Carabinero vs Gamba Roja

[pedro]

Gods of seafood, I implore your help. In the NY forum, a thread about Alain Ducasse at the Essex House showed a picture which clearly resembles a carabinero: ADNY and carabinero.

According to Davidson's Mediterranean seafood, carabinero and gamba roja are the same specie, Aristeus antennatus . However, other sources hold the view that carabinero are Plesiopanaeus edwardsianus.

Opinions, please?

[vserna]

Who's this Davidson character? He don't know nuttin' about our Spanish seafood, it seems. These are two entirely different animals, the red Mediterranean shrimp (gamba roja or Aristeus antennatus) and the giant scarlet shrimp (carabinero or Plesiopenaeus edwardsianus).

[pedro]

As you probably know, I'm referring to Alan Davidson, author of The Oxford Companion to Food among other works, mainly in the field of seafood.

Despite this mistake, I consider his book Mediterranean Seafood an excellent one. If you know a better one, I'd be glad to know about it (no pun intended).

The pending question, now, is what those shrimp were. Since the head had already been removed when the pictures were taken, it makes the call harder. The size, though makes me incline towards gamba roja rather than carabinero.

[vserna]

But the color is scarlet, not dark pink - and this looks more like a carabinero...

So you meant Alan Davidson. He's OK in general. But not in this case.Maybe he lacked the kind of inside information on Spain that Jancis Robinson had in the case of the Oxford Companion to Wine...

[butterfly]

Where do the carabinero come from--the Cantabrian sea, the Atlantic?

I've seen them at the marisqueria, but haven't had a chance to try them yet (really, it's going to take years for me to eat my way through all of these poor unsuspecting sea creatures). The color really is beautiful.

Is there a traditional preparation?

[pedro]

Where do the carabinero come from--the Cantabrian sea, the Atlantic?

I've seen them at the marisqueria, but haven't had a chance to try them yet (really, it's going to take years for me to eat my way through all of these poor unsuspecting sea creatures). The color really is beautiful.

Is there a traditional preparation?

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It seems that you can find carabineros both in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, though probably there are noticeable differences in taste.

A la plancha with some coarse sea salt is a preparation that has simplicity and will give very good results. Add some manzanilla from Sanlúcar to drink with.

If you're brave enough, don't discard the juices that come from the head of the carabinero.

[MiguelCardoso]

So far as I can see, they're definitely carabineros - though, as Pedro implies, it's shocking to see the heads removed as this is one prawn it should be illegal to behead, such is the goodness of the head - possibly the best of all living crustaceans.

I know I'm not trendy - and I do appreciate Alain Ducasse tremendously - but I find it irresponsible and even barbaric to serve carabinero tails. Wasn't it he who memorably and truthfully said "wild turbot without genius is better than genius without wild turbot"? Well then: so much for coherence. By mutilating carabineros ("carabineiros" in Portuguese, but we only have them in the Algarve so they're practically Spanish), he's serving up ignorance and waste (for the sake of colour, perhaps) and he should be condemned for it as, meat-wise, a good langoustine or even a tiger prawn would have been just as effective.

What the hell did he do to the heads? I bet he just threw them into one of his shellfish stockpots, the miserable bastard! ;)

Carabineros are much better when they're fresh but it's so difficult finding them outside (high/Indian) summer that the delicious creatures seem to stubbornly make a point of keeping their juices and flavour when they're frozen and slowly thawed.

They really should always be eaten on the plancha, as Pedro says, with no seasoning except rock salt. Some people cheat with a (very, very) little butter but, again, they're up to it.

The best part, I think, are the juices that ooze from the head while they're being grilled and when you separate the heads with a blunt knife. I always sop them up with small nuggets of very porous country bread. Their flavour is astounding: hazelnutty, luscious, heavy with what I can only describe as sweet, briny cocoa paste.

The bread then goes in to the cavity in its merciless mission to soak and rub the shell dry. Describing it as a "head" (as well as Adrià's mischievous ongoing references to "gamba brains") has the unfortunate effect of putting off quite a few potential devotees. There are no brains - crustaceans don't have them to speak of. What you get, mainly, are the organs, of which the liver is the most delectable.

