Shrimp scampi. What's not to love? Butter, garlic, seafood ... yum!
For some reason, I don't make it very often, but when I saw a recipe in Gumbo Love by Lucy Buffet, I had to give it a try.
Of course, I switched up a few things. Fresh shrimp really doesn't exist here, but I buy it frozen when it looks good. I happened to have a bag of cooked, peeled shrimp in the freezer, so I used that. The recipe actually called for raw shrimp, but I knew I could make it work.
Gumbo Love is another one of the books that's getting passed around in the group I belong to. I also made a pound cake from the book that I thought was almost perfect. The texture was good - which is really amazing up here at high altitude - but I thought it was just slightly too sweet for my taste. But that's okay. I'll probably made it again and adjust the sugar level down and see if the texture remains the same.
I also made a black bean and corn salad from the book. Most of the time, I just toss things together for a salad like that, but this time I (mostly) followed the recipe.
The scampi, though ... I really need to keep this recipe. Thus, a blog post.
Shrimp Scampi Adapted from Gumbo Love by Lucy Buffet
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp (The book specifies wild-caught gulf shrimp, but here in Colorado, sometimes you take what you can get. I used cooked frozen peeled shrimp.)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped shallots (I used onion instead.)
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1/2 cup white wine
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I just eyeballed it when I shook it on.)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided (I just eyeballed it.)
2 cups white rice, for serving (I use rice that had been cooked with saffron, so it was yellow.)
In a large heavy skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat.
While the oil is heating, season the shrimp with just a little of the salt and pepper. Add the shrimp to the skillet and saute for 3 minutes, then remove the shrimp and set aside. (Since my shrimp were pre-cooked, I skipped all of this.
Add the butter to the skillet and allow it to melt, but be careful that it doesn't burn. Add the shallot and garlic (here's where I added salt and pepper) and saute until they start to caramelize.
Add the wine to deglaze the pan, scraping up any gooey bits stuck to the pan and stirring them into the wine. Add the lemon juice, red pepper flakes, and the remaining salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two, or until the liquid has reduced by a third.
Return the shrimp to the pan (here's where mine entered for the first time) and cook until the shrimp is cooked through (or warmed through, if they're precooked).
Turn off the heat, add 1 tablespoon of the parsley, and stir well.
Serve the shrimp over the rice and garnish with the remaining parsley.
Don't worry. It's not going to be all sous vide all the time. But I'm working my way through sous vide cookbooks, looking for the one that will be my go-to book. This time, the book is The Essential Sous Vide Cookbook by Sarah James. I bought this one because the author had a pretty good track record working for Instructables.
Raw, shell-on shrimp were on sale at my local grocery store, so I bought 2 pounds, then I decided to see if the book had any sous vide recipes. Yup. There was a very simple recipe, which was exactly what I was looking for. With sous vide recipes, my first concern is whether the cooking time and temperature will work. If that doesn't work, the rest of the recipe doesn't matter.
Shrimp is a good candidate for sous vide cooking since shrimp go from undercooked to overcooked in the blink of an eye. Overcooked shrimp are the most likely result because if you cook them until they're done, the carryover heat takes care of the overcooking. And then they're kind of tough and rubbery.
The instructions were simply. Put the cleaned peeled shrimp into a sous vide bag with a little bit of olive oil or butter so they'll fit in a single layer. I used butter.
Then, cook at 130 degrees for 15 minutes, drop the bag into cold water to begin the cooling process, then refrigerate. Then the shrimp can be used in salads, with cocktail sauce, or however you want to serve them. The interesting thing was that two recipes where the shrimp was served hot used a temperature of 135 degrees for 30 minutes, with no interim chilling.
But for chilled shrimp, I'm going to say this time and temperature was really nice. I also tossed some into hot leftover fried rice, and the were perfect for that, too.
1-2 pounds of raw, peeled, cleaned shrimp
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
Heat the water to 130 degrees.
Place the shrimp and butter into a sous vide bag so they'll fit in a single layer.
Put the bag into the sous vide water and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the bag from the water and place it in cold water to start the chilling process, then refrigerate until fully chilled.
Serve cold in salad, with cocktail sauce, or however you like. I even stirred them into some leftover vegetable stir-fried rice that I had left over. So yum!
