Tonight's dinner: shrimp scampi, using roughly this recipe.
Prep Shot:
Substitutions made:
- Clearly, I used spaghetti, not linguine. I ain't got a ton of money and I'm interested in using what I have on hand. If you're gonna grief about it, grief someplace elsewhere.
- I didn't have red pepper flakes even though for the life of me I thought I did. They seemed a consistent thread in recipes across the 'net, though, so...I cringed and shook on a tiny bit of ground red instead.
- Also I totally blanked on the recipe even calling for parsley, not to mention my Acme hasn't gotten produce in in like a week thanks to Snowmaggedeon 2016
- Just for the curious I did opt to cook with shells-on, in part because that's how the shrimp came to me.
Action Shot:
If you're telling me that's totally way too small of a pot to successfully cook spaghetti in, save your breath and buy me a new pot. I'm broke. I have three. That's how it's gonna be for the foreseeable future.
Things I Went With Even Though I Was Like, But Why?
- using both olive oil and butter. They've both fats, one is solid at room temp (ish), one isn't. I assume that is important somehow.
Modifications For Being A Single Person:
- I like to make about 10 shrimp for my personal consumption if I don't want leftovers. These are the bigger guys (clearly), 26/30 count. I think 10 guys is about 6-8 oz. I don't know, I'm going to get a kitchen scale
- The rest of the bottle of wine is for drinking, duh (KIDDING) (Am I?)
Plated Shot:
This recipe came together super quickly, maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes start to finish including the water to boil the pasta.
Next Up: Tomorrow - Budget Byte's Zuppa Toscana
I have never made either of these dishes before.
1) Red pepper flakes are best liberated from pizza places and italian restaurants. Order a pizza and ask for lots of red pepper flakes. As you need about half a packet for most recipes, the double handful the average pizza joint will give you will last the rest of the year. 2) Parsley is easily grown in a small pot on the windowsill in the kitchen. Celebrate Sunday by taking it over to the sink and splashing it with some water, and celebrate life by pruning sprigs off of it to put on your plate. et viola. It's the '70s again. That said, parsley is a bitter and aids digestion so it actually serves a function if you eat it (I always eat it). 'cuz thing is? The parsley you buy is always 11 times as much as you'll ever need unless you're making tabouleh. 3) Most sauteed-shrimp-and-pasta recipes use a blend of olive oil and butter because if you used just butter it would be too rich and overpower the shrimp but if you used just olive oil the shrimp would taste fishy. You need butterfats to really make shellfish come alive (I'm sure Alton Brown has an overly-complex explanation as to why) but unless it's a truly robust flavor (such as lobster) you need to cut the butter a little. Your other alternative would be to use clarified butter (or ghee) but in my opinion, the olive oil/butter blend tastes lighter. 4) Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the scampi pan nonstick? I'm not going to cast aspersions on anyone's (working) cookware but keep in mind that nonstick wears out. Regardless of your feelings on ingesting teflon, aged nonstick cookware becomes a chore to work with while aged steel just exists. I bought a set of Costco steel pans for $190 in... 2001. They're still exceptional. And I'm willing to bet someone somewhere near you has taken pans very similar to mine to the Salvation Army. 5) Buy the cheap linguini, not the expensive spaghetti. Holds sauce better. Yes, olive oil and butter is sauce. 6) Beware any website that suggests you make shellfish stock. It's useful for exactly nothing and will stink up your house something amazing.
I have no idea if the scampi pan is nonstick. If it is, I've probably been ingesting teflon for a while; it came from the basement, aka the free-est thrift store around. I could probably try, like, I don't know, looking at the bottom for who made it and googling? Olive, and butter, and lemon, too :)
IMO that pot size is fine for one. Fuck the haters. The reason you add butter to olive oil in some recipes is twofold: 1.) that delicious butter flavour 2.) helps raise the smoking point a bit. Olive oil's smoke point is really low (especially extra virgin), and is actually kind of a bad oil to fry with, because you lose a lot of its flavour with the high heat. I'm more likely to use Canola oil or veg oil in a frying pan because you can cook hotter with them. All of that said, you're not cooking shrimp that hot or that long, so just olive oil or just butter would probably be fine. One thing I've learned from my time in kitchens is that "You're probably fine" is the reaction 99% of the time.
Shell on for cooking. Shell off for plating. I made my cheap and easy pasta standard last night; a lazy version of spaghetti ala vongole. Boil pasta. In a wok or something combine one can of baby clams (with juice) and a can of diced tomatoes. Add garlic and basil. When the pasta is ready the sauce is too. Combine, sprinkle with parmesan and eat. Ten minutes and less than $5 for 2-3 meals.
Hey, I was just trying to poke around the internet the other day re:canned clams. What's your take? I've never cooked with them and some people are anti-canned food - clams seem like they could be delicate enough not to can well. Or like only cheap clams would be canned. You're in favor, though, one presumes? I did shell them all at once once I got to eating which made that a lot easier. So I agree re:shells.
Molluscs are tough as shit. Most of the escargot you'll find is canned in oil. Clams taste much the same canned or fresh and they're a bitch to deal with fresh. That said, if you feel like cooking with fresh clams, cook fresh clams. Don't waste fresh clams in red sauce.
I actually prefer the canned clams over "real" clams for this because of the ease of use. I have used the "real deal" before a few times and do not find the flavor any better and the ease of eating much worse. Some canned food is actually better than "fresh" food. Canned tomatoes, for example, are apparently more nutritious than the real stuff since they are preserved when at their most vitaminlicious.