Cory's Spot: Recipe: Garlic Lime Shrimp

Over time, I'm sure a certain degree of predictability will creep into my posts, but for now, I'm guessing this particular post will come as a surprise to almost all of my readers. You see, today my wife and I enjoyed a delicious seafood and pasta meal for lunch that we had thrown together ourselves in a matter of minutes, and I'm going to tell you all about it. I wish I had the money to be regularly visiting fancy restaurants and posting reviews, but most meals that get a mention here will be either of the fast food or of the home grown varieties. And, yes, I may just be blogging about fast food.

In any case, this particular meal is officially called "Garlic Lime Shrimp." I say officially since that's the name given it by the magazine I originally found the recipe in. The first time we made it, we had to go shopping beforehand, since we didn't have a lot of the ingredients on hand. On the up side, the tiny bottle of cayenne pepper we bought will probably last us for years, so I guess you could call it a worthwhile investment.

Without further ado, the recipe, as I originally found it:

Garlic Lime Shrimp

1 lb uncooked large shrimp (peeled & deveined)
5 garlic cloves, minced
½ t. salt
¼-½ t. cayenne pepper
½ c. butter
3 T. lime juice
1 T. minced fresh parsley
hot cooked pasta

In a large skillet, sauté the shrimp, garlic, salt, and cayenne in butter until shrimp turn pink – about 5 min. Stir in lime juice and parsley. Serve over pasta.

Makes four servings.

Being well removed from any sort of seashore where one could reasonably come by really fresh, good shrimp, we settled for frozen shrimp from Wally-World. It's a little more expensive to buy it pre-peeled and deveined, but it's worth it. As for the garlic, you could of course use garlic powder or such, but it's worth spending a bit up front for a garlic press and then buying fresh garlic – I'm not a huge garlic fan, but when I use it, the taste is much better from the fresh stuff. Ditto for the parsley. I have to admit that we've only ever used the little squeezable limes instead of the real thing, but I'm sure the same would be true there. The major change we've made it getting rid of the butter and using some olive oil instead. I like the taste better, and I believe the health gurus would argue for benefits in their field as well. I suspect I use far less than ½ cup of olive oil, but I've never really measured. One downside to using just enough oil to sauté the shrimp, garlic, etc. is that it ends up being a bit dry on the pasta – that's easy enough to overcome by adding a bit more lime juice, which makes for a better flavor anyway.

I always forget to start the pasta before the shrimp, so I end up having to simmer the shrimp for a bit while waiting for the pasta to be done, but a little advance preparation would easily enough avoid that particular delay.

Depending upon how much cayenne you've used, you'll probably find yourself wanting something cool and crisp to complement the pasta dish. Again, working with a poor college couple's budget and time constraints and not really knowing any better, we usually go for the pre-mixed, bagged variety with something other than just plain iceberg lettuce instead of buying different varieties of lettuce super fresh or growing them ourselves. Crisp it up beforehand in water, then keep it from staying too wet in the fridge and it can actually be quite tasty. The secret ingredient for this particular salad is the dressing: Briannas Homestyle Blush Wine Vinaigrette Dressing. It's a sweet dressing and I prefer to add fruits to garnish my salad when I use this dressing instead of croutons and such, but to each his own.

Well, I'm even surprised that I've gone on this long about pasta and salad, but it's my ability to ramble when I put my mind to it that originally got me thinking about starting a blog, so it makes sense.

Try it and enjoy…and let me know what you think!