I am the usual cook for our household. The LA doesn't really have time to cook, nor does she enjoy cooking, whereas I find it fun and have plenty of time to cook. However, this does mean that we regularly have to buy ingredients. One of our favoured sources of protein is shrimp. We tend to go for Contessa, if only because nobody else seems to do any small shrimp, uncooked, shell and tail off. This mystifies me; what exactly is the appeal of making it harder to get at the lovely tasty meat by leaving the chitinous exoskeleton in place? Could anyone please explain to me the appeal of having to faff about peeling your shrimp before using them? Do bear in mind that I tend to produce fork meals, rather than finger food...
In other news, I have been conducting a small-scale experiment on our two cats. We own two litterboxes, identical but for colour, and both are in use (ideally, we ought to have a third somewhere, since the rule of thumb is that n cats ought to have n+1 litterboxes available, but this is a small apartment). The one in the living room had been getting far more traffic than the one in the bathroom (trust me, you get to know this when you're the one that does most of the scooping), and we were wondering if it were due to the fact that it's white and the bathroom one was purple. The day before yesterday, I pulled off a full-on Cleaning of the Litterboxes, involving dumping out all the litter, soaking them, scrubbing them and generally discovering just how much my back dislikes bending over the bath. In the process, I decided that the litterboxes would swap places.
The purple litterbox is now consistently getting more traffic. So, for cats, as for houses, the key is Location, Location, Location...
You may also have noticed that the LA now has a blog. Be nice to her, please?
The shells are in fact perfectly edible, although I don't care for them myself. The tail is generally left on for aesthetic purposes or to serve as a handle.
ReplyDeleteChinese cooking expects the diner to bite into the shell and suck the meat out, much in the same way as other meats are typically left on the bone.
The shells can be used to flavor soups and sauces: they are, after all, the bones of the shrimp, and will release flavor into hot water just like any other bones. Unless you intend to make and drain the stock separately, it makes more sense to leave the shells on.
Most restaurants probably don't remove them because of the additional time and labor involved.