Food Truck Fight!!!!!

At first I didn't think I would make it to A Taste of Two Cities, the Baltimore-Washington food truck rally at Westport Waterfront.  I was able to get there right at the start of it, and was a little surprised (only a little) to see so many people there already!

With the large circle of trucks from Baltimore and Washington (almost complete list of competitorshere) I had to pace myself accordingly, deciding to hit up an equal number of food trucks from each area.  I started with entrées, then appetizers and finally dessert.

My first choice was DC's El Floridiano (Twitter: @ElFloridianoDC), which proudly announces that it is the only solar powered food truck on the East Coast.  El Floridiano, obviously, is bringing some Miami heat (not that Miami Heat) to the Nation's Capitol.  And on Saturday they brought some to Westport too.  I got the small version of their Pan de Lechón ($4): juicy pork on a roll with a creamy spicy sauce.  El Floridiano also has a little tent covering a table of other hot sauces for all your heat needs.

Next it was food from the hometown.  I followed up my pan de lechón with sushi.  Noodlerolla (Twitter: @noodlerolla) has Japanese and Korean favorites, from bibimbap to miso soup to several types of maki rolls.  I got their simple, fresh and juicy salmon avocado roll for all of five bucks.  The little packet of soy sauce decided to explode all over me, but that's not the food truck's fault.

Quite full already and worrying that I would not get the chance to try anything else. I got something to drink instead.  I chose a Maine Root Soda from the Red Hook Lobster Pound Truck (Twitter: @RedHookLobsterTruckDC).  I've eaten there before, getting the buttery Connecticut version of their wondrous lobster roll ($15 when I got it).  But due to lack of money, time and room in my belly - plus a desire to try as many new things as possible - I held off on the lobster.  They have a self-serve soda dispenser with various Maine Root Soda products.  I got the standard root berr, which is rich and tingly and has none of that weird "fountain drink funk".  One root beer was just $2.

Again it was Baltimore's turn.  I crossed the food truck pavilion and after deliberating over many Charm City food trucks peddling everything from South Carolina barbecue to chicken and waffles to grilled cheese to all of the Gypsy Queen's offerings (the eventual winner of the day's festivities), I finally made it over to Miss Shirley's (Twitter: @MissShirleys) which I have never visited before (honest, just haven't been able).  Among the many offerings on their menu was a seemingly simple dollop of mascarpone grits with bacon and tomato bits.  Probably this was my favorite thing to eat in a day where I enjoyed everything ate or drank.

To finish off, I had dessert.  There were many choices in this category as well, with lots of trucks peddling ice cream, cupcakes, even popcorn.  I decided to go for two cupcakes.  The first came from Curbside Cupcakes (Twitter: @CurbsideCupcake), DC's first mobile cupcake truck.  The variety from this gleaming pink truck included one that sounded particularly interesting: the H Street cupcake, a swirl of marble cake and marble-ized frosting for all of three bucks.  It was a soft cupcake with rich frosting that capped off a good morning of eating.

But this wasn't all: I had to make a stop at Icedgems Baking cupcake truck (Twitter: @IcedGemsBaking), a truck I visit when I can.  This time I chose their Jubilee cupcake, made in honor of Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee: a yellow cupcake with raspberry jelly under the top, flecked throughout with bits of orange rind, and topped with a pink rosewater frosting.  I was too full to eat this at Westport, so I just took it with me in the hopes that I would have room for it soon.  I found some.

My final assessment of the Taste of Two Cities: I've only been to Baltimore's first food truck rally, which was, honestly, a mess: food ran out and people (read: me) stood in line for the better part of half an hour just find this out.  I'm sure these events have improved since then.  This food truck event is proof of that, as this was quite an orderly and well-organized event.  Granted, I got there early, but for me at least it went well.  And hopefully for all of our local and visiting food trucks the case was the same.  But I just couldn't tell who had the best food truck.  The only way to actually figure this out: have another one of these events.  In fact, they should probably do this a few times a year, alternating between either ends of the BW Parkway.  I mean, that's the only way we'll truly find out whose food trucks are better.  And if not, at least we get to eat at them more often.

