I've been thinking about a lot of version 1, version 2 dishes lately. I have Shepard's pie, banana cream pie, and now shrimp scampi (and maybe others...?). The next time I make this I'm gonna try Alton's recipe. It's my goal to perfect shrimp scamp (a Shepard's pie, and banana cream pie) because they're all some of Jeff's favourites. Jeff has a lot of favourites.But really, that's not the only reason. They're all delicious things with flavours that are originally very subtle and simple and they're things that with just a few little changes-- well, you could make it from everyday to amazing.
This recipe was one that I cooked up. I looked at about 10000 different scampi recipes (over the course of this last year) and decided I like this, not this, and this. So there's a ton of that going on. The white wine I used is the same white wine I've used for pretty much everything recently... when Jeff starts SP again I'm sure I'll be going through more bottles (that sounds desperate, but really, it's not, I just prefer drinking my wine when I have more of my own meals, as Jeff doesn't drink). That way I'll have NEW wines to experiment with, hurray!
I had Jeff do all the peeling and deveining. He wanted to get some naturally pink shrimp (from the gulf, like him!) which didn't come peeled and deveined. I haven't really peeled and deveined shrimp much (maybe ever? I can't recall) and he has. He did a good job!
Our shrimp were obviously naturally pink. This one was all alone. He's actually rather cute, don't you think?
In the end we had shrimp scampi! Tada! It's amazing how a little bowl of shrimp like above can turn into such a gigantic meal. We ate it all too. I'm not going to begin to imagine how bad it was for us. The noodles we used were also used for jeff's lamb meatballs a few weeks ago... they're cool because they're like telephone cords. The original plan was to use angel hair, but I didn't have any and we have so much pasta (right now I have telephone cords, penne, and farafelle) that we went with what we had. This pasta always has a sort of bite to it.
So tasty, with garlic, with onion, with lemon, with shrimp (still pink).
At this point this was about half eaten. Everything was shiney from the lemon/wine/butter sauce that makes scampi.
Shrimp Scampi, V1
1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined (we used a bit more than this though)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
1/4 small onion, roughly chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garliv
1/4 lemon, juiced
1/8 tsp dijon mustard
1/8 cup and 1 tablespoon white wine
1/8 cup and 1 tablespoon chicken stock
2 1/2 tablespoons cold butter
a sprinkling of chopped parsley leaves
Lemon slices, for garnish
Cooked pasta, determine your own amount
Season the shrimp thoroughly with salt and pepper.
Heat a large saute pan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add enough oil to lightly coat the pan. Add the shrimp and quickly saute until just starting to turn pink, but not cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the onions and saute just until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds. Add the lemon juice, white wine, and stock, and reduce by 2/3, about 5 minutes. Add the shrimp back to the pan and swirl in the butter. Finish with the parsley and check for seasoning. Toss with the pasta and serve with lemons as garnish.
Topping Optional: I like red pepper flakes and Parmesan (just a bit) on my scampi.
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