Estación Liceu

DIY Fish Stock

Last night I made spicy baked shrimp and we had it over rice. The recipe said that you could boil the shrimp shells and create your own fish stock. This was great since I need some for the New Year's Eve dinner and I'm already (hopefully) making my own crème fraîche so why not do everything from scratch? Well, I'm not sure what went wrong but the end result was simply water with a vague seafood undertone and was hardly broth. I only used shells but I didn't have to de-vein so that's the only guess I have as to what went wrong. At any rate, I was left with a foul looking pot of headless pink shrimp ghosts, delightful.

At least the entree turned out and, for one of the few times on record, Austin had no ideas of how to modify, tweak, or alter my finished product. I always wanted to marry a man who could keep up with me in the kitchen but with Austin, I got my wish and then some: his talent surpasses mine! I appreciate his culinary curiosity, his desire to be creative with recipes, but when I make something new, I just want a baseline thumbs up or thumbs down to begin with. We can discuss tweaking it in good time but when he takes the first bite, does that thoughtful look where his gaze turns upward, and then waves his fork saying something like "less lemon, more salt, and oooh! you could totally do ginger with this," well, I can handle the critique but it's all about the timing :-)

As for the c.f., it's still on the counter doing its thing and, as far as I can tell, it hasn't thickened at all yet.

posted by Kelly @ 10:01 a. m.