Shrimp with Orzo, Asparagus and Feta

We’ve been on a roll of dinners that are…fine. Just *yawn* fine. We make them. We eat them. Everything is copasetic. So this dish was a slap in the face, wake up call for our tastebuds. It was so good, you guys. SO good. Tons of flavor. Super easy to make. And it felt very fresh and spring-appropriate with the lemons and green veggies. The Hubs insisted that it be added to the “rotation” and I obliged. In fact, I’m making it for dinner again tonight. It’s on the Serious Eats blog and the only thing I changed was to use regular orzo instead of whole wheat (we really aren’t whole wheat pasta people.) It took about15 minutes from prep to plate and I seriously suggest you try it as soon as you possibly can.

1 cup (about 5 ounces) orzo

1 1/2 Tbsps vegetable or canola oil, plus more for the pasta

2 medium cloves garlic, minced

1/2 Tsp red chili flakes

1 bunch asparagus, ends trimmed and roughly chopped into 2-inch pieces

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Oregano

1 1/2 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves

4 Tbsps fresh juice from 2 lemons

1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Start by making the orzo according to the instructions on the box, in a small saucepan. Let that cook while you multitask, then drain it and set it aside. Use a skillet over medium heat to heat up your vegetable oil until shimmering. Put in the garlic and red chili flakes and cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute until fragrant and golden (don’t burn it!). Add in the asparagus next and season with salt and pepper. You don’t need to cook it for too long, just enough so that it’s tender but still crisp: about 3-4 minutes. Push the asparagus to the side and add in your shrimp. Sprinkle them lightly with oregano and cook on both sides until they are pink, about 4 minutes total. Now add in the orzo, basil, lemon juice, olive oil and feta and stir in, letting it all warm back up for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and then serve! I promise it will be much more than just “fine.”

Korean Chili Shrimp

I know, I know, I make way too many recipes with shrimp. But I can’t help it. Shrimp is just such a great alternative to the typical beef/chicken/pork dinner options and it’s healthier. And just because I’ve already posted some really good shrimp recipes that I love (like this one, or this one), doesn’t mean that I can’t find even more to love. My heart can take it. And it turns out, this one was pretty darn fantastic, definitely a keeper. I found it on Heart, Mind & Seoul (see what they did there?) and I’m not exactly sure what makes it Korean but let’s go with it. The recipe was incredibly simple, and I didn’t have to buy any of the ingredients except the shrimp, so bonus for my checkbook! I cut down on the amount of Asian chili sauce (reflected below) and it still was incredibly spicy, so if you don’t like spicy food… this isn’t the shrimp recipe for you. We served it with Soba noodles and I think they added more than regular pasta would have. They soaked up the sauce really well, plus they have a slight sweetness and a tiny hint of peanut buttery-ness that was perfect for this dish. You can also serve it with crushed peanuts on top, but we opted not to and I didn’t miss them.

24 prawns or shrimp, peeled and deveined

Salt & pepper

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon crushed garlic

1 tablespoon chili oil

2 tablespoons Asian chili sauce (original called for 3)

2 tablespoons ketchup

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons water

Soba noodles

The Asian Chili Sauce is kind of vague since there are tons of chili sauces and some are sweet, some aren’t. We went with a chili garlic sauce like sambal oelek. Start by patting your shrimp dry and then seasoning them with salt and pepper, and tossing them in corn starch. Then mix up your sauce using the chili oil, Asian chili sauce, ketchup, sugar, and water. I accidentally threw the garlic in there too which turned out ok but you’re actually supposed to cook it. Oops. At this point you want to get your water ready for the noodles. They only take about four minutes to cook, and shrimp cooks fairly quickly as well.

In a wok, heat up some olive oil and add your garlic. Cook for just a minute or so and then add in the shrimp. Cook the shrimp for just about 3 minutes, flipping midway, and then add in your sauce. Stir it in to coat the shrimp. Cook for a few more minutes until the shrimp is cooked through and the sauce thickens. Then drain your soba noodles and toss them into the wok. Stir for one minute and then serve. We kept the tails on our shrimp and I think in the future we would take them off to make them easier to eat with the noodles. But if you are making the shrimp alone for an app, I would leave the tails on. Hope you enjoy and add this shrimp recipe to your dinner rotation, too!

