Seafood Risotto - A Scary Proposition

We made seafood risotto last night. It was good, but it would have been better had we prepared it in Italy, I think.

The difference is fishmongers.

You’re never far from the sea in Italy. Maybe that’s why you can actually get great tasting sea food. Plus, Italians like and demand good tasting sea food—without noxious chemicals.

In any case, we started a pot of broth into which I put the shrimp shells and some clam broth. Once that was simmering along, I sauteed some shallots in an olive oil/butter combo. When they had softened, I added the Arborio rice. Once it was lightly toasted, I added some vermouth. When that evaporated I started adding my broth, little by little, stirring frequently.

When the rice was getting along nicely, I seared half the shrimp and dumped them into the rice along with a little vial of Saffron I had bought in Italy, sacrificing the shrimp’s freshness for a deeper flavor to the rice. The other half of the shrimp I seared and held a few minutes for when the rice was done. As things were coming to a head, I seared some sea scallops, using Danilo Alfaro’s method.

I didn’t get as good a sear as I’d like, but the taste wasn’t all that bad.

I added the remaining shrimp to the rice and stirred. Then I plated it all up and set two giant scallops on each plate.

It was good. But that fresh, tangy seafood taste you get in Italy wasn’t there.

Yes, the risotto would likely have been better in Italy. Why? Because I would have had a fishmonger I trusted to give me fresh ingredients without the economic-cheating addition of chemicals I had in the stuff I bought.

Did you know that if you buy standard, frozen-at-some-point scallops in your supermarket that they’re loaded with:

a phosphate solution that whitens them and makes them absorb more liquid, increasing their weight by as much as 30%. That means you’re paying $15 to $20 (or more) per pound for water.

Phosphates belong in detergents, or maybe not. And that liquid the scallops retain due to these phosphates leaks out when you cook them, causing the scallops to steam rather than sear.

Of course, we wouldn’t want to regulate the industry, the clueless say that regulation reduces profit, and profit is what good food and the good life is all about, isn’t it?

The chemicals don’t end there. My shrimp were probably laced with sodium bisulfate or sodium tripolyphosphate, increasing liquid weight while toughening or rubberizing the flesh.

Yum.

Percentage weight gains of preservatives can be quite profitable, says John Rezny in Chef Talk.

Double Yum. Tongue your profits for some yummy goodness.

Of course, you know your American pizza is likely to have human hair in it, don’t you? L- Cysteine is a non essential amino acid used in bakery products as dough conditioner. Human hair is useful in lots of things—when it’s not on a human head I mean. Like in agriculture:

The mats (of hair) stored in southern Miami-Dade County are part of a world marketplace for human hair. Uses range from the obvious, such as false eyelashes and wigs, to the more obscure: it’s a common raw-material source for l-cysteine, an amino acid frequently used in baked goods such as pizza dough and bagels.

Are we hungry yet? A hairy bagel perhaps?

Seafood Risotto - A Scary Proposition

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