Another strategy - which does require some will-power, is to forego the bread and do what we Portuguese call "rain on the wet", meaning "adding something delicious to what would already be delicious enough on its own": use the tail (the "lombinho") to dance around the juices with a forkful of meat , coating them in the lovely chestnut brown sauce.

Oh my - this is such a cruel topic to bring up in November, Pedro, when the waters have become cold and it's all about shrimps! ;)

P.S.

I have to defend Alan Davidson - the only British author, along with Elizabeth David, whose books I've reread too many times to count. All his classifications are based on first-hand knowledge and the truth is that the big red Mediterranean gambas are often passed off as carabineros. My father was director-general of fisheries in Portugal for 20 years and then secretary-general of NAFO (the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization) for another 10 before he died. His fishing library was enormous and had all the unpublished FAO and NEAFC classifications and he always said he (er, Alan Davidson) was the only one who knew what he was talking about. Since he's died I'd spent a lot (sometimes $300 on one single volume!) on multilingual official fish classification dictionaries, to keep the library minimally up to date but, day to day, Alan Davidson's books are the ones I find myself reaching for. His "North Atlantic Seafood" is priceless.

P.P.S.

Jancis Robinson is indeed gustatively challenged - vserna is right. She has managed to fashion a hellish cocktail of ignorance and bad taste which is capable of the miracle of not striking one single chord with anyone who's ever enjoyed wine outside Burgundy. She wrote a considerable book on Portuguese wines about four years ago and it was very encouraging and flattering - except she chose all the wimpiest and most boring wines. A quick critique soon showed she'd tasted nothing except what a small minority of winemakers had sent her.

Her husband, who writes for the FT, is very sound though, and well worth following. I expect he pretends to prefer beer when they dine together. ;)

Edited November 8, 2004 by MiguelCardoso (log)

[vserna]

Jancis Robinson is indeed gustatively challenged - vserna is right.  She has managed to fashion a hellish cocktail of ignorance and bad taste

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I am afraid I was unable to convey what I meant, which was that Jancis had good sources on Spanish wine whereas Alan Davidson didn't have them on Spanish foods. This means that I fully, albeit respectfully, disagree with you on this matter.

I deem Jancis Robinson to be a terrific taster and an excellent wine writer, which doesn't mean I agree 100% with her, but then naturally no wine writer agrees 100% with any colleague. I don't know a single wine writer in the world (and, believe me, I know most of them) who would accuse Jancis Robinson of "ignorance" and "bad taste". And her Portugal book did not extol "wimpy" wines at all - it was truly spot on. Ask our colleagues at the Revista de Vinhos what they think of it. Shame there was only one, now outdated, edition.

[MiguelCardoso]

Oh well, Victor. Perhaps one day we'll agree on something. :)

[vserna]

It certainly won't be on putting down one of the world's ablest and most honest wine writers...

[pedro]

Guys, we have a wine forum...

[JesusBarquin]

Gods of seafood, I implore your help. In the NY forum, a thread about Alain Ducasse at the Essex House showed a picture which clearly resembles a carabinero: ADNY and carabinero.

According to Davidson's Mediterranean seafood, carabinero and gamba roja are the same specie, Aristeus antennatus . However, other sources hold the view that carabinero are Plesiopanaeus edwardsianus.

Opinions, please?

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The second source is (almost) right: carabinero is properly Plesiopenaeus edwardsianus and gamba roja is Aristeus antennatus, and those at the pictures look clearly the first, not like the latter, but:

Looking closely to this picture: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...21entry757221 , I would not discard a third species: Aristaeomorpha foliacea (langostino moruno, called often carabinero too, in Andalusia at least).

[vserna]

I think you've hit it on the head, Jesús. Smaller than the regular carabinero, but scarlet-colored. Also, and importantly in this context, this is easily available in North America, deep-frozen and exported from Mozambique and South Africa...