Great start ......... semi crappy finish

[Stinky The Clown]

Il mio supermercato di vicinato (aka the Safeway) had some frozen crawfish in the fish freezer. Nice liddle one pound bags of tails, all cleaned and semi cooked (so they could tolerate a little more heat to finish them). From China. Not a bad price.

Tonight I thaw 'em and make a fresh from scratch super ettoufee. Since the crawfish were cooked part way, I didn't wanna add 'em till the end. All the way through, this pot of ettoufee is smellin' like heaven and tastin' great. Fat Tuesday an' all, yanno?

So. The rice is done and sittin' in the cooker on "keep warm". Sparkly's in the last ten minutes of her final piano student. I open the bag-o-craws. I smell 'em. Okay, a little differnt than some domestic frozens, and a lot differnt from fresh Loozyana craws.

But not bad.

Differnt.

Dump 'em inna pot.

Gack!

Muddy tasting. Not sweet like I remember. Actually they taste like a frozen bag of clams I bought at the Asian grocer. Muddy. Not bad. Just ... muddy.

For me, it ruined the fun of workin' hard onna good dish y'aint had inna while and were lookin' forward to.

At least the wine was good. :shrug:

Anyone else have a similar experience with frozen imported Asian seafood?

[NMDemDist2]

1. i'm sure the tsunami has affected the asian fish markets

since most of indochina is out of production i shouldn't be surprised if the less desirable product is being released due to higher demand since such a large part of the production is shut down in the region

(can you say runonsentence?)

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Can I say "runonsentence"?

Hell yes! Not only can I say it, I can produce them, and often do, since my mind tends to get a bazillion thoughts all at once and I can't stop myself from just trying to get it all out at once with no break or time to take a breath, but that's just me, who also, it might seem to some, thinks that punctuation designed to stop a thought, like a period, is the work of Lucifer himself, who, we all know, is not the topic, but a side bar to what I'm trying to say.

Yanno?

:hi:

[eleny]

2. i checked our frozen bag of smelts

product of canada. whew! i was ready to pitch the damned thing and not look back.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Smeltz

Good Eatz!

[Sparkly]

3. It was still good

I can tell whether dinner's going to be "good" or "out of this world outrageously delicious" depending on whether H2S is doing his "happy chef" dance. This one looked dance-worthy earlier on, but no dancing as he was serving it up, so I kinda figured... ;)

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Vindication - partially

I went to a business lunch today. At Copeland's. The semi-upscale Cajun chain. I ordered ettoufee. The didn't have craws. I had the shrimp.

My faith in ettoufee is restored. My leftovers now in the fridge may soon be part of that future park our local landfill will someday become.