Fatal error

 I realized I haven’t shared with you my disappointment in the recent attempt at dry aging prime rib. We were about 15 days into the process and everything was looking good.  

 I was having a hard time keeping the humidity where it needs to be, but that would just cause more moisture loss in the meat and not really affect the taste. I was at work when I got a call the fridge we were using bit the dust.  

 I told Lisa to pull the meat, wrap it tight and put it in her fridge in the house. I was able to salvage a lot of the meat by peeling off the pellicle and keeping the inside. Remember on a subprimal piece of meat bacteria is on the outside, so trimming off the outer layer and keeping everything really clean did the trick.

 With all the rain last weekend, Sharon and I stayed inside most of the time, and I planned to pull out a couple of those steaks for dinner.  Sharon is not a big red meat eater and asked to make something else to go with it. I searched the freezer and found a bag of shrimp. I don’t know why but I have been craving seafood as of late.  

 Now I bet you didn’t know how the lowly shrimp became an everyday food that we eat today. The change is largely due to one man, a Japanese aquaculturist named Motosaku Fujinaga, who devoted his life to figuring out how to farm shrimp. 

 Beginning in the 1930s, Fujinaga worked for more than 30 years to develop effective methods for shrimp farming. The first commercial farms were set up in Japan in the 1960s, and by the 1970s the world was seeing the beginning of a shrimp boom.  

 Fujinaga trained international students in aquaculture, and his disciplines went on to create the huge Asian industry of aquaculture, which farms most of the shrimp that Americans eat today. I headed to a dish I had prepared many times on the vessels and just sounded like a good idea.  

 Coconut shrimp hit the menu this weekend, and although it is easy to prepare, I added a little mango jalapeno sauce to it. This was the perfect appetizer during the less than spectacular game on the television.