One of the things we are trying to do here is maintain some sense of the real Florida in a place that cycles wildly from bland, vapid sameness, to theme park mania, to some kind of insipid, Post-Jimmy-Buffet parrot-infused coconut psychosis. By real Florida I mean a quiet appreciation not only for small block houses with old crank jalousie windows, oranges and grapefruit on your backyard trees, trailer parks on little bays where you could live on one SS check, mimosa and Jacaranda trees, but three of our favorites, shrimp boil, Cuban sandwiches, and smoked mullet. And who better to pontificate on these delicacies than your intrepid Skinny Island Post reporter, me, a six-generation native.

For the uninitiated, uninformed, and just plain slow, we will talk a little about how we prepare these native dishes, but don’t try this at home if you feel the least bit intimidated, or don’t know to bang your shoes together every morning before putting them on, to dislodge any scorpions that may have taken up residence overnight. To begin, a shrimp boil is just that: boiled shrimp.  That’s the whole meal. Any side dish, including salad, bread, zucchini, or what have you, diminishes from the experience, and is not allowed. Beer, of course, is not only allowed, but encouraged.

Start with good shrimp, roughly a pound each, heads on, and fresh as you can get them. We used to get them right off the boats in the Keys, before the shrimp pretty much disappeared down there and they started bringing them in from Costa Rica. You can still find fresh Florida shrimp, but it ain’t easy. Trust your fish monger; a stand-alone fish market is best, but if that’s not possible, get to know the fish guy at Publix. Enjoy the peeling process. Put on some music, pour some wine or crack a beer, and have at it. Pinch off the heads, strip off the casing, and save both aside for paella.  And contrary to what you’ve heard, don’t worry about deveining the rascals. That minute amount of shrimp poop is not gonna kill you, and in fact it adds flavor. Leave on the tails; that’s your dipping handle. You remove the tails, too, if you’re putting them in a sauce or some other fancy dish you eat with a fork. We won’t be doing that.

Get your water going, enough to immerse all the shrimp, but making a habitat for them, so use some judgement. A packaged boil mix is fine, like Old Bay, or you can experiment and make your own. Salt, pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes, whatever you want. Melt some butter in a bowl and add some garlic if you like, or mix up a little cocktail sause with ketchup, lemon, and horseradish. Less is more, here. You want to taste the shrimps. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Drop in the shrimp, but don’t walk away. You want them to turn pink and curl a little, not turn to rubber. No time limit; just watch. Ladle them out, divide and conquer. You should have enough so the very last one is all you can possibly stuff in. Simple but effective.

Making an authentic Cuban sandwich at home raises the bar several degrees, but it is well worth the effort. You’ll need good, thin-sliced ham and pork, Provolone cheese, (Swiss works well, too; just no American,) mustard, mayo, and long slices of dill pickle. The baker in this house has begun making her own Cuban bread, but I would not recommend that right off. You can buy perfectly good Cuban bread loaves at Publix. Cut this loaf into six-inch sections, and slice open length-wise.  Slather on mustard and mayo to both sides, then pile on your ham, pork, cheese and pickle slices. Done, huh? Oh, no. What you have at this stage is a decent ham and cheese sandwich, but not a Cuban. You have to hot press the sucker now. No commercial sandwich press? Not to worry. We have a heavy cast iron pan that came with a really heavy press apparatus, with handle. In lieu of that, use a pot lid, or, as a last resort, a big spatula. The point is to have a hot pan, then press the sandwich as flat as you can, turning to get it hot on both sides, melting the cheese, and heating throughout. Now you have it.

Smoked mullet, the greatest of the great in native dishes, requires fresh mullet, of course, and a smoker. We net our mullet from the beach, (when they are running, which precludes it being an everyday thing.) They should be a good ten to twelve inches or longer, heads on. Scale it, cut off the head and the tip of the tail, then slice open stem to stern at the belly, and remove all the guts. Then you butterfly it, meaning you open it up so it will lay flat, exposing all the meat inside the flanks. We have a stand-up smoker/grill with two racks. You start a bed of charcoal in the bottom, and when that’s ready, lay out your mullet on the racks. You have to add wood ships to the coals periodically to smoke things up. About five hours later, it’s ready. We eat it as is, and also make a fine mullet dip to eat as a snack with crackers.

We talked in an earlier post about Spanish Bean Soup. This, and Paella, as prepared in the famous Tampa landmark restaurant, Columbia, are two more favorites, both served with Cuban bread. It’s hard to escape the Cuban/Spanish influence when you’ve been here as long as we have, and who’d want to? More fish dishes, and a few words about oysters in posts to follow. Hey, eat Florida! and Bon Appetite!