Mock Shrimp Experiment
I’m a serious carnivore. Meat for dinner at least 4 times a week (gasp!). Lost 60 pounds on a low-carb diet, eating eggs and beef-fry for breakfast at least once a week. Meat, meat, meat. So the Nine Days present somewhat of a culinary challenge. Generally I use the time to be creative. Yesterday I decided to conduct a little experiment with DynaSea’s mock shrimp.
I have used DynaSea’s mock-crab sticks before (in a great mock-crab-salad recipe) and of course had them in sushi-rolls, but I had never had the shrimp. I took a recipe for Spicy Grilled Shrimp from the new Grilling cookbook from the Culinary Institute of America (I’m working on a review) and substituted the mock-shrimp. A quick Asian Cucumber Salad on the side, and this was the result:
(Yes, the grilled scallions were just for effect. Turns out that they’re pretty good grilled.)
I think it looks pretty appetizing - don’t you? Unfortunately, it didn’t meet my taste-expectations. It wasn’t bad or anything - just blah. What went wrong? Firstly, mock-shrimp are not absorbent at all. They are sold as a fully-cooked product and soaked up none of the marinade. So I drizzled some leftover marinade over the finished product, improving them slightly. The larger problem was the consistency/taste of the shrimp. If I had to describe them in one word, I would say doughy. Are real shrimp like this? I imagine not. I kept thinking of gnocchi (or shliskes, if you’re in touch with your inner-Hungarian). Dense and doughy, they really didn’t convey a sense of seafood. They were more like a starchy side-dish then a main course. I’ve seen them given the cornklake-crumb/deep-fry treatment and served with cocktail sauce as a Kosher Shrimp Cocktail - I imagine they function more as a novel way to eat cocktail sauce than as a dish of their own. So much for that experiment.
Yeah, shrimp is not doughy. It’s a bit more like orange roughy in texture. I actually once made an orange juice and orange roughy recipie (I sort of go intuitive at passover time) that had much the same taste and consistency as lobster (or what I remember lobster tasting like) which was pleasantly suprising.
I have used sole or snapper cut into strips (pieces really) to be about shrimp size to substitue for shrimp in a classic Spanish Recipe “Gambas ala Plancha” and it worked pretty well. I keep thinking I will go through my favorite old Spanish recipies and come up with a collection of kosher verisons.
For the unfamiliar (like me), orange roughy is a firm, white-fleshed fish.
Shliskes? I have an outer Hungarian–I’m actually in JFK awaiting Malev 91’s delayed departure–but I’ve never heard that term. Methinks that’s the yiddish term for it?
BTW, I agree with the earlier poster about orange roughy. It’s almost rubbery at times. I do not miss shrimp. Buffalo wings on the other hand…
We found a great crab salad recipe right on the side of our mayonnaise jar. It even calls for imitation crabmeat (go figure…).
I once asked the Asian sushi chef at our local kosher chinese place how close the fake version are to the real thing. He said the fake crab is actually a pretty good imitation, but the shrimp not so much, as I guess we’re all finding out.
Here’s the Hellmann’s recipe (more can be found on their website):
Ingredients:
1/2 cup Hellmann’s ® or Best Foods ® Light Mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. chopped red onion
1-1/2 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh dill
2 tsp. lime juice
2 cups imitation crabmeat (and/or seafood)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped cucumber
Instructions:
1. In large bowl, combine mayonnaise, onion, dill and lime juice. Stir in remaining ingredients. Garnish, if desired, with grape tomatoes and paprika. Chill, if desired.
Firstly, I mis-spelled shlishkes. I’m no food-anthropologist, but my father’s family is Hungarian (as much as you could know where the border-du-jour of your country was, in those days). Shlishkes, Kraut-pletzlach (cabbage noodles. Ok that’s Yiddish), Holopches (Stuffed-cabbage) and Goulash were regulars on our table. Maybe it is a Yiddish name.
Shlishkes is potato-dumplings (like Gnocchi) served with a healthy dose of fried breadcrumbs. Many people eat them with a little sugar sprinkled on, but I always had them with my favorite vegetable - ketchup.
I always assumed that the DynaSea “shrimp” were made from the same ingredients as their “crab” products. Is that incorrect? I have noticed that the shrimp generally cost a bit more which I attributed to their upscale shape.
Hmmm, sounds like galuska, nokedli or even gomboc. I’d be surprised if it were a Hungarian word, but I’ll ask my MIL when I get back to the house.
Also, there’s no such thing as misspelling when it comes to Yiddish! :-)
I think gomboc is the answer - I searched online with my father, and we determined that “silva gomboc”, without the plum-filling was the best description. He also agreed that Shlishkes isn’t a Hungarian word - so it’s probably Yiddish. We also decided that Shlishkes is a Hungarian food because it was prepared for us by the Hungarians we knew.
Shrimp tastes nothing like the DynaSea “shrimp” which i had the unfortunate, um, well i ate it in a lo mein dish last week. It was horrendous. My cat seemed to like it but he likes iceberg lettuce and cries for tofurky hickory smoked slices. I have eaten (ahem) shrimp before i went kosher and they’re not even in the same continent. It was mushy and floppy and generally ick. If you want to taste realistic veggie shrimp, try Cherry Street Kosher Chinese in Philadelphia ( http://www.phillychinatown.com/cherrystreet.htm , run by a local Jewish news anchor and his Chinese wife ), which even oddly - smells like real shrimp. in NJ, you can get a not as good but still better than Dynasea, mockshrimp at Veggie Heaven in Parsippany (also in Teaneck and Montclair - but i’ve not been to those locations).
Eper (strawberry) gomboc is even better than szilva gomboc! Yes, it’s definitely Hungarian.
“Shliskes? ”
I’ve always refered to them as “shlishkilach”
I always thought shrip had the consistency of a hot dog. I have to say that I don’t miss them, and if the fake version isn’t all that great, the world is no worse off for it.
Has anyone tried cooking fake shrimp any other way besides grilling them? I was wondering about making shrimp scampi - but since kosher shrimp isn’t very absorbent, I was a bit hesitant to try it out. It looks like i’m a a year too late for this comment though…if no one responds, oh well.
Kosher “shrimp” scampi - feh! Nothing like the real thing (when I did eat it).
Thanks for the info about Veggie Heaven creating “shrimp” dishes that taste more like the real thing. I’ll have to check it out.
Has anyone tried the mock shrimp produced by Asian Star? It is so much better than the Dynasea product. It has a good texture and a lot of flavor. I don’t know if this is what shrimp tastes like, but it is very good. I had it scampi style, but it would be good in salads as well. I’m going to try it grilled next time.