Mini Shrimp Cakes with Ginger Butter

These mini shrimp cakes were one of the recipes I tried for Iron Chef Ginger, and I almost made these instead for the big night. I thought they were very tasty, but a little greasy. I think I used too much oil to fry these little guys. The ginger butter really made it. I decided not to go with these for our Iron Chef, because I really didn't feel like frying anything at our Hostess' house. I do think these would have been hit had I decided to make them. But, if you are hosting a party these would make great little appetizers. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Shrimp Cakes:
3 tablespoons vegetable olive oil
5 large button mushrooms, stemmed, chopped into 1/4-inch pieces (about 4 ounces)
2 large shallots, minced
1 medium carrot, diced into 1/4-inch pieces
1 pound extra-large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons plain breadcrumbs
1 large egg
Zest of 1/2 large lemon
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Ginger Butter:
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
One 1/2-inch-long piece fresh gingerroot, peeled and finely grated (about 4 teaspoons)
2 teaspoons soy sauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus extra as needed

To make the shrimp cakes, take out a medium sized skillet and saute in the olive oil the mushrooms, shallots, and carrots until softened.  Transfer the mixture into your food processor. Add in the shrimp, eggs, breadcrumbs, lemon zest, salt and pepper to the food processor. Pulse until combined but still chunky. Form the mixture into 15 patties, place on a cookie sheet lined with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

To make the butter, combine the butter, ginger, and soy sauce. Stir well with a rubber spatula and then place the butter on plastic wrap. Form the butter into a log and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Heat the 1/4 cup of vegetable oil into a skillet, and fry the shrimp cakes until golden in color at least 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Serve the shrimp cakes while still warm and add a slice of the ginger butter on top. Enjoy.

Chipotle shrimp tacos

I called Jon today and said, "I have five words for you. Are you ready? Homemade. Plaza Azteca. Shrimp. Tacos." He drooled onto the phone.

We love us some Plaza Azteca. For those who don't know, it's a chain (but small and seemingly localish) of Mexican restaurants. While I will eat some Combination Dinner #1 without complaint at other places, Plaza Azteca goes above and beyond that sort of menu. Lobster enchiladas, y'all. And shrimp tacos.They're simple, three soft tortillas wrapped around smoky bites of shrimp with some cheese (but not too much) and a pico de gallo topping of onion, tomato, cilantro and jalapeno.

That, at least, was my assumption about the ingredients when I started envisioning our copycat recipe. And I was so right, that we literally ate these things an hour ago and I'm already blogging it. It was that good.

We figure this makes about eight tacos.

You'll need:
A pound of shrimp, de-shelled and de-tailed, deveined, peeled and cut in half (31-40 count)
1 chipotle pepper in adobo (minced)
2-3 teaspoons adobo sauce
Most of a large Vidalia onion (or sweet onion), diced; you'll use the rest for the pico
Two to three Roma tomatoes, diced (we saved out a bit for the pico)
One-half medium bunch cilantro (we used only the leaves) chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped (and deseeded)
One tablespoon olive oil
About a tablespoon of lime juice
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
Salt to taste (maybe a quarter teaspoon)
Ground black pepper
Pinch sugar
1 "fat" tablespoon of cumin.
Flour tortillas
Queso quesadilla cheese (we used Cacicque brand).


For pico de gallo:
Two to three tablespoons (or to taste; we like a lot) cilantro (we used only the leaves) chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped (and deseeded)
Onion and tomato as mentioned above


So from this list, you can see that Jon was left unattended to season the shrimp mixture. Only he would describe a measurement as "fat." In fact he eyeballed most of the spices, and this is his guess about how much of the dry seasonings he put in. Whatever he did, it worked.

