Baked Shrimp Scampi
- By Katie Roche
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- 24 Apr, 2019
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I have always eye-rolled HARD at writer-types who can't have any noise in the background while they're writing. AND YET. Here I am, sitting in my PJs on my living room floor knowing I need to get this post up, but also engrossed in game 7 of the Boston/Toronto series (NHL playoffs) and I want to do both things but find that it's really hard to hold the words I'm trying to write in my head while also hearing the constant commentary from the announcers. I feel like I've become what I hate a little bit, but this is also good information for me as I'm trying to get more into writing and figure out what my process looks like. From what I gather, my process is similar to writers everywhere in that its essential element is extreme procrastination. But speaking of essential elements! Here we have my ingredients for this baked shrimp scampi with this totally FOINE backsplash in my sister's new house! This post was shopped for and cooked in the lively west-Indianapolis suburb of Avon.
ItemQuest: a gratin dish. Mental ItemQuest: how to pronounce "gratin". I found a few options for the pronunciation, including one specific to "American English" but only one option for the actual dish. As it turns out, they're incredibly hard to find and this annoys me, because I don't see myself gratin-ing things a whole lot. The only thing I'd heard of as a gratin before this was potatoes, and there are just sooooo many better ways to make potatoes. By definition, a gratin is something sprinkled with either bread crumbs or cheese, or both, and then browned. In this case, it was the bread crumbs. Ina stuck to what I have always heard to be true, and did not pair cheese with her seafood. Whenever people give me seafood recipes that include cheese, I politely nod while inwardly resolving to lose that recipe. So if you're reading this, don't do it. I don't care how delicious your cheesy halibut bake or whatever is. Also, don't ever put halibut in a "bake". ALSO, a bake is a casserole. Casseroling halibut is for real a sin. Anyway, I searched Target, Kroger, Amazon, etc. for the right size of gratin dish and, as usual, Ina uses a size an inch or so off of whatever size a store carries. I'm not sure what elusive elitist brand she is using, but I eventually found one that would work well enough at Home Goods.
The rest of this ItemQuest was done at Kroger on the Saturday before Easter, so you can imagine what that was like: not so much ItemQuesting as it was intense People-Dodging. Nothing crazy to get, just a couple of pounds of shrimp, some shallots and garlic, some herbs, and a few lemons. I decided on a lemon-heavy side dish for this as well, so I bought a bag of like 8 lemons and used them all.
ItemQuest: a gratin dish. Mental ItemQuest: how to pronounce "gratin". I found a few options for the pronunciation, including one specific to "American English" but only one option for the actual dish. As it turns out, they're incredibly hard to find and this annoys me, because I don't see myself gratin-ing things a whole lot. The only thing I'd heard of as a gratin before this was potatoes, and there are just sooooo many better ways to make potatoes. By definition, a gratin is something sprinkled with either bread crumbs or cheese, or both, and then browned. In this case, it was the bread crumbs. Ina stuck to what I have always heard to be true, and did not pair cheese with her seafood. Whenever people give me seafood recipes that include cheese, I politely nod while inwardly resolving to lose that recipe. So if you're reading this, don't do it. I don't care how delicious your cheesy halibut bake or whatever is. Also, don't ever put halibut in a "bake". ALSO, a bake is a casserole. Casseroling halibut is for real a sin. Anyway, I searched Target, Kroger, Amazon, etc. for the right size of gratin dish and, as usual, Ina uses a size an inch or so off of whatever size a store carries. I'm not sure what elusive elitist brand she is using, but I eventually found one that would work well enough at Home Goods.
The rest of this ItemQuest was done at Kroger on the Saturday before Easter, so you can imagine what that was like: not so much ItemQuesting as it was intense People-Dodging. Nothing crazy to get, just a couple of pounds of shrimp, some shallots and garlic, some herbs, and a few lemons. I decided on a lemon-heavy side dish for this as well, so I bought a bag of like 8 lemons and used them all.
I got to enjoy the skills of my brother-in-law, brains of this blog, as a sous chef; he butterflied all the shrimp but left the tails on, as Ina instructed. Dan is usually my sous chef, but he hates shrimp and was also fully engaged in a Nerf war with our nephews, who recently acquired their Nerf weapons. Here, the shrimp are resting in a bath of white wine (super cheap Chardonnay, because it was 2 tablespoons and I did not care), olive oil, and pepper. While they rested, I started preparing the things that mix into the butter.
Chopping parsley, shallots, and garlic. Zesting lemons. Forgetting to add the dried rosemary, which should have been fresh rosemary, but which we could not find at Kroger because I guess people use lots of herbs in their Easter cooking. Must be nice to be Ina who has, like, a romantic pathway of usable shrubbery where she individually and lovingly clips her rosemary sprigs whenever she needs them. In my reality, I get lil pots and plant herb bushes in them once a year, harvest herbs from them one time, forget to water them ever again, and they die along with Dan's patience when he finally quits watering them for me because it was my idea and should be my responsibility.
Here is my mashed butter, which looks a lot like last week's butter, but tastes a lot better because it does not contain chopped anchovies. Thank goodness.
I wish I had taken a picture before smearing the butter on top because I had to meticulously arrange the butterflied shrimp into concentric circles, which caused me to exclaim "No, Mon, YOU want the chocolate chips in concentric circles" which then caused my sister to correct my Friends-quoting to inform me that it was marshmallows Monica wanted in concentric circles. Either way...if anyone but Ina Garten ever told me to arrange something in concentric circles, I would refuse. I would have refused in this case too, except that it's, you know...*for the blog*. Trying to live her way and all that. But yeah, after carefully arranging the shrimp, we smeared it with this mashed up butter. As Ina would say, "How bad could that be?"
