Garlic Scape Scampi

Geoff and I have been getting organic vegetables delivered to our door for the last year. It's always a great surprise to find out whats in the vegetable box. This week we received garlic scape.
I had never even heard of them before now. After a quick search on tastespotting, we were able to come across several recipes. Most of the recipes had the scape blended and made into a pesto. That seemed pretty boring to us, so we decided on this amazingly tastey dish from Closet Cooking. The recipe was fast and tastey. We definitely recommend trying this out.

Fiddle Heads Attempt #4

I just found this picture on my camera. Geoff and I made this for dinner a couple weeks ago after having gone out for drinks with his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law ordered a pasta with lots of garlic, some tomatoes and oil. It smelled so good, I thought about it for days. It seemed easy enough so we gave it a shot and added a couple of extras.

Ingredients:
Pasta
Shrimp, peeled and de-veined
Fiddle Heads, ends trimmed and washed
Tomatoes (diced, or cherry tomatoes cut in half)
4 cloves garlic, chopped as much as possible
Olive oil
Butter
4 tsp lemon juice

1. Boil fiddle heads for 5 minutes
2. When fiddle heads are done, begin boiling pasta (should take about 10 minutes for the pasta to be ready)
3. While the pasta is cooking, cook shrimp in a little bit of butter, 2 tsp lemon juice and garlic
4. Fry fiddle heads in a little butter and 2 tsp lemon juice
5. Once pasta is done, drain and put back in the pot, add fiddle heads, shrimp diced tomatoes and garlic. Toss with enough oil to just cover the noodles.
   

Grilled Marinated Veggies and Shrimp

Last weekend Geoff and I finished exams and had the chance to escape up to my family's cottage for the weekend. Two out of three days it was rainy and cold and gross, but on Sunday it was gorgeous. Sunny, warm, no wind, 15C. Perfect spring weather. Finally BBQ season has commenced.

We went to the grocery store in town and picked up some shrimp (mom, just so you know we didn't even raid the freezer at the cottage... and there was A LOT of shrimp in there) and some vegetables.

The shrimp was probably the best shrimp we have ever made. It's way better than in a frying pan. WAY better. And of course the vegetables were really good too.

It was such an easy and fast meal that I plan on making again and again all summer now that I can finally uncover my own barbecue here in Ottawa.

Ingredients:
1 zucchini, sliced
2 bell peppers of your preferred colour cut into large chunks
1/2 of a large egg plant cut into slices then quartered
Bag of 21-24 sized shrimp
Butter
Garlic
Oil
Spices
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
Wooden Skewers
BBQ grill pan

1. Soak skewers in water (this will prevent them from burning on the BBQ)
   
2. Mix 2 parts oil with 1 part vinegar in a large Ziploc baggy or a large bowl. Add in whatever spices you like (we used rosemary and thyme pluse some others that I can't remember... I just open jars and smelled, using whatever I liked at the time), 2-3 crushed cloves of garlic, 1/4 tsp salt, fresh ground pepper. Make sure you mix it up well
3. Add veggies into the baggy or bowl and cover with the marinade. Let sit at least 20-30 minutes
4. Heat up the BBQ
   
5. Peel shrimp and impale them on the skewers. About 4 shrimp should fit on a skewer. Brush the shrimp with a mixture of 1 clove garlic and 3-4 tbsp melted butter.
6. First put the vegetables on the BBQ grill pan on the bbq and grill until almost done
7. put shrimp right onto the grill. Should take 1-2 minutes per side. Flip when the first side turns pink
8. Serve!
   

Lemon-Shrimp Pasta

While browsing through tastespotting (or maybe foodgawker) we saw a recipe with garlic shrimp and orzo pasta. It looked really tasty and after cleaning out the freezer, we found that there was 3 bags of shrimp stashed away from months ago so we gave it our own spin.

I'm not sure who originally posted the recipe but we used it as a starter for our own. The original didn't have any veggies and we had several lemons sitting in the fridge so we made our best attempt at customizing this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 - 1 + 1/2 cups of Orzo pasta depending on how hungry you are
2 tsp diced garlic
2 big handfuls of baby spinach, washed
an assortment of mushrooms, cleaned (we had 3 or 4 different kinds)
lemon juice
3 tbsp butter
peeled and deveined shrimp
olive oil
parsley

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, salt it and add pasta (should take about 10 minutes to cook)
2. In a frying pan, add 1 tbsp butter, 1 tsp garlic and saute the mushrooms until they soften a bit. Then add spinach until wilted
3. Meanwhile, in another pan, melt remaining butter and add remaining garlic. Add shrimp, squeeze 1/2 of a lemon's worth of juice on top. Cook shrimp 1-2 minutes per side
4. Pasta should be done, drain, mix in a little olive oil, mix in veggies and shrimp. Add as much parsley as you like to make it prettier.
   

Spicy Pasta with Shrimp and Grape Tomatoes

Geoff and I made up this pasta as we went last night. We wanted to try and take pictures before it was too dark so we kind of rushed this meal. It was pretty tasty and really easy.

Ingredients:
(serves 2)

200g pasta of your choice (we chose springs)
3/4 of a carton of grape tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise
5 cloves chopped garlic
1 jalapeno pepper
1 other hot pepper that was green and small
12 shrimp (6 each!)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
3 tbs olive oil
2tbs butter
grated Parmesan cheese to your liking
salt and pepper to taste

1. Defrost and peel shrimp
2. Boil pasta until al dente
3. While pasta cooks, melt butter in pan, add garlic for 20 seconds with red pepper flakes.
4. Add peppers to pan, then add shrimp
5. Cook shrimp until they curl up and turn pink (1-2 minutes per side)
6. Toss pasta with olive oil then dump in everything from the frying pan
7. Add Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste

You could toss in some spinach to this recipe for extra fiber, but we used pasta that already had lots of fiber and protein added to it (Catelli has made white pasta healthy, finally!)

Asparagus and Prosciutto with Breaded Shrimp

(Serves 2)

1/2 bunch asparagus

Sliced prosciutto

Lemon

Goat cheese

Shrimp

Butter

Flour

Olive oil

Chopped Garlic

Asparagus bundles (inspired by this recipe http://web.mac.com/marciaskitchen/Site/Asparagus_Bundles.html)

1. Trim ends of asparagus and boil for 2 minutes. Immediately rinse asparagus in cold water after to stop them from continuing to cook
2. Take 4-5 spears of asparagus, and wrap a slice of prosciutto around them. Do this until you’ve got all of the asparagus into bundles
3. Place in a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice and crumble goat cheese on top
4. Heat oven to 400F and bake 5-6 minutes

For the shrimp

1. Peel and devein shrimp
2. Coat in flour
3. Melt butter in a frying pan, add chopped garlic
4. Put shrimp in pan and drizzle juice from ½ of a lemon on top
5. Fry on medium-low heat until both sides are pink and the shrimp start to curl inward – about 2 minutes per side