Shrimp

A bag of shrimp in the freezer is like a helping hand. It's a great backup for those nights when you just can't make it to the store to pick up dinner. The shrimp thaws quickly in a bowl of cold water. And with a bit of seasoning and a quick saute, it's versatile enough to go over rice, pasta or couscous to make a filling entree. If you have time and think of it, marinate the raw shrimp in spices before you leave for work. Or just let them marinate for 15 minutes. Either way, the warm North African spices in this recipe create a flavorful, spicy match for the shrimp.

Besides their shape, star fruit and star anise don't have a lot in common: One is a tropical fruit, the other an Eastern, licorice-scented spice. They do complement each other, though, and here we're pairing them with cooked shrimp and angel-hair pasta. These ingredients may be unfamiliar to some but they are not difficult to find. Star fruit, technically known as carambola, and star anise are sold in larger supermarkets. Two caveats about carambola: Florida's crop was damaged by Hurricane Wilma, so supplies may be erratic and/or pricey.

The Harford County Education Association will sponsor the 11th annual Harford County Seafood Festival from noon to 7 p.m. Aug. 10, and noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 11, in Havre de Grace.The pay-as-you-go menu will feature steamed crabs and shrimp, crab cakes, soft-shell crabs, crab soup and seafood gumbo. Also on the menu will be chicken, Texas burgers, sandwiches, ice cream, french fries, lemonade, soft drinks andbeer.Live entertainment will be provided by a variety of musical groups, including Harford Express, Friendly Fire, Walker Scott (a one-man band)

Christine Mengel of Birdsboro, Pa., wrote seeking a recipe "called limping Susan, which, if memory serves me correctly, is a main dish with seafood. I saw it in the Atlanta Constitution in 1991." Beth Hunter of Timonium responded: "I hope your readers like this as much as we do." Recipe requests Regina A. Hatch of Bloomery, W.Va., writes that she is 75 and had a recipe for a Boston brown bread that she has lost. "I am a native New Yorker who moved south to the mountains of West Virginia 15 years ago and am now nostalgic for things of my past."

When I lived in San Francisco, I often escaped the city and drove north across the Golden Gate Bridge to the desolate land known as Point Reyes, Calif. A fin-shaped peninsula jutting miles out into the sea, Point Reyes offered empty beaches and a charming lighthouse set high on the rocks with dramatic cliff-top views of the Pacific Ocean. I would stop at a village store and pick up a sandwich made with sliced avocado, strips of artisan-smoked bacon and cold, cooked shrimp. It made for great munching while scanning the horizon for a stray gray whale or two. The buttery avocado paired naturally with the smoky bacon and shrimp.

The first time I made this dish, my husband delighted in its briny goodness. "This tastes like something a mobster would eat," he said, meaning that it's rich and satisfying and seems luxurious. So it has been "Shrimp Gambino" ever since in our house. Actually, the shrimp-feta pairing is traditional in Greece, whence so many good things seem to come. Frozen peeled tail-on shrimp would be fine for this dish. Choose the 21-30 size if you can, but thaw them under cold running water first.

Seafood and smoke: it's an outstanding combination when the haze is being created by your barbecue grill. But as delicious as grilled seafood can be, it's also tricky to make. It can go from succulent to stringy and dry in a minute. And because you might not be watching the food as carefully as you would with a stove-top method, it's easy to have overcooked seafood.To remedy this potential problem, I created a foolproof recipe for cooking seafood on the grill. First, I weave a strip of bacon around the seafood -- shrimp, in this case -- on a skewer.

Now that we've had a stretch of sizzling weather, it's time to sizzle some shrimp -- or, as we say in Baltimore, "shrimps" -- on the grill. Even though you can cook them in almost any season, I prefer to wait until it is "barefoot weather" to start grilling my "shrimps." That is because I associate grilled shrimp with spending a week at the beach; a stretch of time when footwear and most outwear is minimal. I won't be bound for the beach for several weeks, but the recent stretch of hot weather got me thinking about the ocean, kicking off my shoes and grilling some shrimps.

Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology will share in a $12.2 million, six-year research project to diagnose an illness killing Ecuadorean shrimp and try to develop shrimp resistant to the disease.The project could have some value in keeping Chesapeake Bay blue crabs healthy, said Dr. Rita R. Colwell, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.Crabs, shrimp, lobsters and crawfish have similar immune systems, and not much is known about how the crustaceans get sick or how to develop disease-resistant strains, she said.

No one dares dispute that the crab is a Chesapeake Bay symbol and that Baltimoreans salivate at the mention of its succulent taste, but another, far less storied shellfish has found a comfortable harbor in the local gastronomy.The evidence isn't irrefutable, but a number of local seafood authorities say that when Baltimoreans vote with their mouths, shrimp wins over the storied crab. And a tour of Maryland seafood cookbooks dating from the 1930s shows steady inroads by shrimp over the years.