The other day I was shopping at my neighborhood supermarket, looking for a little dinner inspiration. I meandered past the seafood department without a thought. Usually, I don’t even bother to look in that direction. I live in Florida, less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico. The last thing I am interested in is defrosted frozen shrimp from Indonesia, artificially colored, farm-raised salmon, or some ubiquitous white fish filets from South America. Sadly, those are nearly always the only kinds of seafood my local supermarkets carry. So, I pass on them and buy my fish at one of the few and far flung fish markets in the area, which are not great, but at least do offer some local selections. But, this time something in the display case caught my eye. It was fresh rock shrimp. Rock shrimp? Wow! I hadn’t seen fresh rock shrimp anywhere around here in a very long time.
Rock shrimp (Sicyonia brevirostris) are deep-water cousins of the more commonly known pink, brown and white shrimps. They have a hard, spiny shell more like a lobster rather than a traditional shrimp. Their shells are “hard as a rocks”, hence the name rock shrimp. They have a fresh, clean, sweet taste, very much like lobster. Rock shrimp live and spawn in warm deep waters between 120 to 240 feet and are mostly harvested off of the east coast of Florida. read more >>
Filed Under: Cooking, Fish and Seafood, Italian, Pasta, Recipes