Snacking State-by-State: Florida Part 2A (The Southern Half) - Un sandwich simplemente no es un sandwich... si no es cubano

We now head farther south into what is probably considered “Yankee-occupied Florida”. The southern half of the state is home to great cultural diversity and a unique cuisine all its own. It's Key limes, conchs and Cuban sandwiches in this post! First a review of where we are.

Official Name: State of Florida
State Nicknames: The Sunshine State
Admission to the US: March 3, 1845 (#27)
Capital: Tallahassee (8th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Jacksonville (largest city), Miami (2nd largest), Tampa (3rd largest), St. Petersburg (4th largest), Orlando (5th largest)
Region: South, Gulf Coast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (northwest), Georgia (north), Atlantic Ocean (east), Caribbean Sea (south), Gulf of Mexico (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: Key lime pie (pie), orange (fruit)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Cuban food (southern Florida), Key lime pie, seafood (stone crab, shrimp, conch, crawfish, etc), alligator (northern Florida) typical Deep Southern foods (northern Florida), foods of New York/New Jersey especially Italian & Jewish (southern Florida)

Miami, Palm Beach, Fort Myers and such bring armies of retirees from New York, New Jersey and parts north to settle or vacation. Emigrés from outside the proper South have brought their own rich food traditions with them. For instance, Florida's Jewish community has grown over the past half century mostly due to immigration from the North. Please remember: the history of Jewish Florida begins in the 1760’s, and not in the 1960’s when (according to FloridaJewish.com) the state’s Jewish population grew dramatically from a mere 25,000 two decades earlier, to well over 175,000. Today there are about 750,000 Jewish Floridians, the country’s third largest Jewish community and the largest in any Southern state.

Immigrants also have flooded into Florida from outside parts from many parts of Asia, Latin America and (especially) the Caribbean. Florida’s Cuban community is notable among these, and it has had a major influence over Miami’s cuisine. Florida’s Cuban-American population is close to 900,000 - by far the largest in the US. Like Florida’s Jewish population, its Cuban population predates the 1960’s. However, the turmoil of the Cuban revolution in 1959 spurred much more migration from Cuba to Florida. The influence on Miami’s food is very distinct. Take the famous Cuban sandwich (sandwich cubano or sandwich mixto): ham, roast pork and Swiss cheese, sandwiched into a piece of Cuban bread and fried. I looked at many recipes for the Cuban sandwich, and while they all share those things in common there are enough differences that you cannot just use them interchangeably.

The recipe I finally went with comes from the Three Guys From Miami. Brothers-in-law Jorge Castillo, Glenn Lindgren and Raúl Musibay celebrate all things culinarily Cuban, and their Cuban sandwich, as it exists in south Florida, seems pretty darn authoritative. They give lots of tips about what each component should be like, and a history of the sandwich, dating at least back to the 1930’s if not much earlier.

The recipe: Cuban Sandwich

As the Three Guys suggest, this is a fairly simple sandwich, and well loved - as Glenn Lindgren notes - “it’s a combination of ingredients that are almost universally loved”. The most difficult part is the grilling, which is not at all difficult.



You will need:

* ham lunchmeat, thinly sliced but not shaved (preferably a sweet one. I got a brown sugar one for about $2.50 for a ¼ lb)
* roast pork (again, I got the lunchmeat version, about $3 for a ¼ lb)
* Swiss cheese (baby Swiss if you can get it - I got lacy Swiss cheese, not quite the same, for about $2 for a ¼ lb)
* Cuban bread (this was the difficult thing to find. It’s difficult to find in Baltimore, so I went with a French batard loaf. The Three Guys recommend French bread but specifically say not to get a baguette)
* mustard and pickles (have them both)
* butter (for frying as well as for buttering the inside of the loaf
* The authors specifically state the following: DO NOT USE MAYONNAISE.


In the Three Guys’ recipe, you need to halve and butter the insides of the bread, and then stack everything in the bread in the following order: ham, roast pork, cheese, pickles.


If using mustard, this should probably go on next. Close the thing up and fry in butter in a pan for two to three minutes on each side, until the cheese is melted and the bread is golden brown.


And while cooking, you must not forget this very important step: weight down the sandwich with something heavy. It could be a brick wrapped in aluminum foil, or a bacon press, or another cast-iron skillet like I used. I tended to hold mine down.