Super-Quick Cocktail Sauce
This is pretty much the only cocktail sauce I ever had when I was a kid. We always used a brand-name chili sauce to make the sauce, but the folks at Kam's Kettle Cookedsent me some of their mild-flavored sauce as a sample(they make both mild and hot), so I used that instead. Their sauce has a slightly spicier flavor which worked perfectly well for my cocktail sauce.
To make the cocktail sauce, just mix chili sauce with jarred horseradish - whatever proportion you like. As horseradish sits around, it loses strength, so if you have a fresh jar, you might just need a tiny bit. If the jar has been hanging around a while, it will take more to get the same kick. If the jar has been around for a long time, it might have no life left, so it's time to buy a new jar.
If you make too much cocktail sauce for the amount of shrimp you have, mix it with some mayonnaise and a little bit of chopped sweet pickle or sweet pickle relish to make Thousand Island salad dressing.
About the cookbook: I've only made this one recipe from this book, so I can't really draw an opinion yet. I'll be making more recipes soon. The book was NOT free from the publisher. I bought this one. And here's a bonus for you. Download the Shrimp Fried Rice photo as a coloring book page. It's free. No obligation, no need to sign up for anything. Here's my artwork:
For more blog posts coloring pages, click here or click the Coloring Book Pages tab at the top.
Seafood is ideal when you don't have a lot of time to cook. While shrimp isn't the cheapest thing at the store, frozen shrimp is great to have on hand. I buy it when it's on sale and stash it in the freezer for nights when I need a quick dinner.
This dish is not only quick to cook, you can also cook the tomato/vegetable mix ahead of time, and then reheat it and add the shrimp at the last second. Great for nights when you want to have dinner on the table a few minutes after you get home.
The Piment d'Espelette is a special type of paprika that comes from a specific area in France. It has a little bit of heat to it, but not a lot - it's certainly not like cayenne. If you don't have it, regular paprika is fine. Depending on your preference, you can use either sweet or sharp paprika.
You might notice that I used a cooking wine for this. I keep a few bottles on-hand for convenience, because I don't always want to open a bottle of good drinking wine just for a small amount for a recipe. A while back, I did some sponsored posts for Holland House, and I liked the product so much, I continue to buy it.
Because cooking wine has salt in it (to make it unpalatable for drinking, which is why they don't sell it as booze) you may not need to add much salt to recipes where you use it. As always, taste the food when it's nearly done and add salt if you think you need it.
I thought this was particularly good on top of rice or polenta, but you could also serve it as-is, or with pasta. Shrimp with Marsala and Tomatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, peel and cut into chunks
1/2 orange bell pepper, cored and cut into chunks
1/2 teaspoon Piment d'Espelette (or paprika)
1 14.5-ounce can petite diced tomatoes
1/4 cup marsala cooking wine
Salt and white pepper, to taste
2 pounds peeled raw shrimp (if it's frozen, thaw it)
Heat the olive oil in a saute pan. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring as needed, until the vegetables are almost cooked through.
Add the tomatoes and continue cooking, stirring as needed, until the liquid is reduced and thickened.
Take the pan off the heat and add the wine (to keep it from flaming). Place it back on the heat and cook for a few more minutes to reduce it again. Add a few grinds of white pepper. Taste for seasoning and add salt, if desired.
Add the shrimp and cook, stirring often, until the shrimp is just opaque.
It's not really Charles Phan's fault that my shrimp don't look like the shrimp in the photo in his cookbook, The Slanted Door. I got ahead of myself making the recipe, and rather than starting over, I just plowed through as best I could.
Meanwhile, I knew I'd never find long beans anywhere, so I used green beans.
Despite my glitching and swapping, the recipe was actually very good. I'd definitely make it again, and read a little slower. And maybe not worry about the beans. It was good with green beans, but I'm thinking it might be good with other vegetables as well.
Shrimp and Long Beans Adapted from The Slanted Door by Charles Phan
12 ounces peeled and deveined shrimp
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 pinches kosher salt
12 ounces frozen tiny whole green beans
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
1/4 cup michiu rice wine
Steamed jasmine rice
Combine the shrimp, 2 tablespoons oil fish sauce, cornstarch, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir and set aside until needed.