Dice the onion -- we did about 3/4 in the shrimp itself, and reserved 1/4 for the topping, which I diced more finely. Dice the tomato (and if you like tomato, you may want the third for the pico topping, but we  don't much like raw tomato so put most of it in with the shrimp mixture). Mince one chipotle pepper.

Chop the jalapeno and pluck as much cilantro if you want (stems are fine to use, we just don't). Mix in a bowl with the 1/4 finely diced onion and some tomato. I splashed a little lime juice in at this point. Set aside.

Chop or grate a small bowl of cheese, depending on how much you like cheese.

Heat the oil in the skillet and add the onion, tomato, chipotle, adobo sauce, the dried spices, and lime juice. Cook about four minutes on medium heat, or until onions start to get translucent. Add shrimp and cook about another four minutes on high heat. or until cooked through.

And that's it. We heated flour tortillas and scattered some cheese on first -- in the restaurant version, the cheese is melty, but while I was lobbying to heat each tortilla and cheese in a skillet, Jon convinced me that would take too long. So we just warmed up the tortilla, added cheese and the shrimp mixture and the pico topping, and stuffed our faces.

It was our first time cooking with a chipotle pepper, but it was the key to making this dish taste similar to the restaurant version we were copying. It wasn't exactly the same perhaps, but it was damn similar (and good!), so we were pretty proud.

Shrimp Scampi Pasta

I didn't like shrimp growing up. Or maybe, I just didn't have the occasion to like it. My mom is very allergic, so we understandably never ate it at home. And when we went to restaurants, I guess I just didn't want to try it. But in the last few years I've been cooking it more and more, and in many different ways. It's so versatile, soaks up flavors like a sponge, and is relatively healthy, so shrimp is finding it's way to my dinner table more often than not. This Shrimp Scampi Pasta dish isn't the most healthy of the shrimp meals I've made (6 tablespoons of butter will do that) but it is very flavorful. Lots of lemony brightness, a touch of heat, and garlicky, buttery shrimpy deliciousness makes this a new favorite pasta dish. The recipe is from Ina, and I only changed it a smidge. She used linguine, but my husband and I are angel hair people. Use whatever pasta you like! 

Ingredients

1.5 pounds angel hair pasta (or pasta of your choice)

6 Tbsps unsalted butter

5 Tbsps olive oil

8 garlic cloves, minced

2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined

Salt & pepper

3/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Zest from one lemon

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Get your pasta going first. Oil, salt, water, you know the drill. Cook according to the directions. In the meantime, start melting your butter and oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Add the garlic and cook for just a minute, making sure not to burn the garlic. If you want, you could actually remove it from the heat and let the garlic and butter do a mind meld for awhile to increase the garlic flavor. Or just keep going through if you're hungry-- it's still going to be plenty garlicky. Add the shrimp, 1 tbsp salt and about a half teaspoon of pepper and cook about five minutes, until the shrimp just turns a little pink. Then remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest, lemon juice, parsley and red pepper flakes. Add a little more of the red pepper flakes if you like it spicy (you know I do!). Make sure it's well combined and then add your drained pasta into the pot, tossing and stirring to coat every noodle. You could serve it with a sliced lemon if your guest wants even more lemon flavor, or put a few sliced lemons on top for prettiness. Hope you love it as much as we did! 

Spicy Sweet Shrimp

There are a lot of ways you can serve shrimp. In the immortal words of Bubba, "There's shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich..." But you know what? Sometimes, you just want to eat shrimp. Shrimp all by itself. One at a time. And that's what we did with this recipe. I'd been cooking all day for a party and didn't feel like making a big meal, so I just made shrimp. No side. No starch. Just shrimp. And it was excellent. Just the right amount of sweetness paired with the perfect bit of heat. It's a nice change of pace from the other spicy shrimp recipe that we eat fairly often. And it uses today's hot (literally) ingredient: Sriracha. It was the "Best Shrimp Recipe" on food52, which is a really great resource for dinner ideas.