Like so.

This is quite the filling sandwich. One batard of bread yielded two massive sandwiches for me, each of which I cut in half to get four meals out of the experience. You think I’m going to eat the whole damn sandwich in one sitting?


Sources:

Castillo, Jorge, Glenn Lindgren and Raúl Musibay (Three Guys from Miami). “Cuban Food Recipe: Sandwich Cubano”, published 2004. Copyright Three Guys from Miami, 1996-2011. Originally from the book Three Guys From Miami Cook Cuban (Jorge Castillo, Glenn Lindgren and Raúl Musibay), Gibbs Smith: Layton, UT: 2004.

FloridaJewish.com. "Florida Jewish History”, publish date 2010. Copyright FloridaJewish.com 2010.

Voltz, Jeanne, and Caroline Stuart. The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie. Random House: New York, 1993.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Florida" page and other pages, and theFood Timeline State Foods link to "Florida".

Snacking State-by-State: Florida Part 2B (The Southern Half) - When life gives you key limes...

Before leaving Florida, we head as far south as we can go in the lower 48 - the Florida Keys.

Official Name: State of Florida
State Nicknames: The Sunshine State
Admission to the US: March 3, 1845 (#27)
Capital: Tallahassee (8th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Jacksonville (largest city), Miami (2nd largest), Tampa (3rd largest), St. Petersburg (4th largest), Orlando (5th largest)
Region: South, Gulf Coast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (northwest), Georgia (north), Atlantic Ocean (east), Caribbean Sea (south), Gulf of Mexico (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: Key lime pie (pie), orange (fruit)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Cuban food (southern Florida), Key lime pie, seafood (stone crab, shrimp, conch, crawfish, etc), alligator (northern Florida) typical Deep Southern foods (northern Florida), foods of New York/New Jersey especially Italian & Jewish (southern Florida)

The so-called “Conch Republic” has a few of Florida’s unique dishes. Note, for example, conch, which you can make into fritters (grind the conch up first) or use in a salad (as Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart recommend you do). You just have to find it first. It’s not always available this far north. Some well-stocked seafood markets have it (try Lexington Market or DC’s Maine Avenue Seafood Market, or occasionally H-Mart). A far easier thing to find is bottled Key lime juice, which you will need to make that most famous of Floridian desserts, the Key lime pie.

The recipe: Key Lime Pie

To make Florida’s state dessert, I went back to Voltz and Stuart’s bible of Florida foods for the recipe and the history of the pie. Originally it was not even cooked - the citrus in the key lime “cooks” the eggs in the pie so that you’re not eating a raw egg pie. Today many cooks recommend baking it a little. You will need to do this for the meringue and the crust anyway, so just to be on the safe side.

Though this was the most time-consuming dish to make, it is rather simple in terms of the number of ingredients. How you use them makes it not such an easy recipe. Here’s what you need:


* one pie crust, either pastry or graham cracker (I went the latter route, making a crust from graham cracker crumbs, butter and sugar)
* 4 eggs, separated (prices vary)
* a 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk (About $2.50. Remember NOT to get evaporated milk. It will not work.)
* ½ cup Key lime juice (even though you can find a bag of Key limes at Harris Teeter for about $3, it’s much easier to get a bottle of Key lime juice. The only brand I could find was Nellie & Joe's "Famous" Key Lime Juice for about $4.50.


Don’t use regular old lime juice if you can help it. Key lime juice has a distinct, more complex flavor. Otherwise, you’re just making plain old lime pie. That’s not such a bad thing, but it isn’t Key lime pie.)
* regular boring ol’ “non-Key” lime (for the juice and the rind. The juice will go into your meringue)
* sugar (to add to the meringue you will put on top of the pie)

First, make the crust if you haven’t already done so.


Next, you will need to mix together the egg yolks (a little beaten), the condensed milk and Key lime juice. Stir until thickened, and then bake in the pie shell for about 15 minutes at 350.


