On the way home from school yesterday, my mind was busy plotting the way to perfecting the art of deveining and butterflying shrimps for dinner, and then onto formulizing the recipe for a killer Italian-inspired batter. The problem has always been that the deep-fried ocean delicacy won't retain its level of crispiness for longer than 15 minutes. I figure, adding some portion of baking soda and baking powder, both of bicarbonate compound, will alleviate this problem.

It turned out that I found no need to devein and butterfly the shrimps as we bought the ones that had already been deveined ($6.99/lb, no wonder), and that the size would be just a wee bit too small for butterflying.

For the batter, equal portions of the soda and the powder (of about 1/2 tsp) were added onto about 1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour and 2 tbs of maizena, and then came the egg, a cup of water, some salt, garlic powder, and pinches of dried oregano, basil, sage, and black pepper. The shrimps were generously covered with the thick slurry-like batter and were then deep-fried until golden brown.

The result were almost encouraging, some of the shrimps regained their rubber like consistency while I was still frying the next batch, some stayed crispy until the next hour. Maybe I wasn't adding enough of the baking soda and powder, maybe there was too much liquid added, or maybe I should've added some kind of acid to fully activate the bicarbonate compounds. So, onto the next deep-frying time.

On an electrifying note...

Big hearty congratulations to Ndoro Yadda. She has been accepted to TAMU's Electrical Engineering for the Spring semester 2005. She is planning to concentrate on Power Electronics. All these after much thoughtful consideration to ditch Industrial Engineering (her original plan) and Chemical Engineering (thank God, there won't be three chemical engineers in the family). At one point, she was even considering to attend a local Nursing school or some East Coast art institute.

We're all so proud of you, Ndoro!
Thanks for the Shaky custard treat last night. It was yummy.