If you're using fresh beans, blanch them. Since I was using frozen beans, I popped them into the microwave just long enough to thaw them.
Heat a wok over high heat (I used a saute pan, but a wok would have been better) until a drop of water evaporates on contact. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of oil and wait until it's shimmering, then add the shrimp. Cook, stirring, until the shrimp turns pink - about a minute.
Remove the shrimp from the pan and set aside. Pour out all of the oil except about 2 tablespoons. Add the ginger and garlic and stir, then return the shrimp tot he pan along with the beans ad rice wine.
Cook for another minute and serve with (or over) rice.
About the book:
Before I got this book, everyone I knew was simply raving about it, but I'll admit I was a little bit skeptical about how much use I'd get out of a Vietnamese book. The grocery stores around here don't have a huge selection of Asian ingredients, and the big market is a bit of a road trip, so I don't go there very often. Maybe twice a year.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the recipes were very do-able with supermarket ingredients or perhaps with a few minor substitutions, like using green beans for the long beans. And based on the fact that I messed up this recipe and it still tasted good - well, that's enough to convince me that if I do things right, I'll have even better results.
The photos here are interesting, compared to some books that have artistically stunning photos. These don't make me want to hang them on the wall - they make me want to pull out a fork and have some to eat.
While I doubt this will be a book I turn to for everyday recipes, it will be a book I turn to when I want something a little bit outside my normal repertoire. The people who were praising this book definitely got it right.
I received this book from the publisher at no cost to me.
This recipe came about because I had a few blog-things I needed to deal with. I had raw frozen shrimp that needed to be used; I had a garlic press I wanted to test; and I had purple snow peas and endive that Frieda's Specialty Produce had sent to me.
I could have used all those things separately, but the more I thought about it, the more they made sense together. Along with a few other things, of course.
This is the sort of recipe that begs you to improvise, to make this to your taste. I used green bell peppers, but red bells would be nice and would add a nice pop of color. Yellow or orange or a mix of colors would be fine, too.
Garlic and ginger are strong flavors - use as much or as little as you like. I didn't add any herbs, because I wanted this to be about the garlic and ginger, but you could make this with garlic and basil, for example. Or ginger and cilantro. Or oregano and red pepper flakes. Or whatever strikes your mood.
I had very large shrimp, so I cut them in half, but this would be just as good with smaller shrimp, or even bay scallops. No endive? How about a bit of cabbage or bok choy? No purple snow peas? Use green snow peas or sugar snaps or English peas. Or no-peas, if you don't like them.
This is the sort of meal you can put together really quickly, particularly of you have everything prepped in advance. Dinner can be on the table in the time it takes to boil water and cook your pasta.
Shrimp with Garlic, Ginger, and White Wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 large onion
2 green bell peppers
2 large cloves garlic
1 1/2-inch piece of ginger
Salt, to taste
1 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 small endive
1/4 pound purple snow peas, stems removed
1 pound large shrimp, peeled, cleaned, and cut in half, lengthwise
1/2 pound linguini, cooked in boiling salted water
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet.
Cut the onion in half through the poles, then cut that in half (or thirds, if you want smaller slices). Cut the pieces into 1/4-inch slices.
Core and wash the bell peppers and cut into slices that are similar in size to the onions.
Add the onions and bell pepper to the pan and cook, stirring as needed.
Dice the garlic or press it through a garlic press. Grate the ginger or press it through a garlic press. Add the garlic and ginger to the pan and stir. Add the salt (I used about 1/2 teaspoon), and cook, stirring as needed, until the onions are becoming translucent.
Add the white wine and lemon juice and let it simmer while you work on the endive.
Cut the endive in half, lengthwise (remove and wilted or damaged outside leaves, of course), remove the cores, and slice into shreds about the same size as the peppers and onions. Add the endive and snow peas to the pot, and cook, stirring as needed, until the liquid is reduced until it's almost gone. Add the shrimp and cook, stirring, until the shrimp are opaque.
Add the pasta and stir to combine.
Serve hot. Or ... although I made this with the intention of serving it as a hot dish, it's actually pretty tasty as a chilled pasta salad. I'd suggest adding an extra squeeze of lemon and a splash of olive oil if you serve the leftovers chilled.