While you do that, whip up the meringue. I’ve rarely made meringues in my life - I had not made one in years actually. This time it did not exactly come back to me, so I had to refresh my memory through the wonders of the internet. Remember that meringues whip up faster and easier with room temperature egg whites. Beat it at a medium setting until foamy, and then add the lime juice (Voltz and Stuart also recommend cream of tartar), beat more, and then a few tablespoons of sugar at a time until stiff peaks form.
“Seal” the edges of the pie with the meringue - I also put a decorative dollop in the middle - and bake for 15 more minutes. I decided to cover mine with lime rind after I took it out.

Ready for baking

I have not eaten much in the way of Key lime pies before. In fact, most of my citrus pie experience is of the lemon meringue variety, with those nasty “glop in your mouth” meringues you get on your store bought pies. My meringue was soft and even a bit chewy, a trait I don’t get to enjoy in many meringue pies. I hope to experience this more. The meringue cuts the tang of the Key lime very nicely for a filling and (forgive the term but it really is the most fitting) decadent eating experience.


My visit to Florida is done. Next I head back up I-95 to the home of Coca-Cola and Paula Deen, the ATL and the, er, SAV? Anyway, the Peach State is coming up. I’ve got Georgia on my mind. (By the way, does Augusta have a super-nifty acronym like Atlanta does?)

Sources:

Castillo, Jorge, Glenn Lindgren and Raúl Musibay (Three Guys from Miami). “Cuban Food Recipe: Sandwich Cubano”, published 2004. Copyright Three Guys from Miami, 1996-2011. Originally from the book Three Guys From Miami Cook Cuban (Jorge Castillo, Glenn Lindgren and Raúl Musibay), Gibbs Smith: Layton, UT: 2004.

FloridaJewish.com. "Florida Jewish History”, publish date 2010. Copyright FloridaJewish.com 2010.

Voltz, Jeanne, and Caroline Stuart. The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie. Random House: New York, 1993.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Florida" page and other pages, and theFood Timeline State Foods link to "Florida".

Snacking State-by-State: Florida Part 1B (The Northern Half) - It's the only kind of tea that matters

As I said in the last post, the barbecued shrimp goes well with a certain ubiquitous Southern beverage that you simply can never find unsweetened. But it's just "tea" in the South.

Official Name: State of Florida
State Nicknames: The Sunshine State
Admission to the US: March 3, 1845 (#27)
Capital: Tallahassee (8th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Jacksonville (largest city), Miami (2nd largest), Tampa (3rd largest), St. Petersburg (4th largest), Orlando (5th largest)
Region: South, Gulf Coast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (northwest), Georgia (north), Atlantic Ocean (east), Caribbean Sea (south), Gulf of Mexico (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: Key lime pie (pie), orange (fruit)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Cuban food (southern Florida), Key lime pie, seafood (stone crab, shrimp, conch, crawfish, etc), alligator (northern Florida) typical Deep Southern foods (northern Florida), foods of New York/New Jersey especially Italian & Jewish (southern Florida)

I admit two things: 1) I hate drinking unsweetened iced tea; 2) Diabetes runs on both sides of my family. So usually I just grab some Splenda or Sweet & Low and put that in my tea. But once in a while you just have to have the real stuff. This recipe is even easier than the last, and takes far less time.

The Recipe: Iced (Sweet) Tea

For (sweet) tea, you'll need:


* quart size tea bags (I used Luzianne, but any tea bag will do.)
* sugar - I added a cup for a little more than 3 quarts.
* water - lots of water (I started with about 3 quarts, and then added a little more at the end to top it off)

Boil the water and steep the tea bags as usual.

Wow. This is hard.

Even harder.

But here’s the important thing: add the sugar while the tea is still hot. Also note that most recipes call for much more sugar per quart than this. Some recipes I’ve seen call for a cup of sugar for every 2 to 4 cups of water.


This is the sweet stuff here, a dessert you can drink.

Next we head south with the snowbirds, retirees and Golden Girls to explore what the southern half of the state has in store food-wise.

Sources:

Voltz, Jeanne, and Caroline Stuart. The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie. Random House: New York, 1993.

Some information about the diversity of Floridian cuisine comes from the following websites, in addition to the Voltz and Stuart book:

Essman, Elliot. “Florida Cuisine”. Life in the USA, 2010. Copyright Elliot Essman 2010.

