Recipe
modified by Gretchen Wilson – January 20, 2009
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Recipe
originally published by The Daily Recipe – Monday, February 10, 2003.
Are
you wondering why I didn’t link to the original recipe? Well there are many reasons which I’ll cover
throughout today’s post. This was one of
the first recipe e-zines I ever subscribed to.
They were decent recipes for beginners, but honestly, a lot of it was
buying box stuff and jazzing it up. I
progressed past that pretty quickly.
Then I realized they were running the same recipes over and over. Maybe not every month, but when recipes look
familiar and you get them 365 days a year, that’s pretty bad. As they were less creative with their
recipes, they started continually trying to sell me tchotchkes.
Now I have no problem with people selling stuff from their blogs. I hope one day this blog can generate revenue
(please pass the blog along!), but most of my recipe e-zines I get sell stuff
like pots, pans, ingredients… you know, stuff I can use while cooking. Not plastic fart machines – not that I have
anything against fart machines – I just don’t want to be bombarded daily with
it in my Inbox. Oh yeah, and there was a
little incident of every time I would access their website, I’d get a virus
notice from my software. It was time to
say goodbye.
Cue Andrea Bocelli…
This was one of the recipes that
I really enjoyed from their site. It was
simple, yet incredibly tasty. Also, it
exposed me to pesto – an ingredient/sauce that seems really scary when you are
considering using it for the first time.
When you look at the ingredient listing it is basically pureed basil
with a little olive oil and garlic. That
can absolutely terrify a novice chef as well as a picky eater.
My finished product:
|
Picture published with recipe:
None
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Another issue I had with The
Daily Recipe was that they never published pictures of their recipes. Now, I am far from a professional blogger,
but even I take pictures of the dishes I create. How can you be a professional blogging
company, write/publish recipes for said company, and not take pictures of what
you make. It doesn’t make sense!
Putting that aside, even though
my photo is a little far away (another one of my first photos) it still manages
to look delicious. A delicate pasta with
a light sauce that showcases the shrimp.
Assessment:
for more details about what my
ratings mean, go to Gretchen’s Rating System
Mess: EH –
other than cooking the pasta, which never really makes a mess, everything is
done in one pan and there is no prep. So
why not a NADA rating? Because of the pesky peeling and deveining of
the shrimp which has the potential of making a slimy watery mess. Of course, you can always spend a little more
cash and get peeled and deveined shrimp at your grocery store’s seafood
counter.
Start-to-Finish Time: WELL UNDER AN HOUR – Start the pasta water
even before getting out your ingredients because the sauce takes about 15
minutes to make. You’ll have it done
before you even get your water to boil.
Prep Work: ALL
FINGERS STILL HERE – technically there is some prep work, but
there’s no chopping or anything like that.
You have to peel and devein your shrimp.
Messy? Yes. Difficult?
No. I couldn’t in good conscience
rate this any worse.
Ease of Recipe: COOK IT IN MY SLEEP – If you can cook pasta
and pour and stir, you’ve got the talent for this dish.
Overall: YUMMY – You’re dealing with a pound of shrimp
and a pound of pasta and I still could have eaten well over half of it in one
sitting. In fact, the only reason I
haven’t made this again and again is because it isn’t really the healthiest
dish I’ve ever made. But on special
occasions – you bet this recipe gets busted out.
Recipe Information:
Time estimates are from
the original publisher of the recipe, not the length of time it took me to
create it. Look for my comments
below. Nutritional Information is based
on original recipe. Any changes I make
to reduce the caloric, fat, cholesterol or sodium content are not reflected in
the Nutritional Information.
Prep/Total Time: None given
Servings: None given
Nutritional Information
None given
Do I really need to say why this
information is important? What do they
consider a serving? What is the calorie,
fat, protein, sodium content? Yes, you
can put this in the “why I no longer subscribe to this e-zine” column. Obviously there was little I could do about thinning out the recipe, but I tried my best with the wheat pasta.
Ingredients:
Changes denoted by red text
1 pound wheat thin spaghetti
½ cup butter
2 cups heavy whipping cream
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1/3 cup store-bought pesto
1 pound large shrimp - peeled and
de-veined
Ingredient Notes:
Wheat Thin Spaghetti
- Originally this recipe called for angel hair pasta, but I wanted to use wheat pasta, and I couldn’t find it. Angel hair pasta is just like spaghetti but the rods are very thin, so technically, “thin spaghetti” is probably angel hair. Cook’s Thesaurus lists other substitutes as capellini (pronounced cah-peh-LEE-nee) or vermicelli (pronounced ver-mih-CHELL-ee).
- Many an Italian has told me that wheat pasta is blasphemy. Personally? I can’t tell the difference. However, the original recipe does call for traditional pasta, so feel free to use it in the event (a) you can’t find wheat angel hair or (b) you can’t bring yourself to eat the wheat.
Shredded Parmesan Cheese – I had shredded instead of grated on hand,
so that was what I used.
Pesto – you can find Pesto in the same area as the other pasta sauces
but probably on one of the top shelves.
Of course, you can also make your own.
Shrimp
- When you buy your shrimp, “Large” shrimp are considered to be 21 to 30 ct size shrimp.
- Buy frozen, deveined shrimp that you have to peel to save time, or to save even more time, visit the seafood counter of your grocery store the day of or the day before you are planning on cooking this dish and purchase deveined and peeled shrimp.
Equipment Needed:
Large pot / Pasta pot
Wooden spoon
Collander
Large skillet / Dutch Oven
Large spoon
Equipment Notes:
Large Skillet / Dutch Oven – if you don’t have a large skillet that is
deep (you’ll be cooking 2 cups of cream and a pound of shrimp with stirring it)
just use your Dutch oven.
Directions:
(1) Cook
and drain pasta as according to the directions.
The ingredient listing had the
pasta already cooked, but anything that requires cooking, should be listed as
its own step. By the way, start the
water boiling before even getting out the other ingredients. The sauce doesn’t take very long to make.
(2) In large skillet, melt the butter over
medium heat; stir in the cream and pepper.
Cook, stirring constantly, for 6 to 8 minutes or until hot.
You really don’t want it to
boil. When you see a little steam rising
off the cream, it is ready.
(3) Add the grated parmesan cheese,
stirring until thoroughly mixed.
(4) Stir in the pesto sauce and cook for 3
to 5 minutes, until thickened.
(5) Add the shrimp and cook until they
turn pink, about 5 minutes. Serve over
the hot pasta.
This was a quick and easy pasta
dish that had a great taste. Was it the
healthiest? Not really, but indulging
once in a while won’t kill anyone. If
there was anything I’d change, it would be the pasta. Honestly, I think the sauce could really
stand up to thicker/wider pasta, like a linguine or fettuccine.
Looks easy ! Hubby loves shrimp.
ReplyDeleteIt is REALLY easy. You'll have the sauce done faster than the pasta too!
ReplyDelete