bookcooker: Pickled Shrimp and Black Water Rising

I have wanted to make pickled shrimp for a while now, so when I was perusing the amazing cookbook Texas Eats to find inspiration for something to make inspired by Houston, Texas, these shrimp jumped out at me. Pickled shrimp are not mentioned in Attica Locke's Black Water Rising, but they seemed somewhat appropriate since the book is set in Houston and the gulf and bayous of the city are a strong presence in the story. The book is about Jay Porter, a young struggling attorney, and the mess he gets himself into by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the night of his anniversary, Jay takes his pregnant wife Bernadine on a boat ride on the Houston bayou that was a half-hearted attempt at romance. The couple and their boat captain run into trouble when they hear screaming and gun shots, and then pick up a woman in the bayou who is fully dressed and shoeless. By rescuing the woman and not reporting what happened to the police, Jay sets off on a path that will cause him immense stress and put his family in danger. Neither Jay nor the reader knows what happened that night on the bayou or how the woman he rescued is involved, and it is the quest for answers to these questions that drives the plot forward. This novel felt like a departure from what I usually read - it felt like a Grisham novel with more depth and less law. I didn't love this book, but do plan on trying one of Attica Locke's other novels. More about the book and shrimp after the jump.

Attica Locke's Black Water Rising is a complicated thriller, set in the 1980's, with a hero who is deeply paranoid. From the start, it is clear that Jay Porter is haunted by his past. Locke does not reveal at first what happened in Jay's past to make him so scared, but little by little she reveals the pieces of the story. Although he is a lawyer, Jay has an unhealthy relationship with the law. When he was in college in the 1970's, he was a civil rights activist at the University of Houston, organizing marches and sharing the podium with Stokely Carmichael. Then, a rally went wrong and he ended up as a defendant in a criminal case - we don't learn at the start what the charges were, but we know he was acquitted, and by the skin of his teeth - one woman in the jury voted not-guilty. After Jay was acquitted he stopped his activism, put his head down and he got a law degree and started a small barely successful practice, where his biggest client is a hooker who is suing a rich john for personal injuries received as a result of a car accident. Jay meets his wife, Bernadette, in her father's church, and his marriage to her furthers his effort to live a quiet, straight and narrow life after his brush with the law. On the night of his anniversary, Jay was reluctant to help the woman in the bayou. After his wife urges him to help, they pick up the woman and Jay drops of her off at the police station. He knows something is off about her and the situation - she was dressed too nicely to have been in the part of town they found her, but Jay leaves her at the police station and tries to move on. The next day he sees on the news that a murder occurred that night right at the place he picked the woman up. Jay knows he should report what happened the previous night to the police, but he stays quiet and starts his own investigation into what happened. At the same time, his father in law, a local pastor, asks Jay to help the local African-American longshoreman's union in their efforts to win a better contract and be treated equally as their white co-workers. Jay reluctantly agrees, but this work brings him into contact with the mayor, Cynthia Maddox, who also happens to be his former girlfriend. Jay uses the mayor to try to get more information about the bayou murder and who the mysterious women he rescued might be. As he tries to get the bottom of what happened, he is trailed by a man in a large white truck who Jay is convinced is a real threat, but as the reader we don't know whether Jay is really being followed or if his paranoia is making him imagine things. As you can probably tell by my summary so far, the novel is a bit convoluted - there is a lot going on here - a murder, maybe tied to the oil industry, mayoral politics, racial tension, union walkouts, secret oil reserves and more. All of that noise got in the way of my connection to the book - I was ambivalent about the book and never had that need to keep turning the pages. I do think that this is an extremely elevated crime thriller, that you should give a try if that is your thing.

Pickled Shrimp, adapted from Texas Eats by Robb Walsh

Ingredients
2 and 1/2 pounds shrimp, cleaned and devined
1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning
2 sweet onions, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablepsoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon dill seeds (I used dry dill weed since I could not find the seeds)
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 bay leaves
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup white vinegar, more if necessary
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Directions:

To cook shrimp, bring about quart and a half of water to boil in a stock pot.
Add the old bay and then the shrimp.
Boil until the shrimp are pink and just cooked through - about 3 minutes.
Drain the shrimp and cool - peal the shrimp.
In a small bowl, mix together the seeds, garlic, powdered ginger, sugar and salt.
In a very large jar or a few smaller ones, layer your ingredients as follows: shrimp, onion slices,spice mix, bay leaves, shrimp, onion slices, spice mix etc... (if you use more than 2 jars, break up the bay leaves and put one piece in each jar)
Fill the jars only 2/3 full - try to make three layers of shrimp and onions.
Combine the vinegars and lime juice and pour into the jar or jars. If the liquid does not cover the shrimp, top off with white vinegar. Leave some head space so you can shake up the jars.
Cover the jars tightly, shake up and refrigerate.
Refrigerate for at least 48 hours, shaking once a day.
These last two weeks in the fridge but I would eat them in a week. Serve chilled.