Royal for a Reason...

Not your average shrimp, Royal Reds never see the light of day, preferring to run with their peeps in the cold black deep. Like rock stars, they live out at the edge. That’s where the gently sloping bottom of the Gulf drops abruptly off the continental shelf. Depths from 1,200 ft. to over a half mile down are the home to this sweetest of all shrimp, ranging from the Desoto Canyon off of Pensacola all the way along the shelf's edge to the Dry Tortugas in the Florida Keys.

Royal Reds are bigger, cleaner, and considerably easier to peel and devein than regular shrimp. Hands down though, is their winning taste and texture that elevates them to the status of seafood divinity. Like a cross between shrimp and lobster but a lot more tender than both. Given their delicate texture, their cook time is half that of ordinary shrimp. They aren’t called Royal for no reason.

Carla isn’t nearly as fixated with the joy of special ingredients or recipes as I am, but I obnoxiously dog her: “If you had to pick, would you rather have a cup of fresh lump crab meat, lobster, snow crab, crawfish tails, or Royal Reds?” She loves all of that too. Ultimate culinary treats. No frills. All bathed in melted butter with a dusting of Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Seafood Magic. When your ingredients are this special, they are like the best aged whisky, you don’t want to mix them with a lot of other ingredients. Sometimes she won’t join my fantasy though and says” “I’m just going to have some of the Ziti you made.”

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s great Ziti, ridiculously cheesy and covered with an extra ladle of my vegetarian spaghetti sauce, but that’s not the point. I want to talk seafood.

So right now it’s 3:04AM. I’m up cooking with Etta James. She’s singing tunes from her Chess Box Sessions. The dogs both have one of the bones I roast for them, so they are happy and preoccupied. Carla is at the hospital dealing with people oozing death. Good for her, I couldn’t handle any of that and would probably call just Orkin and have the whole wing tented. Good thing I don’t work in health care.

But I want to give her a memorable breakfast when she gets home. Actually, that’s my goal every morning before I go to work myself. 

So this morning I’ll serve up Royal Red Shrimp Scampi over a blend of Texamti white, brown, wild and red rice. That and a cup of my organic chicken/vegetable soup and some fresh squeezed orange juice from our Blood Orange tree in the backyard.

I ask her: “Does Donald Trump eat any better than this? Does he love his life any more than we do? Does he enjoy a breeze off the marsh or the stinging sun that cuts through the cool air like a knife through Pound cake, like we have right here?”

She agrees that life is good, breakfast is wonderful and then she brings me back to reality with a quick appeal: “Will you please put on the episode of Sister Wives we didn’t finish?”

She is always good about pulling me back in, away from the edge.