Seafood

Broths are easy and rewarding, since homemade broth is always better than canned. You’ll use it constantly-even in place of some of the water in the recipe above to cook beans. Make a big batch when you have time and freeze measured portions in heavy-duty plastic freezer storage bags. With slight variations, this simple formula will work for chicken, beef, or fish broth. You can often get the needed bones or carcasses from your butcher or fish market. If you need to substitute canned broth for homemade, use one 14 1/2-ounce can for every 1 3/4 cups broth.

New Orleans–style barbecued shrimp, called “barbecue” even though they have nothing to do with smoke or a grill, are usually prepared in the oven. We do ours in a big hot pot on the stove because this dish is all about the buttery, garlicky sauce. Mass quantities of crusty French bread are required for sopping. We plunk the big pot in the middle of the table and go to town. It’s an exceptionally good time tearing into long baguettes and washing everything down with plenty of cold white wine. Sometimes, we remember the salad.

Whenever the two-pound bags of frozen shrimp are on sale (the bigger the shrimp, the better), we throw one in the freezer and the other in a brine before a quick trip under the broiler. If you’re not near live shrimp, choose bagged frozen ones because the fish counter’s fresh is often the same stuff already thawed. You’ll get perkier results thawing them in a salty bath, which puts a little ocean back in. This recipe is ripe for tinkering. Vary the rub and swap the butter for olive oil. If you skip the brine, use a dry rub with salt instead. Smoked sea salts and smoked paprika chic it up, but the bare-bones version is always a home run with kids. Pull a skewer through a warm corn or flour tortilla, and top with shredded cabbage, cilantro, onion, and a quick chili powder mayonnaise, à la fish tacos. Delicious.

Pickled shrimp remind us of the time when R. B. was on his home brew jag. As usual, he was way ahead of his time. Now a slightly smarter man, R. B. relies instead on the craftsmanship of real brew artisans for his lagers, ales, stouts, and porters. Back to these delicious shrimp and why we’re distracted by beer. Pickled shrimp must relax in the refrigerator a while to soak up the flavors of the oniony marinade. As with beer fermentation and the curing of Fridge Lox (page 134), you must leave them alone and go find something else to do. Meanwhile, things are happening. Easier than making beer, pickling shrimp takes an overnight instead of three weeks. Min occasionally tosses in a chopped fresh green jalapeño (with the seeds). We cannot get enough of these.

A traditional low-country boil is a whole lot easier in a kitchen than on a deck with all that huge pot, outdoor burner, and propane tank business. Usually, the corn on the cob and the new potatoes are cooked right in the boil with everything else, but in a regular kitchen stockpot, we think it’s easier to cook the vegetables separately. We like the extra depth that a little bottled smoke adds to the shrimp boil.

This stovetop stew is a loose interpretation of the three-day beachside fest known as the New England clambake, that picture-perfect steaming seaweed pit immortalized each August by every shiny food magazine. How do all those beautiful people stay so crisp and clean after digging a sand pit and hauling rocks? One summer, on the beach in Charlestown, Rhode Island, we were actually asked by the crew of a popular food television program to stay out of camera range until they finished a shoot. Our cluttered site didn’t convey casual flawlessness. Rhode Island Clambake in a Bowl is not only less work, it’s a much cheaper cheater because we’re skipping the lobster. Instead of a plate of steamed seafood with a little piece of corn on the cob, a sausage link, and a stray potato, this stew is meant to be served in bowls, with bread for sopping up the clam broth.

Next to firing up the smoker, having a catfish fry in the party pot (our name for the turkey fryer) is our preferred all-day patio workout. Then, after hours of fun over the hot cauldron, we’re done with frying for months. Except maybe for an occasional batch of corn tortilla chips. The thing about catfish is that its soft, almost mushy flesh demands a rigid cornmeal exoskeleton forged in hot peanut oil. An oven and a seasoned panko/cornmeal crust mimic the deep-fried crust with a fraction of the mess and without oil recycling in the morning. R. B. confirms that leftover Catfish Sticks reheat like a dream in a toaster oven. He makes a mean cheater po’boy with reheated catfish sticks piled on a hamburger bun slathered with tartar sauce and topped with iceberg lettuce excavated from the crisper drawer.

One of the cool things about cooking cheater barbecue is the thought that something is going on inside that slow cooker or behind the oven door while you’re off doing something else. The same is true with making lox in the fridge. Our method is just a simple take on classic cold smoking with a little bottled smoke. The fish “cooks” in sugar and salt and cold-smokes in the fridge. Three days later, like magic, you’re in lox. Serve with toasted bagels and cream cheese or dark rye bread with chopped hard-cooked egg, capers, and red onion.