Ingredients
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup Sriracha
1 tsp Worcestershire
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 handful cilantro, roughly chopped
1 tsp sugar
Salt & Pepper
2 pounds of large shrimp, peeled & deveined

The directions are super simple: just mix all the ingredients in a plastic bag or bowl. Don't be afraid to use a good amount of salt and pepper. Let it marinate for 2-4 hours. Then skewer the shrimps and grill. Depending on how hot your grill is it should only take about 2 or 3 minutes a side. Serve them on the skewers or slide them off with a fork. They are delicious enough that you don't need to add a thing!

(Click for printable recipe)

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

One of the simplest, quickest weeknight meals to make is shrimp. I often buy a bag of frozen shrimp at Kroger and just keep it in my freezer for a night when I get home late or don’t feel like putting much energy into my meal. And this recipe takes that ease even further because you don’t even need to thaw your shrimp! I mean, you can’t get much easier than that.

I found this recipe on The Pioneer Woman Cooks a long time ago, but we have another spicy shrimp recipe (also on this site) that we like a lot, so it took some effort to try something a little different. But I’m glad we did! I don’t think this recipe will replace our other one, but it’s nice to change things up once in awhile. I actually made half this recipe and served it over spaghetti, but if you’re just going to be eating the shrimp with a few friends, I would make the whole thing.

2 pounds Raw Shrimp, deveined (shelled or shell on, up to you)

2 sticks cold unsalted butter

1 teaspoon kosher salt

4 cloves garlic

¼ cups fresh parsley

½ teaspoons crushed red pepper

Juice from one lemon

Start by preheating your oven to 375 degrees. Rinse your shrimp just a bit to separate them, and lay them out on a baking sheet in a single layer. Get out your food processor and throw all the other ingredients in. The cold butter in chunks, salt, garlic cloves, parsley, red pepper and lemon juice. Combine in the food pro until it forms kind of a crumbly mixture (cold butter is key). Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the shrimp and bake until they are done and the butter is melted and bubbly.

If the shrimp is completely frozen, it could take about 20 minutes. We started with semi-thawed shrimp and cooked it for about ten minutes (which may have been slightly long). Obviously with completely thawed shrimp it won’t take long at all, maybe 6-7 minutes. The Pioneer Woman suggests serving it with bread, but as I said, Steve and I like it over spaghetti.

And there you have it. I feel like I should write more, but it’s really just that simple.

(Click here for printable recipe)

Spicy Shrimp and Pasta

The girls like to give me a hard time for making shrimp twice for our Iron Chef competitions, and winning both times (Iron Chef Citrus and Iron Chef Wine.) But I like to point out that I don’t get to vote on my own dish, so if I keep winning, it’s because they keep picking my food. Besides, did the Bulls stop playing Michael Jordan because he was the key to winning so often? No, they didn’t. And yes, I did just compare Michael Jordan to shrimp.

Anyway, the point is—people like shrimp. It’s one of those foods that can carry pretty much any flavor. It’s a little different from normal household fare, so you don’t get the boring feeling that chicken can give you. And it’s relatively healthy and light. Maybe not so much paired with a big ol’ pile of pasta, but hey, every little bit helps.

This is one of our favorite meals to make. It came from allrecipes.com in its original form, and is meant to be grilled on skewers. It was definitely fantastic prepared that way, and I recommend it, but Steve and I wanted to make it into a heartier meal, so we added the pasta. Slam dunk! (See how I kept the MJ metaphor going there? Yeah!)

2-3 large cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined

Angel Hair pasta, cooked

Shredded parmesan cheese

This is the modified recipe. However, I almost never actually measure anything and it always turns out fine. Add more garlic if you want, or more lemon juice. Use less cayenne if you want something less spicy. At the same time that I’m mixing up this marinade, I make a second, slightly smaller batch that we throw in to coat the pasta.