About those purple snow peas ... I have to say that they didn't taste any different than the green version, but - and maybe this is just my imagination - but it seems like they held their crispness better than the green ones. I used a small amount in some chicken soup and cooked them for a looooong time, and they held that lovely crispness rather than getting soft.
I receive produce from Frieda's Specialty Produce on occasion for my use; posts are not required, but then again I only ask for things I plan on using. Or that I'm curious about. Frieda's products are available in many supermarkets ... and I buy them, too. I received the garlic press from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.
This is the first of a series of articles I'm writing for Pompeian, makers of olive oils and vinegars. Right up my alley. I go through olive oil like it grows on trees.
hehe.
Pompeian has three oils in its Varietals Collection, which are oils made from a single variety of olive. I chose to work with the Picholine, since it's an olive I'm familiar with, but I've never tried a picholine olive oil.
The other two oils in the collection are Arbequina and Koroneiki.
One cool thing about these single-source oils is that you can look up the origin of the oil, including the mill, the country, and the harvest date. All you need is the lot number from the bottle. Or use your smart phone and scan the QR code on the bottle.
Mine came from Morocco.
Even better is that these oils are affordable - you're not going to have to dip into the college fund to make a salad - they sell for about $6.99 for a 16-ounce bottle, but I've seen them locally for less.
The picholine was described as "a medium-bodied oil with a green fruitiness, hints of herbs and a pleasing balance of bitterness, great for meats and sauces." So it was the middle-ground between the other two. I tasted it and started brainstorming. I wanted a recipe where you could taste the oil, but not just oil drizzled over something.
I decided to pair it with shrimp. And, I've got two options for you.
This recipe takes advantage of parsley stems - the part you're likely to throw away for other recipes. You don't have to use the stems, but if you bought parsley for another recipe, you might as well use stems for this.
Otherwise, use leaves and stems of about 1/4 of a bunch of parsley. Eyeball it - this doesn't need to be exact.
Shrimp with Herb Oil (or mayo!)
1/2 cup Pompeian Picholine olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, peeled
Stems from 1 large bunch parsley
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled and cleaned
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup prepared mayonnaise (optional)
Lemon juice (optional)
Heat 1/4 cup of olive oil on gentle heat in a nonskillet add the garlic and cook, stirring as needed. until the garlic is cooked and soft. It's fine if the garlic browns a little, but don't let it burn. If it does, start over.
Pour the oil and garlic into your food processor add the parsley and the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. Process until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it to be.
Strain the mixture through a fine strainer and discard the solid bits - we're just after the flavored oil. Taste and add more salt, if desired.
Heat the skillet again with the residual oil - you can add more if you think you need it, but you shouldn't need more than a teaspoon or so.
Cook the shrimp in the skillet, turning them over when cooked on one side, until just cooked through.
Serve warm, drizzled with the herb oil. Drizzle with a bit of lemon juice, if you like.
Shrimp with Herb and Olive Oil Mayo
These shrimp, served cold, are excellent with a green herb-olive oil mayo. Here's how.
Put the 1/4 cup of prepared mayonnaise in a small bowl. Drizzle the flavored oil into the mayonnaise, whisking to incorporate it.
If you add it slowly and keep whisking, the oil will emulsify into the mayonnaise and it will stay thick, rather than thinning out.
Taste, after you've added two tablespoons of the flavored oil and add more oil, if desired - how much you add is totally up to you. Add more salt, if needed. You can also add a bit of lemon juice, if you like.
Serve the mayonnaise with chilled shrimp.
If you make more mayonnaise than you need, you can thin it with a bit of buttermilk or or milk and use it as a salad dressing or drizzle over vegetables. This post is sponsored by Pompeian as part of the #PantryInsiders program.
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Gro-ables. All opinions are 100% mine.
It's spring and it's snowing. Welcome to high-altitude Colorado, where we're likely to get snow in mid- or even late-May. Yes, I'm not kidding.
I started the Gro-ables pods that I wrote about here, so I could harvest some herbs for a recipe, but let's be honest here. It's SNOWING.
I considered planting them outdoors, but then decided that wasn't a good idea.
So, I started the pods indoors in pots, and I'll be moving them outside as soon as the weather becomes a little less hostile to tender green growing things.
