Ohh look at him, a real shrimp that’s not processed, SO SCARY!!!  No my friend, do not be scared of this delicious sea-bug.  I will show you how to clean and devein Chuck here (yes I named him Chuck).  Why would you even buy an unprocessed shrimp as opposed to the nicely packaged shrimp in a bag?  Well one, a pound of giant shrimps like these will cost you ~$15/lb at the grocery store if you’re lucky.  If you clean them and devein them yourself, they are $5/lb at the Asian grocery stores.  For smaller shrimp, $3.50/lb.  It takes about 5-10 minutes to process them, definitely worth the time!  Plus I spit on those who lets a good shrimp head go to waste.  SPIT!  You have to eat the shrimp heads, suck the brains out, nomnom.  Ok if you are too scared to eat the head, reserve the head and peel for a shrimp stock, it’s got mmm mmm flavor.

First, rinse Chuck under cold water and give him a good shower.  Then take some kitchen shears and give his tentacles a good trim, and feel free to snip off the tip of the head including the eyeballs, who wants to look at eyeballs when they’re eating Chuck?  The spike on top of his head is quite pokey, so be careful when handling, take your shears and follow the contour of his head and snip it right off.  Think of it as a shrimp mohawk, and you’re the establishment and decided that he has to be shaven bald.   When you are done, your shrimp should look like this, no more eyes, tentacles fairly trimmed down (you can leave them on too if you like tentacles… ):

Now it’s time to devein Chuck.  This is the part where we remove his intestinal tract, it’s usually full of dirt and shrimp poop, so we really don’t want to cook that along with our shrimp.  First, make an incision right between the head and the body with your kitchen shears, about an inch long.  You can actually go the whole way as well and sometimes it might be very necessary if your shrimp has really dirty poop.  These were fairly clean and I only cut an inch to keep the integrity of the shell a little better during cooking.  You should see the vein after you’ve made this incision.  See where I’m pointing to it with my index finger?  That brown line there is the poop chute.

Now with your fingers/nails, grab a hold of the vein and pull it right out.  It helps to straighten the entire shrimp body when doing this.  If the vein isn’t coming out very easily with a little pressure, consider splitting your shrimp out all the way to the tail.  Rinse your shrimp under cold water to remove any residue.   This is what should be coming out.

As you can see, Chuck and his fellow shrimp did not eat a big meal before their deaths, so their intestinal tract is not that dirty.  I’ve seen much worse, where the entire thing is just black.  Gross.  It’s not harmful to you if it’s not cleaned 100%, it might just make your shrimp a little sandy and gross psychologically, but it’s not gunna kill you.

After your shrimp is prepped, time to fry them!!

Evie’s Salt and Pepper Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 1 lb head-on shrimp, cleaned and deveined and dried with paper towel
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Szechuan numbing pepper (optional) or a few slices of jalapenos
• enough canola oil to cover the shrimp in the wok in batches

Directions:

1. Combine the flour, corn starch, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.  Add the cleaned and deveined shrimp, toss to coat.
2. Heat up canola oil in wok, the oil should be about 375 degrees, but I just gauge it by eye.  It should not be smoking, and it should look hot and glossy enough for a proper fry.
3. Fry the shrimp in batches, 4 or 5 at a time.  I had about 14, so finished frying in 3 batches.  They don’t need to be fried very long, about 4 minutes should do it, lay the shrimp on a paper towel to drain.
4. Discard the oil and wash the wok and reheat.  Add the kosher salt, ground black pepper, and the Szechuan numbing pepper to a hot wok.  Stir for about a minute so the pepper can get a bit aromatic and flavorful.  Add the shrimp to the salt and pepper mixture and stir to cover, about another minute.  
5. Plate and Serve Chuck and his friends with sauteed pea shoots over rice!

Do not read this if you hate deliciousness.

Do you like bacon?  Do you like it a little on the softer side?  If so, this is for you.  This was always a comfort food while I was growing up, and it’s meant to be eaten in moderation.  2 or 3 pieces with a bowl of rice and some greens makes a perfect dinner.  Pork belly offers a very interesting texture as well as flavor, melts in your mouth, makes you happy!

Mom’s Braised Pork Belly

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of pork belly, you can purchase this at Asian grocery stores or the butcher
• 2 tablespoons sugar or brown sugar
• 1 big stalk of leek (or 2 small stalks), washed and cut into 1 inch long pieces*
• 4 slices of ginger
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons cooking wine (sake, or white wine is fine too)
• 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon Chinese 5 spice powder
• green onions for garnish

*my mom uses a few bunches of green onions, but I find leeks to be tastier.

