to prepare? Many of these items are inexpensive, easily found and unique, 

 says Joyce Taylor, North Carolina Sea Grant's retired seafood education 

 agent. 



A quick trip to a kitchen, housewares or hardware store or perusal 

 through a catalog, such as Williams Somona or Chef's Catalog, can equip 

 you with everything you will need for gift packages or stocking stuffers. 



If a gift ensemble is what you want, start by choosing a basket, apron, 

 tablecloth or dish towels with an ocean theme. At housewares stores, you can 

 find fish-shaped baskets, dish towels swimming with flounders, tablecloths 

 adorned with seashells and aprons embellished with lobsters that look so real 

 you'll want to drop them in a pot. 



Using one of these items as the base for your collection, add a shrimp 

 deveiner, oyster knife, crab knife, lemon zester, shell cracker, bamboo sticks 

 and/or lemon squeezer. Most of the items cost less than $8 each. If you want 

 more expensive gift options, consider a grilling basket, high-quality pepper 

 mill, mortar and pestle, large stockpot, fillet knife or poaching pan. These 

 items range from $15 to more than $100, depending on quality. 



Or why not make smoked salmon or tuna a homemade taste treat for 

 someone on your list? For about $45, you can buy a home smoker from a 

 discount, hardware or catalog store. If you want to take the work out of the 

 smoking process, you can fork over about $130 for an electric smoker. 



If aesthetics are the point of your purchase, consider a set of shell 

 servers, fish- or shell-shaped napkin rings, nautically embellished napkins, or 

 serving platters and bowls painted or imprinted with fish or shellfish. Several 

 moderately priced ($50 to $70) dish sets on the market sport ocean scenes and 

 marine critters. The same goes for glasses (often plastic) and bar sets. 



To spice up your holiday giving, present friends and family with a 

 selection of seafood seasoning mixtures, breading mixes, marinades or 

 sauces. You can purchase these items at supermarkets, gourmet food shops 

 and fish markets. Add a cornbread or hush puppy mix, and you have a meal 

 in the making. 



To expand your gift recipient's knowledge of seafood, subscribe to 

 Simply Seafood, a magazine brimming with good recipes and beautiful 

 photographs. A one-year subscription (four issues) is only $8.95 (Simply 

 Seafood, 5305 Shilshole Ave. NW, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98107-9950). 

 Mariner's Menu, the quarterly seafood-information newsletter published by 

 North Carolina Sea Grant, is an even better deal. It's free. Although it has 

 no colorful photographs of steaming seafood to tempt your tastebuds, it does 

 offer eight to 10 excellent seafood recipes in each issue (Mariner's Menu, 

 North Carolina Sea Grant, Box 8605, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 

 27695-8605). 



Taylor provides 38 tried, true and tested fish and shellfish recipes in 

 Sea Grant's No Salt Seafood cookbook. Instead of using salt to enhance the 

 flavor of the fisher's catch, these recipes call for citrus juices, wine, herbs, 

 spices and other flavorings. At only $3.50 a copy, this 36-page booklet offers 

 an inexpensive way to complete a gift ensemble or stuff a stocking. (To 

 order, send a check or money order to North Carolina Sea Grant, Box 8605, 

 NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8605.) 



Whatever you decide to buy, shop early and remember to keep in mind 

 the tastes (literally) and preferences of the one you're buying for. In any case, 

 keep your receipts for possible returns. After all, at 82, Aunt Zelda may not 

 want to learn how to smoke her own salmon. 



Happy shopping! □ 



• Seafood cocktail forks. (Top) These 

 delicate, dainty forks extract meat 

 from shellfish — blue crabs, stone 

 crabs, snow crabs and lobsters. For a 

 set of four, the price is $8 or more, 

 depending on the quality. Silver 

 cocktail forks can cost as much as 

 $35 each. 



• Shrimp deveiner. (Bottom) This 

 utensil removes the shrimp's shell and 

 waste vein with one motion. The vein 

 runs under the shell along the length of 

 the shrimp's back and holds the 

 crustacean's gritty waste. Insert the 

 deveiner, pointed tip down, in to the 

 vein at the front of the body (shrimp 

 should already be beheaded). Push to 

 remove vein and shell. Cost is $3 to $6. 



• Pepper mill. Almost every recipe developed 

 by Taylor specifies freshly ground black 

 pepper, which has a more intense flavor 

 than the preground, packaged kind. That's 

 why Taylor urges cooks to invest in a well- 

 made pepper mill with a lifetime guarantee. 

 Although these mills can cost more than 

 $40, their fine-tuned, adjustable grinding 

 mechanism turns out coarse- to fine-ground 

 pepper for years. And toss in a variety of 

 whole peppercorns — white, black, red or 

 green. The mill also grinds spices such as 

 cloves and nutmeg. 



•Seafood cracker. This plierlike tool cracks 

 crab claws and lobsters. Place the shellfish 

 between the jaws of the cracker and 

 squeeze. Cost is about $5. 



• Steel-mesh glove. Gaining entry into an 

 oyster shell, cooked or uncooked, is not 

 always easy, and many an oyster shucker 

 has sliced a hand in the process. To prevent 

 this, purchase a steel-mesh glove that will 

 deflect the knife blade. The pliant, nonskid 

 glove also helps you get a secure grip on 

 sometimes slippery fish for filleting or 

 scaling. These can be purchased through 

 cooking and fishing-tackle catalogs. 



Cost is $15 to $20. 



8 HOLIDAY 1997 



