Despite what yuppies would have you believe, processed foods are found all over the world, not merely in the poorer and therefore less virtuous parts of America. Where the West has spam, bologna, and hot dogs, the East has fish cakes, surimi, and, of course, shrimp balls. On the surface, the shrimp ball is exactly what it sounds like: a ball of processed shrimp. But in spirit, the shrimp ball is so much more than the sum of its ingredients. It is pink. It is round. It is at once something you would order when taking a date out for dim sum and something a four-year-old would dream up to feed a My Little Pony. Above all, it is delicious.
Some people will be put off by the fact that making shrimp balls involves putting raw meat in a blender, which may remind them a little too viscerally of the wood chipper scene in Fargo. Don’t worry. Your friendly neighborhood Asian grocery store can do the dirty work for you. Although Asian grocery stores generally aren’t so good at eliminating evidence that their meat was once alive (my local store marks the beef and pork aisles with adorable drawings of baby cows and pigs), they’re pretty good at packaging shrimp balls so as not to guilt you into sending checks to PETA.
Once you’ve procured your shrimp balls, there are several ways you can eat them. If you care about authenticity, you can toss them in your soup, where they traditionally belong. If you’re The Exploited, you can boil them with your angel hair pasta. If you’re like me, you’ll experiment with them, perhaps creating the following:
Coconut Shrimp Balls
- 12 frozen shrimp balls (can be procured at most Asian grocery stores)
- 4 bamboo skewers, soaked in water
- 1/4 cup coconut
- 1/4 cup panko or breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- optional: 12 cubes of pineapple
1. Defrost shrimp balls by leaving on counter or boiling for a short time.
2. Crack egg into small bowl and whisk until uniform in color.
3. Mix coconut and panko on plate.
4. Spear shrimp ball on end of skewer. Dip in egg, then roll in coconut mixture. Push down skewer to make room for next shrimp ball.
5. If using pineapple, spear on skewer and coat with coconut mixture (not egg), then push down skewer.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until skewer is full, then do the same with the remaining skewers.
7. Broil in oven until coconut is browned and shrimp balls are warm, about 5 minutes.
8. If, like me, you hate wasting food, you can use the leftover batter to make a coconut omelet:
Coconut Panko Omelet
1. Stir remaining coconut and panko into remaining egg. Add a pinch of salt.
2. Fry in pan until browned on the bottom, then flip and repeat.
3. You can eat the omelet plain or serve it with the following sauce:
Omelet Sauce
- juice of 1/2 an orange
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons rice wine
- dash of soy sauce
- dash of lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon chopped cilantro
1. Combine all ingredients in a small pot.
2. Heat on stove, stirring constantly, for about five minutes.
*Actually, that title is misleading. It would be very easy to imitate a shrimp ball, probably with the gustatory chameleon of fish, pollock.
Tags: chinese food, shrimp, shrimp balls