Rattray, Diana. “Florida Cuisine - The many flavors of Florida”. Southernfood.About.com, publication date unknown. Copyright 2011 About.com

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Florida" page and other pages, and theFood Timeline State Foods link to "Florida".

Snacking State-by-State: Florida Part 1A (The Northern Half) - It's shrimp! But is it barbecue?

Next on my armchair trip around the country is the Sunshine State. Florida is the southernmost state in the Lower 48, an eclectic mix of Dixie, Yankee and so many immigrant cultures and cuisines (notably Cuban). It will be difficult to limit myself to just a few recipes this time if I want to truly represent the diversity of this state.

Official Name: State of Florida
State Nicknames: The Sunshine State
Admission to the US: March 3, 1845 (#27)
Capital: Tallahassee (8th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Jacksonville (largest city), Miami (2nd largest), Tampa (3rd largest), St. Petersburg (4th largest), Orlando (5th largest)
Region: South, Gulf Coast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (northwest), Georgia (north), Atlantic Ocean (east), Caribbean Sea (south), Gulf of Mexico (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: Key lime pie (pie), orange (fruit)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Cuban food (southern Florida), Key lime pie, seafood (stone crab, shrimp, conch, crawfish, etc), alligator (northern Florida) typical Deep Southern foods (northern Florida), foods of New York/New Jersey especially Italian & Jewish (southern Florida)

Like California, Florida has a varied and unique blend of cuisines that reflect the history and diversity of the state.

• There are various regions, influenced by their long history of Native American, Spanish, African and English foodways.
• The northern part of the state is the more traditionally Southern part of the state, with notable Creole and Cajun influences from further west.
• The central and southern parts of the state aren't really considered "Southern-with-a-capital-S" anymore, thanks to the massive influx of emigres from the Northeast (Perhaps there are but a few New Yorkers who haven't made a joke about their uncle in Boca Raton.) That doesn't mean Florida's food traditions have gone out the window, but they have been influenced.
• The Florida Keys have a food tradition all their own (and Jimmy Buffet to boot). Some of that tradition has spread statewide and even nationally (Key lime pie, for instance). Others, for practical reasons, have not (the mighty conch - I tried to get a hold of some but I just never could get around to it, and it is not the cheapest seafood to buy when you do find it in the Mid-Atlantic).
• Florida also has a diverse set of immigrant cuisines, notably from its Cuban, Haitian, Dominican and Puerto Rican communities, as well as traditions from all over Latin America (Mexican, Nicaraguan, etc) and Asia (Cambodian, Vietnamese, etc).
• Florida is one of the great seafood destinations of the country - again, the aforementioned conch is but one of its famous delicacies. There’s the stone crab, which unlike our own blues do not have to be killed in order to enjoy them. Instead, the legs are harvested and the crabs are thrown back to grow new ones. And then there’s red snapper, mackerel, oyster, clam, etc.
• Finally, Florida is one of the important centers of citrus production in the US, specifically in terms of its oranges. But note again the famous Key lime. [bulleted information compiled in part from Voltz and Stuart 1993, Elliott 2010 and Rattray 2011]
  

The true diversity of Floridian food did not strike me until I got a hold of the informative and excellent Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie by Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart. Voltz and Stuart are two chefs and scholars who have thoroughly researched Florida’s food regions and represented the complexity of each. And they make sure that recipes from every part of the state shine in their cookbook. For this State by State post, I tried out three recipes (okay, four including a beverage). Two of those come from Voltz and Stuart.

There is enough diversity (and stuff to write about) in the foods of Florida that I am going to go the same route I did with California: one post this week, another post next week. This week I am focusing on northern Florida, the "Southern" half.

Northern and Central Florida - the Panhandle, Jacksonville and into Orlando - is generally agreed to be Dixie’s southern frontier. You can see this in the food: many (Deep) Southern classics are common in this part of Florida, from barbecued oysters and shrimp to cheese grits and straws, and from iced tea - the assumed-to-be-sweet kind - to blackened alligator to boiled peanuts (look for this last one in a future post), One recipe that jumped out at me was a barbecued shrimp recipe that smacked of one I ate last year at Mr. B’s Bistro in New Orleans. They gave me a bib to keep from splattering myself, but little do they realize I’ve been peeling shrimp for years, and I know how not to make a mess. I don’t like mess. This recipe was a more Floridian take on this Gulf Coast classic. Or at least it should be a classic if it isn’t already.

