Steph's Most Famous Shrimp Linguini

Being the good Italian wife that I am, I have spent the whole weekend making great lunches and dinners.  I decided to end the weekend with my most notorious recipe. 

Mateus and I call this “shrimp scampi”, but my friend John told me that its not true scampi, so whatever. Anyway, this is Mateus’ all time favorite dinner that I make, and I used to make it A LOT in our old apartment.  Truth be told, I haven’t made it in like a year, and that is WAY TOO LONG!  Its easy, f-ing delicious, and the longest part of the cooking is boiling the water for the pasta.

Ingredients:

Shrimp, peeled and deveined (whatever size, or however many, who cares)

2 lemons, zest and juice

1 BIG cup of white wine (Pino is perfect for this)

9238472473 garlic cloves, minced (more like 6-8 cloves)

1 shallot, minced (optional)

1 big handful of parsley, chopped

Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes (amounts you can handle)

Butter and olive oil

Whole wheat linguini (trust me, the whole wheat tastes so much better!)

Parmy cheese

Directions:

1^st off, get your pot of water going on the stove for the pasta around 15 minutes ahead of time.  The whole sauce should take about as long as it does for the pasta to cook. Maybe a tad longer. So if you time it right, once the pasta is done you toss it right in with your completed sauce.

In a large pan that will ultimately be big enough for your shrimp AND the pasta, heat up 3tbs of both butter and olive oil.  Add in the garlic, shallot, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and cook on low to medium heat to soften the garlic without burning it.  Add in half of the lemon zest and juice and start to crank up the heat. Add in the wine and simmer for about 2 minutes, then toss in the shrimp. They should only need to cook for about 4 minutes depending on their size.  While they cook pour in the rest of the lemon zest and juice, and all the parsley.  Turn off the heat and add the linguini.

Top with cheese, serve with garlic bread for juice-dipping. Please drink wine as well. This is a step that makes pretty much ANY meal better. Seriously.  I would drink wine with sloppy joes.  (uh oh, idea for another post!)

A quick note on whole wheat pasta: Its great.  Don’t knock it.  It’s a little nutty, a little bit more texture, and a lot more better for you (more better? Heh?).

A note on shrimp: Today I used pretty small shrimp, which worked well.  But normally if I buy large shrimp I like to slice them down the center to make 2.  That way there's more pieces to go around and I don't need to spend too much $$$.