The day after Christmas, in the spirit of Italian Christmas Eve seafood feasts, we made a rich cioppino and the most heavenly loaf of ciabatta. All you could hear was slurping and moaning.

Just a little of the honey/lemon sauce so that it isn’t too sweet and lets the flavor of the deep-fried shrimp shine through.

Lunch today was miso-glazed sea bass with sticky rice and skillet-roasted broccoli. Dessert was Key Lime Meringue Pie:

Ready to eat with salad in the background:

What happens if you create a broth from shrimp shells and then use the broth for poaching jumbo shrimp for cocktails. And then you freeze that broth and use it for poaching the next batch of shrimp? And what do you think it will taste like 10 years and a few hundred pounds of shrimp later? Intense and unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. The idea came from a Mark Bittman recipe in Cook’s Illustrated back in July/August 1997. I continue to use this broth for poaching, but I also use a little bit here and there to add a deeply satisfying brininess to other seafood dishes.

Today we had spaghetti with crab based loosely on a recipe from Reed Hearon’s Rose Pistola Cookbook. This recipe calls for fresh dungeness crabs and uses the cooking liquid from the crabs in the sauce. All I had was a can of Costco crab (very good wild stuff from, of all brands, Chicken of the Sea). About 1/4 cup of the ultra-concentrated shrimp broth was all that was needed. My taste buds are is still singing.

On a similar note, I have a batch of chicken poaching broth that is several years old. It’s been through maybe 40 or 50 cycles and gets better and better each time. I very, very gently poach the chicken until just done – no more. Full of flavor and juicy, it makes a great light meal.