon into the fettuccine, just in case there isn’t enough sodium and cholesterol in this “heart attack on a plate.” In for a dime, in for a dollar.

The dinner was an unqualified success. One of the couples had invited us over for dinner a few weeks earlier. They put out an impressive spread, albeit a somewhat ostentatious one. I readily admit to a thoroughly enjoyable game of culinary one-upmanship here. Later, they would try and rob me on a job I did for them. The other couple had invested heavily in a multi-level marketing scheme which they tried, unrelentingly, to reel me into. Our relationships ended badly, but is that what I remember? No.

I remember that my fettuccine killed!

Ingredients: (for 4)

16 large sea scallops

1/2 box fettuccine

salt & pepper

6 strips of bacon (save the grease)

almond meal

{for the sauce}

1 1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup imported Parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 cup imported Romano cheese, grated

6 egg yolks from fresh jumbo eggs

Salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:

Cook the fettuccine according to the box instructions (I like to use ½ water and ½ chicken stock or broth).

For the Alfredo Sauce: Heat the milk and cream in a heavy bottom saucepan until it begins to simmer. Turn off heat. Slowly whip in the cheese, then remove from heat. Place egg yolks in a separate bowl and slowly whip in a portion of the hot milk and cream mixture. Slowly add egg yolk mixture back into remaining cream mixture. Place back on very low heat and continually stir until simmering. Take sauce off heat so it thickens. Add crumbled bacon and season to taste with salt and black pepper.

For the scallops: Fry the bacon and remove from pan. Drain and save 2/3rds of the grease. Coat the bottom of a pan with bacon grease and heat over medium high heat. Wash and dry the scallops, dip in a bowl with 2-3 beaten/whisked eggs and dredge in almond meal. Place a few at a time (4/5) in the hot oil and sear for 3-4 minutes on either side until browned on the outside, and white in the center (not opaque). Let rest for 5 minutes, and repeat with remaining scallops. Serve with the fettuccine and Alfredo sauce.

***I am not a recipe guy. I am a pinch, handful, bunch of and however-much-seems-right-at-the-time cook. This is a modified version of a recipe (and photo) stolen from;

http://www.mattawamum.com/2013/01/olive-gardens-fettuccine-alfredo-with-pan-seared-scallops/

Introduction

The Busman’s Holiday Buffet; Travels of a Blue-Collar Foodie

 

  

Introduction

I spent a good part of the last thirty years traveling around the country as a furniture mover. I worked what was called short haul, roughly within 500 miles, for the first year or so. Working out of Phoenix, AZ this job took my co-driver and I to Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and mostly, to California. The company I worked for used a Union 76 fuel account and credit card, so those were the main truck stops we stopped, fueled and ate at. The restaurant that most of those truck stops had was Denny’s.

One of the first fallacies to be forever put to rest by this experience was the “Truck drivers know the best places to eat, look for the places with the most trucks parked in their lots” myth. Truck drivers eat at places where they can park a 75’ foot long truck. Those logistics tend to limit your dining options. Think about the last restaurants you went to that had truck parking. Because we were also running on a tight schedule, staying close to the highway and making the truck stop a one-stop shopping exercise made more sense. The problem was, eating at Denny’s twice a day, six days a week, we ran through their limited menu options fairly quickly. Truck travel is a lot like business travel in that the sights, accommodations and especially the food tends to become disturbingly uniform after a while. I will die happy if I never have to see “Moons Over My Hammy” again.

The obvious solution to our boring routine was to try other dishes at other places. Some truck stop food was good. Some was more adventurous. Some was…questionable. Nothing will drive you back into the welcoming arms of the known like driving 7-800 miles after unknowingly ingesting the unknown wrapped in a bad burrito.  Some of the smaller places had private, locally owned and operated restaurants or diners, while the larger ones tended to go with big fast food chains like Burger King or Wendy’s. The most common features were price and quantity. Truck driving does not pay much, and it is easy to overspend on food when every meal and snack comes at an aggravated retail price. Big and cheap and more bang for your buck was the biggest constant. We had slightly different needs from our more sedentary fellows, though, as we had to load and unload a truck full of furniture, by hand, often up and down stairs, every other day or so. We couldn't afford to get too far out of shape or overweight.

We were still largely limited to Interstate-adjacent fare, but we did enjoy options that many other drivers did not. We drove a smaller, 24-ft long truck called a straight truck for one. We could, with varying degrees of effort, get into places the big trucks could not. Secondly, because we delivered furniture to people’s homes, we were not entirely limited to the commercial districts that freight haulers were. Our biggest constraints were time and money. We ran on something of a miserly food and lodging per diem. For us to eat someplace a cut above the truck stops, we had to scrimp and save on hotels and other meals. We also rarely knew where good restaurants were, and largely operated on a hit-and-miss strategy of trying to find places that looked promising.

The first and best thing I discovered was the endless variety of Mexican food that differed from state to state. Different Southwestern states were settled by people from different parts of Mexico, and their culinary traditions are reflected in those regional dishes. Arizona is characterized by mostly Sonoran Mexican food, while Texas offers Tex-Mex, New Mexico features the local chilies first and foremost and Colorado’s Mexican dishes tend to be more cheese-heavy. My co-driver was from Wisconsin and clearly no stranger to cheese-dominated cuisine, but tended to be a little less adventurous in reaching beyond standard Taco Bell fare. I managed to convince him that Mexican food was uniquely suited for road food owing to the spiciness of the chilies acting as on onboard disinfectant that rendered any malicious microorganisms that may be found therein stunned and inert if not totally lifeless.

I lied. He believed it. Our menu choices expanded exponentially.

The other big payoff was the occasional shot at fresh seafood when we ran to California. I spent a large part of the 80’s enjoying fresh Red Snapper at seaside restaurants before finding out in the 90’s that it probably wasn't really Red Snapper. Whatever. My memories are unalterable. Buckets of steamed clams, Gulf shrimp and scallops, even things like abalone that didn’t quite pan out as expected were still worth living on Power Bars and sleeping in the truck for, just for the experience if nothing else. There were a few misfires, like Pacific spiny (rock) lobster and West Coast oysters that were somewhat disheartening, but were still valuable experiences. I could now say “Yes, I’ve been there and yes, I’ve tried ******. I was underwhelmed.” Moreover, I could say it with authority.

Perhaps the most important part, for me at least, was doing all of this on the clock. Actually, I worked on a percentage, so it was my clock, but I got paid to drive to these places and I not only had my meals partially subsidized as part of my pay, but I could write the remaining expenses off of my taxes. This brings me back to this blog’s title, The Busman’s Holiday. The term originally referred to bus driver’s who would vacation at the same destination that they drove paying customers to while on the clock. This also brings me to point I made earlier that truck driving really doesn't pay very well. I developed a habit early on of structuring my work to pay for—at least in part—the things and opportunities I could not afford otherwise.