Fiddlehead Kitchen

Okay, maybe there are some out there that don't care much for shrimp but I'm not one of them. They're just good, fast cooking and it seems like you did something fancy when really, you didn't. I made this the other night, my take on a shrimp scampi pasta. You'll need about a half pound of cleaned and peeled—except for the tail—shrimp and roughly a half pound of pasta, I like linguine, you may like something else, it's all good.

Here's a quick run down of what you'll need to have around in order to whip this up:

Half pound of cleaned, peeled shrimp

Half pound of dried pasta

Couple of garlic cloves, smashed

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Dry Vermouth, or White Wine (not a sweet one)

Capers, about a spoonful + or - depending on your love of capers

1 lemon, zest and juice

Butter, about 1 ½ tsp to 1 tablespoon

Fresh parsley, roughly chopped, to finish

Put a large pot of well salted water on to boil for the pasta while you make the shrimp and sauce. Reserve a little of the pasta water to use if the finished sauce needs to be a little saucier:

In a skillet/saute pan over medium heat add some olive oil, about 2 teaspoons along with the butter. Once the butter is melted add the garlic and stir. You should be smelling some garlicky goodness, give it about 2 minutes. Add the shrimp, salt and pepper them. Cook these guys, turning occasionally, until they are just opaque. Add some dry vermouth, about a ¼ cup but go ahead and just eyeball it, be crazy. Pour in the lemon juice. Add the capers, lemon zest and the just al dente cooked pasta and toss it all together to coat those noodles. Finish with a sprinkling of fresh parsley. Told you it was quick and easy, but it looks kind of impressive right? You can also easily double this for more people or more for a few or just you, no judging here.

Need more sautéed shrimp in your life? Here's something else you can do. I stretched out some homemade pizza dough—we'll get into that another time—you can also use store bought. A little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil smeared around, sprinkle of salt and pepper, then I spread a thin layer of pesto. Top that with some sautéed leeks, love leeks, and toss around some mozzarella cheese, fontina would be great too. That goes onto a screaming hot pizza stone in a 525° oven, hotter if your oven will do that. The greens you see are sautéed broccoli leaves—lots of sautéing going on here—which are truly great but you can use anything you want, it's pizza. When the pizza comes out of the oven top it with more cheese of course, this time fresh mozzarella, the greens or whatever you're using, shrimp and a final dusting of grated Pecorino Romano. Let's eat already!