Shrimp Malbec Jason Style
May 29, 2009 by admin
I have no idea how to cook seafood; all I know is red and white meat. Well that’s not totally true — it’s just that for seafood, I don’t have an internal recipe repertoire like I do for other meats. That’s why I had to pull out Molto Italiano a few weeks ago when Jacquie tasked me with cooking shrimp for dinner. After thumbing through Batali’s book, I thought his “Jumbo Shrimp Marsala Housewife Style” sounded great.
Just one slight problem. I was missing many of the recipe ingredients: capers, pine nuts, currants, fennel seeds, plum tomatoes, and marsala wine. Yeah, pretty much everything. However, I knew the flavor profile of those things and knew I could substitute for the stuff I didn’t have. That’s how in our version of the dish, capers became dill pickles, pine nuts became walnuts, currants became Pom juice, fennel seeds became fennel pollen from Marx Foods, plum tomatoes became vine ripened tomatoes, and marsala became malbec. Lastly, this dish is meant to be served like an appetizer but being as it was our dinner, we served it over pasta. This forced me to throw in some tomato paste to thicken it up a bit.
Despite all of the substitutions, we loved it and though the pics might not be great, I assure you that dish itself was tasty and beautiful.
Shrimp Malbec (Jason Style)
adapted from Molto Italiano
5 ounces of dried spaghetti
1 celery rib, diced
1/2 medium red onion, diced
2 vine ripened tomatoes, diced
2 tbsp chopped walnuts
2 tbsp chopped dill pickles
1 tsp fennel pollen
1 tbsp red pepper flakes (less if you aren’t a fan of spicy)
1 tbsp Pom juice
1/2 cup malbec wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
10 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt/pepper to taste
1. Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil for spaghetti.
2. Heat oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the onions and celery. Salt and cook until translucent.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients up to the shrimp and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 4-6 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.
4. While this is simmering, start the pasta.
5. Add the shrimp and cover, cooking for 6-8 minutes or until the shrimp turns pink. Salt and pepper the sauce to taste.
6. Transfer the pasta – which should at this point be just al dente – into the sauce and toss.
7. Serve immediately.
Tags:2009,in the kitchen,shrimp,spaghetti
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