They can stay in the pots I planted them in, since the basil, dill, and lettuce aren't going to need tons of space to spread. They'll be just fine.
This sprouted after just a few days!
When I got the herbs, I planned on making a basil pesto to go along with shrimp. Since my little herbs are, at this point, still itty-bitty babies and I needed quite a bit of basil for this recipe, I bought some.
And then I added pasta. Because it sounded good.
I have to say that I like the idea of having home grown herbs waiting for me outside - so much more convenient than running to the store when I need a spring or a snip of something.
The basil, according to the Sprout It site, is easy to grow, and likes full sun and normal watering.
All of the plants varieties are listed on the site, with tips on growing, and suggestions on how many plants per household are recommended. It's handy information for new gardeners who might not know the average yield from different plants.
But meanwhile, dreaming of summer and swaths of fresh herbs and produce, we have this:
Basil Pesto
1 cup loosely packed basil leaves
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon macadamia nut butter*
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove black garlic
Pinch of salt
Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. It's fine if there are tiny bits of basil leaves, but you want it as smooth as possible.
*You can use any nut or seed butter you like here. I thought the macadamia nut butter was fun.
Shrimp and Pasta with Basil Pesto
1 pound shrimp, cleaned and peeled, and cooked as desired
1/2 pound rotini pasta, cooked
24 grape tomatoes, halved
12 kalamata olives, halved
Basil pesto (recipe above)
Combine the shrimp, pasta, tomatoes, olive, and pesto.
Serve warm.
Drizzle with olive oil for serving, if desired.
Want more info on the Gro-ables? Check out the video!
I love 'em, and since I got a ginormous bag for participating in an OXO event, I've been cooking with them quite a bit lately. This was a super-quick supper one night, but worth jotting down for the next time I'm trying to think of something fast and easy.
This would be great on pasta or rice, or it could have been served on a bed of roasted or stir-fried vegetables, like zucchini, bell peppers, onions, or bean sprouts.
For herbs, tarragon, paprika (hot, mild, or smoked), rosemary, basil or thyme would work. Or use a bit of soy sauce or a dash of sriracha. Or a lot more lemon. Or lime. Or even some tomatoes.
Or, you know, just serve it plain, without any frills.
Shrimp with Scallions
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
12 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
Salt and white pepper, to taste
6 scallions, thinly slices
Juice of 1 Meyer lemon
Heat the butter and olive oil in a medium saute pan. Wait until the butter sizzles a bit. Add the shrimp, salt, an pepper. Watch carefully - it cooks quickly.
When it's pink on one side, flip to the second side and add the scallions. Cook until the shrimp is just cooked through.
Take off the heat, drizzle with the Meyer lemon juice, and serve with the scallions and the butter sauce from the pan.
Have you ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant? One of the signature dishes is shrimp with a secret egg yolk sauce. It almost seems like cheese - but it's not. instead, it's a relative of mayonnaise. Or, technically, I guess it's a type of mayonnaise, since it's essentially emulsified egg yolks and oil.
Here, I decided to veer away from the Teppanyaki serving style and served the shrimp on a bed of spinach. Then I drizzled the whole thing with some extra lemon juice - lemon goes perfectly with both shrimp and spinach - and it was a very simple meal.
The secret sauce can be made in advance and refrigerated until needed, and you can peel and clean and butterfly the shrimp ahead of time, too. So when you're ready to cook, it's really fast.
To make the portioning of the sauce a little easier, I used a pastry bag, but you can dollop it on with a spoon, if you like. The sauce is really rich, so don't get carried away. Or, just eat more spinach to compensate.
Annato seeds can be found at specialty spice shops and at some ethnic markets or in the ethnic section of your grocery store. You might find the labeled at achiote seeds. Make sure you get the actual seeds and not the powder or paste. They look like little brick-red rocks and turn the oil a bright yellow-orange color.
Be careful - the oil will stain.
As far as the spinach, as much as I'm a fan of using fresh vegetables as much as possible, sometimes frozen spinach makes more sense. A bunch of spinach at the grocery store or farmer's market cooks down to nothing. A pound of frozen spinach is relatively substantial. And, it's already clean, so you don't need to deal with washing the grit off the spinach leaves. One of my least favorite kitchen tasks.
