let's cook!!

While attending a wine party back in May, a number of recipes were distributed along with information regarding the wine and one in particular caught my eye (anything with shrimp will do that!). I completely forgot that I snapped a picture of the recipe until recently and I'm happy because this dish was delicious!

The dish was titled "Creamy Linguine with Asparagus and Shrimp" - I decided to use angel hair because of preference and was very simple to make.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of pasta 

2 tablespoons of butter

1 pound of asparagus- trimmed and sliced into 1 inch pieces

1 tablespoon of minced garlic

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 pound of jumbo shrimp

4 teaspoons of Tuscan seasoning

1 teaspoon of Sicilian sea salt

**In addition to the above ingredients, I also used about 2 teaspoons of olive oil**

According to Wine at Home, this dish would nicely be paired with Somersvile Cellars 2011 White Meritage which they described as a Bordeaux-style blend with citrus, floral and hazelnut aromas.

After gathering all the required ingredients, a pot of water was put on the stove and I began preparing the shrimp. When I went to the grocery store, peeled and deveined shrimp was on sale so I decided to give it a try as I find deveining shrimp to be a pain in the butt. When I unwrapped the shrimp, I saw that in fact it was not deveined and I had to do it anyways so I was slightly annoyed.

After I deveined and pulled the tails off the shrimp, I went on to the asparagus.

I cut approximately an inch and a half off the bottom of the asparagus and then proceeded to cut the asparagus into one inch pieces.

After the asparagus was prepared, I placed the butter and garlic in the skillet over medium heat and once warm, the asparagus was added.

Once the asparagus is placed in the skillet, I drizzled olive oil over the aspargus and cooked it until tender, approximately 5 minutes.

Once the asparagus is tender, I added in the heavy cream, lemon juice Tuscan seasoning and sea salt. At this point, I added about half of the seasoning, sea salt and lemon juice and added the remaining when the shrimp was added.

I used the McCormick seasonings from their gourmet collection and I do recommend these.

 Once the asparagus became tender, I added the 1 cup of heavy cream.



I mixed the heavy cream with the asparagus, oil and butter and brought it to a boil, still on medium heat.

By the time the shrimp needed to be added, the water was ready for the pasta and since angel hair requires a small amount of time to be cooked, it was perfectly timed.
 

When I added the shrimp, I also the remaining seasoning, sea salt and lemon juice and cooked over medium heat.

Once you can see the shrimp changing from grey to pink, you know it's time to flip!

I continued to cook the sauce over low heat while I was waiting for the pasta to cook to keep the
shrimp from becoming too hard.

 
Once the pasta is ready, remove the sauce from heat and serve!
 

Add shredded (as opposed to grated) Parmesan cheese to the top and enjoy!!

Now if you choose to follow the original recipe and decide to serve with linguine as opposed to angel hair, I would put the water on earlier as linguine takes a significantly longer time to cook. I definitely think that I will be making this dish again!