Shrimp Pasta

Pin It Because my Quick Friday-of-Lent Dinner post got the most page views and it is Good Friday, I thought it would be appropriate to post about another favorite dish in this house.  Although a tad late for those in the Philippines, this dish is good for an easy weeknight meal.  The recipe uses my homemade jarred tomato sauce.  But this can definitely be made with a simple olive oil and garlic sauce similar to the salmon pasta dish.

1/2 lb. uncooked, peeled and deveined shrimp
about 1 1/2 cups of my tomato sauce
about 3 cloves of garlic, minced
my standard Italian herbs
salt and pepper
1/4 lb. pasta (half of an 8 oz package)

Start boiling the pasta, I like to use thin linguini.  The sauce should be ready as soon as the pasta is al dente.

While pasta is cooking, sautee garlic in olive oil.  Add the shrimp and season with salt, pepper, and herbs.  Take the shrimp out before it is fully cooked. This will be very, very quick so make sure to fish out the shrimp before it is fully opaque.  You don't want to overcook the shrimp when you put it back in the sauce later. Pour the sauce into the oil where shrimp was sauteed.  This allows the shrimp flavor to be infused into the sauce.  Once the pasta is almost ready, put the shrimp back into the sauce to finish cooking.  Once the pasta is al dente, put the pasta into the sauce to finish cooking in the sauce.  Toss and serve.  Makes two servings.

Money saving tips

I like to buy peeled frozen shrimp from my warehouse club so that I can always conveniently prepare this dish.  The two-pound bag of the colossal shrimp is about $20.  But I found that when I'm not serving it as cocktail shrimp, I can get the same two pounds for $14 for the extra large shrimp.  That's a lot of savings for the same amount of shrimp in weight.  You just use more pieces of shrimp for each unit of weight you need .