Home Cooking

Even though today is Monday, I felt in the mood to cook tonight.  I believe Monday gets a bad rap.  Yes, you have to go back to work after the weekend but really it's the easiest day of the work week.  Everyone, even the most miserable bastard, is slow-moving on a Monday.  Everyone has a "case of the Mondays."  Being a teacher, Monday is the only day I don't have to worry about correcting or bringing anything home with me.  Usually I bring home some work on on the weekend and by Monday, I'm all set for the week.  And it's only Monday so anything you have to get done can be done on one of the other days.  Monday is usually my night for Dancing with the Stars.  It's just a lovely night.  I think Tuesday is really the worst day. I take that back.  I don't want to jinx myself.

So anyway, I had planned to cook tonight.  I wanted to make shrimp scampi but this time, I decided to add some spinach to it.  Fabulous move.  As you know, I love shrimp.  I just basically love any type of fish over pasta.  Shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, calamari, you name it- I love it.  I've actually become a shrimp scampi and shrimp fra diavolo snob.  I just like the way I make it more than any way a restaurant has prepared it.  I will almost always order some type of seafood over pasta, but I will not order scampi or diavolo.  I don't do anything special to it.  I'm not quite sure why it tastes different than at a restaurant. 

Here's what I did tonight- I put the pot with salt and water on the stove to begin to heat up.  While that was heating up, I started to cook the spinach.  I put some olive oil and garlic cloves in a pan and then added the spinach.  I let that cook until it wilted and reduced size.  I then removed the spinach and garlic.  In the same pan that I cooked the spinach in I added a bit of butter and a little more olive oil.  I sauteed chopped garlic with some red pepper flakes.  Put the shrimp in the pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and let that start to turn pink.  By that time, the water should be boiling and some spaghetti-like pasta can begin to cook.  I then added about 1/2 cup of white wine, some squirts of lemon juice and let that come to a boil.  Then reduce the heat, add some pasta water to create more of a sauce.  I put the spinach back with the shrimp mixture.  When the vermicelli was ready, I just put it directly into the pan with the shrimp and tossed it together.  Sprinkle a little parsley on top and boom- you're ready to eat.

It was a very tasty meal.  You have your grains, vegetable, protein.  Can't go wrong.  Feel free to give it a try.  The only difficult part about the meal was peeling the shrimp before I started cooking.  Other than that, it was quick and simple. I would really love to add a little Parmesan cheese to that but I know there's the whole rule about not combining cheese and fish.  I would just like to know why that is.  Fish is delicious.  Cheese is delicious.  Why not put them together?  People do all crazy shit these days.  Chocolate covered bacon is OK, but oh Lord, don't put the cheese on the table with shrimp scampi!  I believe that Giada said that rule is made up.  I normally yell at Giada while I'm watching her show.  I say things like, "Oh shut up, Giada!"   It gets my anger out.  But in this case, I agree with her.  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the matter.  Time to go get ready for Fashion Police!  Until my next bite...