Shrimp Bisque

It’s nice to take a breather from writing my novel to cook. I just love spending the day fluttering around my kitchen like a 1950's housewife.

The remnants of Ernesto got things marinating in my Brooklyn backyard yesterday. My six foot high tomato plants were not designed to withstand a category -1 hurricane. One of the fruit vines was toppled by the 60 m.p.h. winds despite staking and caging.

My ketchup-like seedlings recently got their first signs of fruit. I know, it’s quite late in the growing season for tomatoes not have already ripened. It has been a most peculiar growing season here in Brooklyn.

We had very little rain all summer. Suddenly the ground is saturated with life- sustaining water and my saucy stalks are pumping all that tropical moisture into the still green fruits as if levies in the sky have broken and moisture is flooding into my creole crops.

In two days those paste creating vegetables grew from the size of a dime to a soccer ball and they have not finished growing, they are still green. It is no wonder the plant and its enlarging fruits toppled over in those Ernesto gusts!

I went outside while the eye of the tropical depression was passing by and quickly straightened up the fallen tomato vine. I stood in the moist soil while barefoot and quickly restored my little plot of farming land and its tattered crops.

“What’s for dinner?” Shawn asked.

I pulled out my favorite cookbook and wrote down the ingredients I would need for seafood bisque.

All that rain and moisture from the Carribean ocean put me in a seafood mood. I decided to double the recipe and wrote down: ½ lb. baby scallops and ½ lb. jumbo shrimp, not in my novel, but on a shopping list. I also jotted in 1 C. heavy cream, 2 onions, 4 potatoes, 2 sticks of celery, half of a red bell pepper wrapped in plastic wrap in the ice box, paprika, teaspoon thyme, 1 tsb. salt, 1 Tbs. pepper, unbroken bay leaf and 4 egg yolks. (Charles’ secret bisque ingredient: cardamom.)

A Chinese lady sold me the sea food. Her little seafood shop located inside Associated Supermarket is a separate business from the rest of the food center here in Bedford-Stuyvesant so I had to pay her almost $20 in addition to what I forked over to the cashier at the front, next to those doors that open automatically with the blink of an eye.

I took the last of the baby scallops (just over a half pound) and a pound and a half of those succulent shrimp sitting atop crystal clear ice and made a projected path towards the final checkout register and home.

My hands were quite full and I couldn’t protect myself from Ernesto with an umbrella. It was one of those days when umbrellas turn inside- out anyway. I got drenched on the way home from shopping, but my ingredients remained dry inside plastic shopping bags.

I brought 2 cups of water to a rapid boil and tossed in all those vegetables and seasonings. It simmered while I took an Epsom salt bath.

After I dried off I used an electric mixer to whip the tender vegetables like mashed potatoes. The concoction resembled pond- scummed mashed potatoes. I trickled in two more pints of water and returned it to a boil. Afterwards, I adjusted the seasonings. I looked out the bedroom window and saw that Ernesto had blown over ‘Gloria’ my tomato plant again. I went back outside in the pouring rain, lifted the toppled giant and used a spade shovel to secure it one last time in an upright position. Ernesto was not going to ruin my Labor Day weekend!

My pre-bisque had cooked down for well over three hours before I added one cup of heavy cream and four egg yolks to the soup which then officially made it a bisque. It is only after the creamy substance is added that one can name their bisque. I called mine ‘Florence’.

I turned off the flame and added the chopped seafood. Dinner was fabulous. Shawn and I rolled under the sheets like a wave of thunderstorms steaming off the coast of Africa. Afterwards we fell asleep and I neglected the novel.

This morning, both Gloria and Andrew had fallen over due to the loosening of the dirt from all that Ernesto rain and wind. I staked them both up again as if they were being crucified.

I was saddened by the fruits that had fallen from the vines but patted down the soil around the exposed roots and pray that they have eternal life.

We’re having fried green tomatoes dipped in Ernesto bisque with a touch of tropical moisture for dinner this evening. Perhaps we’ll invite a friend and have a threesome. It’s a long three day weekend and it’s not even half way over yet. The sun may even come out today.