It’s time for another Mystery Ingredient Monday, and we’re cooking with wine. OK, I know it’s Wednesday, but I started writing this on Monday, then got distracted with trying to throw together a first birthday for Lucia before her party on Saturday. Here I am a few days late, but I still wanna submit my recipe because this one was full of twists and turns, action and excitement. And EXPLOSIONS!!! I might have lied about one of those things.
I just happened to have a bag of shrimp in the freezer so decided to make a family favorite, shrimp scampi in a white wine sauce. <—You have to say the italicized portion of that in a French accent. My recipe, my rules. That’s how I say it and turst me, it’s more fun that way. I think this recipe was originally from Emeril, but I adapted it for the lazy person over the years and can’t remember exactly where I first found it.
If the pasta looks dry, it because it’s pasta’s evil twin, a rice/corn/quinoa gluten-free disaster that I use instead of delicious wheat past. The kids don’t know the difference and it’s cheap at Costco.
This is a special occasion kind of meal for us, since shrimp is muy expensivo. Last week I saw frozen raw shrimp on sale, so I thought “oh boy!” and bought it without a moment’s thought. In my excitement, I forgot to check that it was peeled and deveined. There’s nothing that’ll kill the romance of a delicious steaming plate of shrimp scampi than peeling the nasty exoskeleton off the little buggers. And beyond that, deveining, which is a euphemism for yanking out intestines full of poop, brings me to near-gagging disgust levels.
Too up close and personal with my dinner.
Wow, this is turning out to be the least appetizing food post on all the internet. Sorry about that. So the moral of that story is spend the extra 5 bucks and buy the shrimp cleaned up. Anyway, after I cleaned them for 45 minutes, I sauteed one small onion and 4 cloves of garlic in a LOT of butter and olive oil. I use just shy of a whole sick of butter, because gluten scares the crap out of me, but saturated fat is my friend.
Garlic, onion, butter. Is there a better smell in the world?
After that’s smelling amazing (about 5 minutes) I throw in the shrimp and cook for 2 minutes. I can’t walk away at that point or it gets overcooked. Last minute, poor in a half cup of wine or so, two lemon’s worth of juice, the rest of the butter, and salt and peppa. Simmer for a few.
I just use a dry white that we’ll finish with dinner. Some wine of the shrimp, some wine for me.
I like to top with parsley, but we had no parsley. I always seem to be missing one ingredient when I cook something fancy. The kids just ate the fake pasta with some butter on it and broccoli, so Oskar and I got all this lemony, winey shrimp. Twas good!
TJ’s find: a good, dry chardonnay. Chateau Michelle from Washington. I think it’s 9 or 11 bucks.
Go see Tasha at A Clan’s Tale for more wine-inspired food!