Mix the first five ingredients together in a bowl. If you are buying frozen shrimp (which is what I do, and is probably a culinary no-no, but it’s just easier and cheaper for me) make sure you drain the shrimp before adding it to the marinade or else it will dilute the flavor. Once you add the shrimp, stir to coat, and let it sit for no more than 25 minutes. The lemon juice starts to cook the shrimp and it could end up tough and chewy.

We cook the shrimp in a large skillet, but they are excellent grilled on skewers as well. Make sure to keep an eye on them as they cook very quickly. Only about two minutes each side. As soon as the shrimp look opaque, add the cooked pasta to the pan and pour the second batch of marinade in as well. Cooking the pasta in the sauce helps it to soak up the flavors, more than if you just ladeled it on top. In fact, I’d recommend this step on any pasta you are making. Heat just about a minute, and serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. It’s a great tasting, quick & easy meal for a weeknight. And in any food competition, it’ll probably have an unfair advantage.

(Click here for printable recipe)

Iron Chef Wine: Marinated Shrimp with Champagne Beurre Blanc

Have you ever heard of that diet book entitled, “French Women Don’t Get Fat”? Seems like they are rubbing it in a little, don’t you think? Especially since all the food they send over to America seems to be particularly unhealthy. French fries, French toast, and pretty much anything from Julia Child’s cookbook. I can perfectly picture those beautiful, lithe French women snickering as they puff away on their glamourous cigarettes saying, “Ha, ha, ha! We have tricked ze Americans and now zey are fat and miserable! Send zem more recipes made with butter!” And that’s when they invented the Beurre Blanc, a fancy schmancy name for butter sauce. But, after tasting this recipe (the Iron Chef Wine winner) I think you’ll agree that clogging your arteries tastes pretty darn good.

Sauce base

2 cups Champagne or other dry sparkling wine

1/3 cup finely chopped shallots

2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or other white wine vinegar

1/4 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

Shrimp

1 cup Champagne or other dry sparkling wine

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons minced shallots

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

24 extra-large uncooked shrimp (about 2 pounds), peeled with tail left intact, deveined

1 tablespoon minced fresh chives

1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1 stick chilled unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

A few quick notes... if you’ve never used shallots before, you can usually find them near the garlic, as they are sort of a mix between garlic and onion. The nicer grocery stores almost always carry them, but they can be somewhat expensive. You don’t need many for this recipe, so it’s worth it in my opinion. I used a fairly inexpensive Brut Champagne and the sauce was very tasty, but obviously the better the Champagne, the better the flavor. And finally, I used the white wine vinegar since I knew that was something I’m likely to use again, versus Champagne vinegar, which is not a common ingredient.

You can make the sauce base up to four hours ahead of time, which makes things a lot easier if you are having a party or something and want to serve this dish warm. It’s fairly simple, just mix the four ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Then, let it boil until the liquid is reduced to about half a cup, which will take around 20 minutes. The more you reduce it, the more tart it becomes, so don’t overdo it. In the meantime, mix up your marinade. Stir the Champagne, olive oil, shallots and pepper in a small bowl. Put the shrimp in a large ziplock bag and pour the mixture over, making sure the shrimp are coated. Marinate for at least a half hour, and no longer than one hour.

I made my beurre blanc sauce before cooking the shrimp because I wasn’t sure I could handle both at once. If you are a skilled multitasker or have some help, you can do them at the same time. Just remember that the shrimp will cook fairly quickly, while the sauce takes about ten minutes to pull together. Warm up the sauce base in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Be very careful never to let it boil or the sauce will break. Add the chilled butter one slice at a time, whisking it in until it’s fully melted. Take it slow and don’t rush it. Once all the butter is melted in, it’s done! Just add a little salt and pepper to taste. Broil the shrimp until just opaque in the center, about 2 minutes each side. Then put the shrimp on a serving platter and pour the sauce over them. Finish with a sprinkling of minced chives, tarragon and parsley. It might be a good idea to serve this with some French bread, or simply let your guests lick it off the plates, as some of the highly cultured ladies at our Iron Chef party may have done. And I don’t think even those uberthin French ladies would fault them for that.  


(Click here for printable recipe)