Cookalong part two

The original post won’t open all the way anymore, so starting over is what must be done.

This is most of what will go into the shrimp pasta

Here are 8 raw large shrimp, peeled and deveined, fresh heavy cream, garlic, butter (in that covered dish behind) and pepper.

Shrimp stock

I put the shells and tails into a tiny pan, added water and boiled a minute or two. I am missing the crucial pictures of making the sauce, but they just weren’t in the camera! It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.

Shrimp and Black Pepper Pappardelle

First I made crunchy breadcrumbs for topping the pasta, but I honestly wouldn’t do it again, even thogh they look great. It’s traditional on fishy pastas, but to me it resembles sand or ground glass a bit too much in the teeth. I heated oil with minced garlic, some cayenne pepper then the dry crumbs which I make and keep all the time. Stirred about a bit they brown and absorb the flavors.

I started the pasta water to boil. I heated a wide frying pan with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. In that I fried the garlic slices until they started to become translucent. I added 1 ounce of sweet butter, a pinch of salt and as soon as the butter melted I added the shrimp. Immediately I started to grind pepper over the dish. It really only takes moments, so as soon a you turn the shrimps over, add about 3 tablespoons of the shrimp stock and then about 3 tablespoons of fresh heavy cream. Throw the pasta into the boiling water and when they rise to the top, lift them out and into the frying pan. Stir about and continue to grind pepper over it. Taste for salt and correct.

Use tongs to lift the dressed pasta into pasta bowls. Sprinkle the optional bread crumbs over all and serve immediately.

This dish took less than 10 minutes to make once the shrimp were peeled and the pasta was made, so if you purchased pasta and peeled shrimp, that would allow this to be a rapid meal. Faster than driving to Burger King for sure.

I liked this a lot. It achieved exactly what I wanted which was to keep the shrimp from overcooking, to keep as much of the sweeter shrimp taste as possible by using only sweetening ingredients, like cream and butter and garlic, and was made with the minimum of ingredients possible. I’ll not do the crumbs again, but I’ll certainly make this pasta and use these shrimps again. They were really delicious.

5:59

I am competely out of appetite, but I’l soldier on and make my neighbor eat the pasta. It also looks like my keyboard has gone kablooey, too.

We left me last breaking open these super legs with a hammer. It’s easier to open cooked crab legs, but this was the right things to do in this case. I was told in Florida that when you catch these crabs you take one leg and the crab re-grows it. Very handy, I think. This one showed signs of a cold water life, I thought, with nice yellow fat here and there.

Crab stock, simmered 10 minutes

In order to keep this dish as sweetly crabby as I like, I put 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter into a frying pan. Over gentle heat I sautèed one broken chili pepper which appeared to be the kind they make Tabasco from, 2 small cloves of sliced garlic and half a medium onion, chopped rather small. As soon as the onion was translucent, I added about 1/2 cup or 125 ml of crab stock and let the vegtables cook until the stock boiled away. I added the crab meat and sautèed it just until it was opaque, then I added the maledetto tomato. Check for salt, but mine needed none.

The crab pasta

Those red pieces of tomato fillet look good, don’t they? But they aren’t, so if you want to make this dish, use pieces of roasted red pepper instead. The tomato was unpleasant.

This pasta was superb. Once I yanked out the tomato pieces, I purred as I ate it. I could only have been happier if it had been lobster instead of crab, and I would have prepared it precisely the same way. Cooking it from raw definitely give you a superior result.

I can’t imagine ever being hungry again, but maybe after Bollywood, after ironing, who knows? Anyway, those Californians are hardly even out of bed by now.

I’m sending both these cookalong posts to Presto Pasta Night, hosted this week by Kate at Thyme for Cooking in the Bordeaux region of France.