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Good Eats: Crustacean Nation
Alton tackles The Shrimp Cocktail - once a delicacy, now consigned to cheap hotel buffets and weddings. Alton means to change that, showing how to make shrimp... Good Eats. Along the way, he explains how to buy shrimp and signs that what you're getting may not be the freshest. With a little brine and the dry heat of the broiler, Alton promises a delicacy.
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Episode Info
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Episode number: 2x4 Production Number: EA1B07 Airdate: Wednesday March 08th, 2000 |
Recap
Alton, clad in foul weather fishing gear, stands on a dock near the shrimp boat Nautilus. He remembers his first cocktail – in the middle of the Mohave Desert, on a dining car bound from Los Angeles to Kansas City. He told his mother he had to have one. It was cold, clean and crisp, with horseradish but unmistakably of the sea. It was intoxication by crustacean. Now the shrimp cocktail is the fare of cut rate motel buffets and low class cafeterias. Alton means to change that. With a little work, he’ll reinvent it as… Good Eats...Read the full recap
Episode Notes
Cards
- In Europe any large shrimp is called a prawn. In the US the word “prawn” denotes a fresh water crustacean.
- Frozen shrimp come in two forms: block frozen and Individual Quick frozen or “IQF”. Although block are usually of higher quality, IQF are more convenient.
- Shrimp is from the Middle English “Shrimpe” meaning: Pygmy.
- Horseradish is one of the 5 bitter herbs of the Passover feast.
- In 1983, a machine was developed that can mold “shrimp” from ground shrimp meat. The machine can produce over 10,000 faux shrimp an hour.
- Besides being low in fat, shrimp contain high amounts of protein, niacin and B-12.
- Shrimp often change gender from male to female after a year of sexual activity.
Episode Quotes
Alton: When you shop for fresh shrimp, well, they decompose quicker than Beethoven with an electric eraser!
Alton: Where is it you get your shrimp?
Cousin Ray: I got me some… connections…
Alton: Connections, huh? Looks more like infections.
Cousin Ray: I got me some… connections…
Alton: Connections, huh? Looks more like infections.
Alton: Where’d you get this stuff? A bait shop?
Cousin Ray: Who told you that?!?
Alton: I think you just did…
Cousin Ray: Who told you that?!?
Alton: I think you just did…
Cultural References
Alton mentions "a shrimp boat, just like Forrest Gump" - In the 1994 Robert Zemeckis film, Forrest Gump, mentally slow but wildly lucky man achieves fame and fortune through the shrimp business through a series of odd circumstances.
Boarding the Nautilus, Alton utters the first line from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, "call me Ishmael".
Alton notes his own fishy pungency and understands at last why their women doused sailors home from the sea in Old Spice! He's lampooning a series of commericals that ran in the 1970's and 1980's to advertise the cologne.
Alton, scorning such terms as "jumbo" and "colossal", repeats the line, "Names is for tombstones, baby," firstuttered by Yaphet Kotto's sinister character Mr. Big to James Bond in 1973's Live and Let Die.
Alton "double dog dares" even Julia Child! The phrase "double dog dare" most famously appears in 1983's A Christmas Story as a taunt intended to goad other children into foolishness. In particular, the phrase goaded the character Flick into licking a frozen metal light standard - his friends quickly abandoned him when he could not get his tongue loose. Julia Child was a famous American cook; her support is credited by many with helping Food TV get its legs under it in the early years.
Alton recaps his shrimp technique as a "twelve-step program" although he only manages nine steps. Twelve-step programs (the most famous is probably Alcoholics Anonymous) are credited with helping addiction victims manage their lives and cope with their illness.
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