This post is sponsored by OXO and the NFI Shrimp Council. For my participation, I received a selection of OXO tools and enough shrimp for several different recipes. There's a list of participating bloggers after the recipe, and a chance to win some amazing goodies for yourself, including the same tools I received, and a $100 gift card.
Shrimp with Egg yolk Sauce
For the sauce:
1 cup mild-flavored vegetable oil
2 tablespoons annato seeds
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
2 egg yolks For the shrimp:
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and butterflied
1 tablespoon olive oil
For serving:
1 pound frozen chopped spinach, cooked
Lemon juice, as needed
Lemon wedges, for serving
To make the annatto oil:
The first step of this process is to make the annatto oil. You probably won't use the full cup of oil, but once you have it, you can use it for other purposes, so there's no problem with having extra on hand. If you don't want any extra, you can halve it - use 1/2 cup of oil and 1 tablespoon of seeds, and if you need more oil, use plain vegetable oil.
Put the oil and seeds in a small saucepan and heat gently. You don't need to boil the oil, and above all, you don't want those seeds to blacken. Just get the oil hot, stir once in a while, then turn off the heat and let the seeds steep until the oil has cooled. Strain the seeds out and keep the oil.
To make the egg yolk sauce:
Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl until they lighten in color. This step might seem frivolous, since you're not adding anything to the eggs. But trust me, if you don't beat the oil well, the oil will never emulsify. You can do this with an electric mixer or stick blender if you like.
Add the oil, a little bit at a time, whisking like crazy as you go. The oil should incorporate into the yolks and you should see it thicken.
If you add the oil too fast and the mixture separates, you can beat one more yolk separately and then add the broken mixture to the new yolk, slowly.
When you've got about 1/2 cup of oil beaten into the yolks, add the lemon juice and salt and continue whisking (at this point, I think the whisk is a better tool, so even if you started with an electric mixer, I suggest you finish by hand.
Keep whisking, and the mixture will thicken until it's almost the consistency of Velveeta. You can continue adding oil, if you like, but I preferred the higher yolk-to-egg ratio. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice, as desired.
If you're not cooking the shrimp right away, refrigerate this until needed.
The great thing about shrimp is that even if it's frozen, you're not too far away from cooking. If you didn't think about putting some in the refrigerator to thaw, just let it thaw in cold water. The bowl and strainer OXO provided was perfect for this. For a smaller amount of shrimp, the silicone steamer in any handy bowl or container works just as well. Since it's flexible, you can make it fit into whatever containers you have handy.
To finish the dish:
For a quick video on how to clean shrimp using the OXO shrimp cleaning tool, click here. Once the shrimp is deveined and peeled, butterfly them by cutting through the top side of the shrimp (the top of the curve, opposite the legs) almost all the way through, then flatten them out.
Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a saute pan that has a cover. (Meanwhile, cook the spinach, as desired. I microwaved mine until just cooked through and still bright green.)
Have the egg yolk sauce ready, along with your lemon juice (OXO provided a wooden reamer to make this task easy). Have a cup or small container on hand, with about 1/4 cup of water. You could also mix half water and half white wine, for a little extra flavor.
When the oil is hot, place the shrimp, cut-side up, in the pan, then top each with a small dollop of the egg yolk sauce (or pipe a line down the center using a pastry bag). Pour 1/4 of water into the pan and cover. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through - check after about 30 seconds - and cook just as long as you need to.
Some (or all) of the shrimp might curl a bit as they cook.
Place the shrimp on top of the spinach and drizzle with lemon juice. Serve warm with extra slices of lemon.
Want more shrimp in your life?
The following bloggers all have shrimp recipes, sponsored by OXO:
All of the #ShrimpShowdown posts will be featured on a shared Pinterest board on both the OXO and Eat Shrimp Pinterest pages - be sure to check them out! Also, each post will be added to a photo album on the OXO Facebook Page and the Eat Shrimp Facebook Page.
Go check them out and share your favorites with your friends and fans!
Want to enter to win?
The photo shows the tools I received, which are the same ones YOU CAN WIN. The bowl and colander set at the back comes with a lid for the bowl that's not shown in the picture.
