From Dock To Pot

WE WERE LYING on the dock, bellies pressed against the cold boards, faces dangling over the edge, gazing into the water. Trails of phosphorescence left by creatures below the surface looked like shooting stars.

"Do you see those little shrimp?" asked Betsy. "When we were kids, my sisters and I would come down here at night and gather these shrimp with a net."

"Do you still have the net?"

Within minutes we were catching dock shrimp or "coon stripe shrimp," officially known as Pandalus danae. And it wasn't long before I learned about their larger cousins, Pandalus platyceros, familiarly known as spot prawns. Eventually, I learned something about the natural history of those critters.

After various larval and juvenile phases, members of the Pandalidae family begin their adult life as males, and later change their sex to female. As females, they brood their eggs on their abdomens. Shelter is the key to their survival. Because they hide in crevices all day and come out at dusk to hunt, they are defined in a way by their habitat.

We were defined by our habitat, too. Just out of college, we both worked in restaurants, and after work we used to take a rowboat back to the smaller island where her parents' summer house stood. It was our first home, in a way, the place where "we" were born.

As graduates, we felt like refugees, survivors not so much of the university as of our own various phases of development. And as young lovers, we were more like one creature than two, exploring and discovering new ways of being together. The island was where we came to start our new lives, and the shrimp that swam there were symbolic of something; capturing them together was proof that we could make it, feed ourselves, and more than that.

The first time we caught the shrimp, we took turns with the flashlight. One of us would hold the light while the other used the net. We took them home and boiled them in seawater. We were working together.

Soon, I had taken over as chef at the restaurant, and when I replaced the chef, I replaced the farm-raised tiger prawns he served with the local spot prawns. I served them in all sorts of ways. Chilled with a homemade cocktail sauce based on horseradish harvested right outside the back door, or grilled with garlic and fresh parsley. But my favorite way to serve them was in a dreamy soup reminiscent of the lobster bisque that the previous chef had taught me to make.

Greg Atkinson is author of "Entertaining in the Northwest Style" and a contributing editor for Food Arts magazine. He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.