The recipe: Florida Barbecued Gulf Shrimp

Barbecued shrimp is by no means “grilled” shrimp - but we all know the difference between “barbecue” and “grill”. It is shrimp that is cooked for a while in a barbecue sauce that you make yourself. Voltz and Stuart discuss the recipe, titled “Linda’s Barbecued Shrimp”

Peel-your-own shrimp recipes are popular all over the South, but nowhere more than in the Florida Panhandle, where you’;re never far from the Gulf. Caroline [Stuart]’s sister and brother-in-law, Linda and Bill Virgin, worked this one out for easy entertaining. The advantage of this recipe is that the sauce can be made ahead of time; the shrimp are then added to the sauce and cooked in the oven, rather than on top of the range, freeing the cook to join the party. [Voltz and Stuart p. 81]

Hopefully I do justice to the author’s sister’s work.


What I needed for the recipe (which I halved):
* 2 ½ lb raw shrimp (mine were Texas Gulf shrimp, smallish and pink but, yes, raw, that I bought at Cross Street Market in Federal Hill for about $7 a pound - in the end, an expense of $17, easily my priciest expense for this project thus far)
* 2 sticks butter (had, but didn’t realize this and rushed out to buy some anyway. Duh. An extra $3 I don’t have to spend on butter in the future)
* 1 onion (about 60¢)
* 2 cloves garlic (had it)
* salt, pepper, paprika (smoked in this case), chili powder, brown sugar (had all of them)
* Worcestershire sauce (same)
* ketchup (I was out, so I had to buy a bottle - $2 from Trader Joe’s, without the corn syrup)
* liquid crab boil (First off, I had to stop shuddering from the idea of boiling a crab, anathema to anyone from these parts. Once I did that, I sought out liquid crab boil and, surprise of surprises, Giant had none, just powdered crab and shrimp boil, “Chesapeake style”. I later found Zatarain’s Liquid Crab Boil at Harris Teeter for the same price, about $2.50. The description of what you could do with it made it sound like liquid Old Bay. Man, wouldn’t that be somethin’...)
* prepared (yellow, in this case) mustard and Tabasco sauce (had them)

This recipe has a lot of components, but is ridiculously simple to make, as our author’s sister hints at. Melt the butter in a pot - in this case, my Dutch oven-like pot - and then throw in everything else but the shrimp for 10 minutes.

Just throw it in. Go ahead.

If you’re not saving it for later (in which case you would refrigerate it), throw in the shrimp, washed and drained, for about 30 to 45 minutes. The authors say to either bake it or cook it in the Dutch oven (my pot). I did the Dutch oven, which made stirring a much less painful and hot task.


There, wasn’t that easy?

I cannot tell you just how messy and how wonderful this shrimp is. That $17 was well spent, because it kept me from spending more money doing takeout all week. Though my shrimp did not absorb the sauce as much as Mr. B’s Bistro’s shrimp did, a simple swirl in the rich sauce solved that problem. I dare say that the sauce itself is almost as much of a highlight of this recipe as the shrimp. The authors recommend croutons made from Italian or French bread to sop up the sauce. Buy a soft baguette, slice it into slices of about ½ inch, drizzle olive oil, garlic powder, kosher salt and parsley flakes, and throw them in your toaster oven until toasted to your liking.
These barbecued shrimp go very well with iced tea. You know the kind.

Sources:

Voltz, Jeanne, and Caroline Stuart. The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie. Random House: New York, 1993.

Some information about the diversity of Floridian cuisine comes from the following websites, in addition to the Voltz and Stuart book:

Essman, Elliot. “Florida Cuisine”. Life in the USA, 2010. Copyright Elliot Essman 2010.

Rattray, Diana. “Florida Cuisine - The many flavors of Florida”. Southernfood.About.com, publication date unknown. Copyright 2011 About.com

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Florida" page and other pages, and theFood Timeline State Foods link to "Florida".