AND - there's also a gift card, for a total value of $180. Here's the list:
Shrimp Cleaner
Flexible Kitchen & Herb Snips
Silicone Steamer
Wooden Lemon Reamer
3 Piece Bowl and Colander Set
12" Tongs with Silicone Heads
$100 Visa Gift Card from the NFI Shrimp Council
Enter with the widget below.
If it doesn't load immediately, give it it a few seconds.
I love it when an idea comes together. I wanted to make a shrimp and pasta dish, but I didn't want to go with the usual tomato sauce. But I wanted it to be colorful. So, I turned to my good friend, roasted red peppers.
With the red and the green, this is a pretty festive dish, and perfect for a holiday or pre-holiday meal with the typical colors of Christmas.
In the summer when peppers are plentiful and cheap, I roast my own, but in winter, I'm perfectly happy to buy them. Luckily, they're a lot more plentiful these days than back when you could only buy them in tiny jars.
You might think that 1/4 cup of olive oil is a lot, but think about it - there's pretty much no other fat here, and it's four servings. That's only 1 tablespoon of oil per serving, and you have to figure that there will be some left in the bottom of the bowl or the pot. There's probably more oil in the salad dressing that you're slathering on your lettuce. Or more butter on your toast.
If you wanted to, you could make this with twice as much pasta to stretch it a bit, but I liked this ratio of shrimp and vegetables to the pasta. Don't get me wrong - I love pasta. But I also love shrimp.
This is a great dish when you don't have a lot of time to cook - everything cooks pretty quickly, so you can have everything done in the time it takes to cook your pasta. To make it an even more convenient after-work meal, you can have the vegetables prepped ahead of time, so you can just throw them in the pan.
I used frozen, peeled, medium-sized tail-off shrimp, but fresh would be wonderful. However, I live pretty far from oceans here, so the "fresh" shrimp at most places is frozen shrimp that has been thawed. Or, it's insanely expensive it it really is fresh.
Frozen shrimp is just fine with me. You can toss it in the pan frozen, or thaw first - either way works with a slight change in directions.
For a more upscale meal, you could opt for larger shrimp. Like, you know, if you were serving this on Christmas Eve.
This post was sponsored by Carapelli, and I used their Extra Virgin Olive Oil for this dish. Check out the GIVEAWAY after the recipe.
Three-Pepper Shrimp and Pasta
Makes 4 servings
1/4 cup Carapelli Extra Virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced into thin half-moons
1 green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
Generous pinch of salt
1 cup roasted red bell peppers, roughly chopped
10 ounces frozen peeled, tail-off shrimp
1/2 pound uncooked thin spaghetti, cooked al dente
Heat the oil in a large saute pan until it's warm - but you don't want it smoking hot. Add the onion and green pepper and stir. Add the garlic, pepper flakes, marjoram, and salt. Stir again. Cook, stirring as needed until the vegetables are almost cooked through. Add the red peppers.
If you're using frozen shrimp, add them now and cook until they're thawed and beginning to cook. If you're using thawed or fresh shrimp, add the shrimp and al dente pasta at the same time. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through and the liquid has been mostly absorbed. If the pan becomes dry and the shrimp aren't quite done, add a bit of the pasta cooking water and continue cooking.
Serve hot.
This post is sponsored by Carapelli through Virtual Potluck, a fun group of bloggers that you really ought to meet! I received product to use and compensation for creating the recipe, but all words are my own.
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by Lucy Buffet
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
While the oil is heating, season the shrimp with just a little of the salt and pepper. Add the shrimp to the skillet and saute for 3 minutes, then remove the shrimp and set aside. (Since my shrimp were pre-cooked, I skipped all of this.
with a little bit of olive oil or butter so they'll fit in a single layer. I used butter.
by Sarah James
sent me some of their mild-flavored sauce as a sample(they make both mild and hot), so I used that instead. Their sauce has a slightly spicier flavor which worked perfectly well for my cocktail sauce.
is a special type of paprika that comes from a specific area in France. It has a little bit of heat to it, but not a lot - it's certainly not like cayenne. If you don't have it, regular paprika is fine. Depending on your preference, you can use either sweet or sharp paprika.
(or paprika)
by Charles Phan