Directions:

1. When buying pork belly, make sure you get leaner pieces.  Pork belly is fatty, really really fatty.  Generally I would look for something that is 50/50 fat to meat ratio.  Usually they will be ~3 inches thick.  I cut it into 1×3 inches, or 2×3 inches, like so.  
   
2. This is the hardest part.  Heat up your dutch oven, no need to add any oil.  Brown the pork belly in batches.  It WILL splatter, a lot.  Wear an oven mitt to protect your hand.  I got 2 small oil burns this time around, but damn it’s worth it.  You can skip this step too but I find this step gives it a better texture.
3. When you are done browning the pork belly, there will be quite a bit of fat at the bottom of the pan.  Turn the heat to medium and add the sugar.  Stir vigorously and don’t burn yourself, let the sugar get a little caramelized, it adds another layer of flavor.  This process should only take about 20 seconds so be very quick here!
4. Add the browned pork belly back into the pan and stir.  Add the 2 cups of water right away.  At this point, the water should reach a boiling point instantly.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Stir.  Reduce the heat to a simmer.  Your pot should look like this, all nommy and stuff.  
   
5. Cover the pot and simmer for 2 hours.  Then uncover and simmer for another hour.  Be sure to stir every 30 minutes or so, especially that last hour.  You might need to add a little extra water depending on how dry your climate is.  It should look like this.  At the end of 3 hours you should have about a cup of thickened sauce/fat mix at the bottom of the pan.  

Serve over some white rice and spoon a little bit of sauce over the pork belly (minus the oil) and garnish with green onions.

yup another turkey recipe!  This one requires a rice cooker.  If you don’t have one, it sucks to be you.  I suppose you can do this the hard way and use a normal pot as well.  After my epic fail, I had to redeem myself with a much better performance – I hope this will suffice.  This is “fried” rice because the rice isn’t actually fried in a wok.  This is healthier because the recipe doesn’t involve any oil.

Evie’s Leftover Turkey “Fried” Rice

Ingredients: (Yields a pot of rice, enough for leftovers to bring to lunch the next day and share with coworkers)

• 2 cup of jasmine rice *
• 4 cups of turkey stock
• 3 eggs, scrambled beforehand
• 1 cup of mixed veggies from your fridge, diced small
• 1/3 cup soy sauce (more or less to taste, I rarely ever use exact measurements, so boring)
• 1.5 cups of leftover turkey, diced

*Use the cups provided by your rice cooker and the water line from the pot.  The rice to water ratio should be 1:2.  Very important for this recipe if you are going to double the recipe, do not use the maximum allowed cuppage for your rice cooker, make sure you leave some room for the extra stuff that goes into fried rice.

Directions:

	Measure out your rice and wash it in the pot – add water, stir with your hand, drain the water, repeat a few times.  This removes any impurities from the rice, and it tastes better.
	Next add the turkey stock to the rice.  I used 2 cups of rice, and filled my rice cooker pot to the line marked “2″, because you see, I used 2 cups of rice.
	Add the turkey cubes to your rice mixture.  Notice the water level rose to 2.5, this is why I say don’t make the max for your rice cooker.  I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you did, but I’m pretty sure it will lead to the zombie apocalypse in some way.  Make sure you have a board with a nail through it.  Cook your rice according to the rice cooker instructions, usually this involves hitting a button that says “cook my rice” and it goes.  Really, do you have a rice cooker yet? You want one now don’t you?
	Go sit on the couch for a bit and have a glass of wine while your awesome rice cooker is doing all the work.  When it beeps to alert you that there’s 10 minutes left in the cooking process, prepare your cup of veggies.  Now if you’re just using frozen peas and carrots, you can probably skip this step.  I used fresh baby bok choy because that’s what I had in the fridge this week (and yes I have a lot of it!)  If you are using a veggie that requires a bit of softening, I would suggest doing a quick sautee.   Also scramble your eggs at this time before the rice is fully done.
	This is what your rice will look like after it’s done cooking.  It’ll be very fragrant and smells of turkey stock.
	Add your eggs, veggies and soy sauce to the rice.  Stir everything thoroughly.  Let everything sit in the rice cooker for another 10 minutes on warm (especially if you are adding frozen vegetables).  My eggs aren’t pictured because I was being economical and using the same pan I sauteed the veggies in!
	After warming, you are ready to serve your fried rice!  nomnomnom.