Ina says you can brown it for a minute under the broiler but my sister either doesn't have a broiler in her new oven or we couldn't figure out how to use it. Our expert on such things - the beloved appliance repairman and blog husband Dan - was still Nerf battling and therefore not available for comment.
How cute is the fam, getting pumped for din? I mean, so cute. My nephew Calvin seriously has the picture-perfect cheese in every single picture.
Alright. Here we have a not-that-great pic of my plate, because as we've established from the beginning, I'm not a good photographer. What's on it is the shrimp (obvi), some Caesar salad made by carefully dumping a bag of romaine and mixing it with bags of other things (croutons, dressing, etc) because I do not enjoy making salad, and Rachael Ray's lemon pepper capellini because it's great as a side dish with shrimp or chicken. It takes several entire lemons worth of juice and zest and that plus some olive oil, garlic, and pepper is the entirety of its "sauce". It's pretty light and went super well with this shrimp scampi.
Recently I heard someone make fun of the phrase "shrimp scampi" saying that in Italian it just means "shrimp shrimp" so it sounds goofy when we call it that. I don't know where we got that phrase (it feels like something we could probably blame on Olive Garden), or what shrimp scampi usually means. I think it's usually served on pasta? But whatever the heck it is, it is DELICIOUS. My nephews liked it, and I tried in vain to get them to give me hilarious feedback on the recipe, but I guess it's one of those things where wanting it too much makes it not happen. The hilarious kid commentary has to be off the cuff. They did ask to try my tangerine La Croix though, and JAM, the oldest, just took a sip, made a face, and shook his head "no". Anyway, for real, this was so so good! Given the ingredient list, I feel like my expectations were reasonably high because nothing too nasty was going on, but I have developed some trust issues because it's been a minute since I really loved one of the recipes! Her entire-bottle-of-wine phase of the cookbook damaged our relationship a little bit.
As much as we approved of the shrimp, I think the side dish was an essential component to its success; Ina didn't really make any serving recommendations - just straight up shrimp shrimp - so definitely make this but go on Food Network and get that Rachael Ray recipe I mentioned and make them together. This would make a great spring or summer menu for when it's warm out, except for the part where you have to have the oven on. The flavors are light and of course, I'm obsessed with lemon so I heartily approve of the high lemon content. My one beef - and I think it was an issue for all of us - is why she made us leave the shrimp tails on. Why does anyone ever leave them on? All I could find on the internet about this issue is that chefs mostly leave the tails on for presentation. All I have to say about that is SCREW PRESENTATION. No one sitting at your table wants to individually pluck tails off of shrimp before eating them. How does Ina not see this?
Apologies to the people who love the posts more when I hate the dish. I feel like that's actually most of you. I can't hate this. Imagine us sitting peacefully under Ina Garten's lemon tree, which never isn't growing perfectly ripe lemons. I will regale you with my childhood food traumas and random and vehement food hatreds, such as any mayonnaise that isn't Hellmann's, ketchup of any kind, and any of those Pinterest recipes that include the word "crack" like "crack chicken" or "crack brownies". This is my next blog concept. Stay tuned.
Recently I heard someone make fun of the phrase "shrimp scampi" saying that in Italian it just means "shrimp shrimp" so it sounds goofy when we call it that. I don't know where we got that phrase (it feels like something we could probably blame on Olive Garden), or what shrimp scampi usually means. I think it's usually served on pasta? But whatever the heck it is, it is DELICIOUS. My nephews liked it, and I tried in vain to get them to give me hilarious feedback on the recipe, but I guess it's one of those things where wanting it too much makes it not happen. The hilarious kid commentary has to be off the cuff. They did ask to try my tangerine La Croix though, and JAM, the oldest, just took a sip, made a face, and shook his head "no". Anyway, for real, this was so so good! Given the ingredient list, I feel like my expectations were reasonably high because nothing too nasty was going on, but I have developed some trust issues because it's been a minute since I really loved one of the recipes! Her entire-bottle-of-wine phase of the cookbook damaged our relationship a little bit.
As much as we approved of the shrimp, I think the side dish was an essential component to its success; Ina didn't really make any serving recommendations - just straight up shrimp shrimp - so definitely make this but go on Food Network and get that Rachael Ray recipe I mentioned and make them together. This would make a great spring or summer menu for when it's warm out, except for the part where you have to have the oven on. The flavors are light and of course, I'm obsessed with lemon so I heartily approve of the high lemon content. My one beef - and I think it was an issue for all of us - is why she made us leave the shrimp tails on. Why does anyone ever leave them on? All I could find on the internet about this issue is that chefs mostly leave the tails on for presentation. All I have to say about that is SCREW PRESENTATION. No one sitting at your table wants to individually pluck tails off of shrimp before eating them. How does Ina not see this?
Apologies to the people who love the posts more when I hate the dish. I feel like that's actually most of you. I can't hate this. Imagine us sitting peacefully under Ina Garten's lemon tree, which never isn't growing perfectly ripe lemons. I will regale you with my childhood food traumas and random and vehement food hatreds, such as any mayonnaise that isn't Hellmann's, ketchup of any kind, and any of those Pinterest recipes that include the word "crack" like "crack chicken" or "crack brownies". This is my next blog concept. Stay tuned.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!