Mainly Maine, Part 5: Transgendered Shrimp

One Maine food bombshell for me was that Maine had good shrimp. American markets have been so innundated with cheap Thai shrimp that we forget there are good native varieties. I grew up with Gulf shrimp, but the of-Mexico variety; there is a Gulf of Maine kind, too, whose season begins in December.  Maine shrimp are small, but tasty, with a delicate, almost sweet taste. Great for a milk-based chowder.  Here I am sauteing some whole, unpeeled, early-season ones that we got at a local seafood vendor for $3/lb on December 9:

I mention the date, because here are some raw ones I got almost 3 weeks later, on December 29, for only $1/lb.  Aside from the price, note the difference.

That blueish stuff you see on the later shrimp is roe. It's mild tasting (not strong and salty like most fish roe), translucent powder blue, and if I could harvest enough, I'm sure I could sell it in Boston or NYC as a gourmet cracker-and-cream cheese item for $100/lb--hey, it was not easy wrestling all those blue eggs from those shrimp legs.  As it was, I made some shrimp chowder (no photo) and used the roe for a garnish. I used lobster bodies and the shrimp shells for the chowder stock.

Here's the odd part: NEARLY EVERY SHRIMP IN THIS BATCH HAD ROE IN IT. The first batch 3 weeks earlier was roe free. This raised a lot of quesions. Were these all female shrimp or do males carry eggs, too, like seahorses? Did all the males go south for the winter after mating (men!).  Are Maine shrimp bisexual or hermophroditic?  Did this have anything to do with the Maine legislature voting down the gay marriage bill three months ago?

Here's what some brief research revealed: Northern Shrimp, Pandalus borealis, occur in the U.S. only in the Gulf of Maine. They begin their lives as males and switch to females about halfway through their 4-year life span. Note that in this shrimp tribe, it's always the older females spawning with younger males. In humans such older females would be called Cougars; in the shrimp world, they're called smart--younger males to spawn with, i.e., better broods.

Exactly how this gender switch takes place was not explained clearly--Wikipedia says magically "their testicles turn to ovaries"--but there's a moral here: when you study the real Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom carefully, you discover some really wild stuff, and it ain't all grizzly bears and wolf pups.

So, the now transgendered M2Fs with their new reproductive capabilities come in from the cold water toward the shores to spawn in the winter, and that's where most of the commercial shrimping takes place. In other words, these were indeed all females in their new responsibility to produce shrimplings for the kindergarten at the end of the spring thaw. Perhaps the few roeless ones in this batch were some sympathetic males still waiting for their operations but wanting to swim with the girls. Personally, I feel awful about contributing to the end of so many future shrimp boys-who-become-girls, but I chowdered forward. Merci, mon crevettes.

Mainly Food, Part 4: Some fish have shells

I had no intention of going to Maine and not sampling local foods, whatever that turned out to be. You won't be surprised that it included lobster.

Maine's summer is short, so there is no Portland Tomato or Eastport Pepper. There are Maine potatoes, blueberries, and maple syrup. And you can fish most of the year for something, so chowders are staples.  They're everywhere, like in a diner in the small town of Bowdoinham:


What kind of fish was in the chowdah was a mystery, but you can bet it had potatoes and milk as a base.

In fact making chowder at home is pretty easy when you have access to the following stuff--"fish parts 29¢/lb", "lobster bodies $1.50/bag"--sold in many seafood markets. I made a nice lobster stock for later:






 
The big deal here is the so-called lobster roll. It's basically lobster meat usually with mayo (alternately butter) on a soft hotdoggish roll. Lobster roll aficianodos argue whether a leaf of lettuce should go on the roll, but the anti-lettuce people tend to prevail. It's mostly a summer treat, an in-hand sandwich for warm-weather coastal slumming. If the lobster is fresh, it's wonderful.  In my limited experience so far, most places use all claw meat, like the  one below (which cost $12.95). 

When I asked about it, their argument to me was that the claw meat is sweeter, and the red color is more visually appealing.  Personally, I think it's because the claw meat is cheaper, so the profit margin is higher--tails get shipped to out-of-state markets, claws get put on lobster rolls. Ka-ching.

(Important Note: Lobster tails are technically not tails, but thoraxes, but they would never be called that because it's a dreadful word with no sex appeal, and it sounds like an animal from a Dr. Seuss story. Compare: "I'm eating some tail tonight" vs "I'm eating some thorax tonight."  Hmm?)

I visited Eastport for a few days, and I wanted to try something other than lobster while I was there, but lobster was about all that was safe to eat. This sign on a telephone pole near the water tells the tale:

 

Such paralytic poisons, caused by what are known as "red tides", are not killed by cooking, have no taste, and can paralyze your breathing in 2 hours. You'd basically become the steamed clam you ate. I happily munched on lobster tails, pondered the possible taste of a carnivorous whelk, and wondered whether the snails were also meat eaters. This made me rethink the slugs in my garden back home. I would have to wait for another trip for a comparison of clam chowdah DownEast. Or whatever else was available. Next, more fish tails/tales.