Shrimp Scampi and some Gossip Girl

Casey had a night class and so I took the opportunity to make shrimp scampi and catch up on some gossip girl. I dumped all of the Orzo on the plate to take the picture, and thought "I probably won't finish this" but I did. I ate it all. Over a 1/4 lb. of rock shrimp laden with butter, garlic and lemon juice. It was awful. Every last bite.

I must say, lemon juice is deceitful. I was softening a shallot and a ton of garlic in butter and I added the juice of half a lemon and I couldn't smell it at all. I feel like this sounds silly since clearly shallot and garlic throw off some strong scents, but I thought at least a little. So I added most of the other lemon, save for the pieces you see in the picture and the shrimp sure turned out lemony. Surprisingly so. But you really do need it to contrast nicely with all that butter and garlic. I found a recipe in the silver spoon I was going to try but it got more involved than I was willing to get into that night, making compound butter and what not. We usually keep a bottle of lemon juice around, (speaking of deceitful, a lot of lemon juices have unnecessary preservatives in them so watch out!) but I've been using lemon juice from actual lemons. It makes a really nice difference! Who knew?!

I have a thing for fresh herbs. I love them, I really really do, but I just don't want to take that time to wash them, cut them, and than throw away half of it anyways since it goes bad so quickly. The only herb I really splurge for is cilantro since there is no such thing as dried cilantro. Sure they may sell it, but it's not cilantro. Plus is has so many uses in Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and obviously Mexican food that I end up using most, if not all of it. We have a basil plant at home, fresh thyme for Thanksgiving, I use it for the turkey and I can use the rest for the stock. And that's pretty much it.

This recipe was super easy, plus I love Orzo pasta.

Shrimp Scampi
Serves 1 hungry person

Butter
Juice of 1/2 lemon
6ish garlic cloves
1 large shallot
1/4 lb. peeled, de-veined rock shrimp
dried parsley
Orzo pasta

Get the pasta cooking. Soften garlic, shallot and salt in butter until onion is translucent. Add half the lemon juice. Drain pasta, add back to pan with butter, the rest of the lemon juice and dried parsley. Add rock shrimp to garlic and shallot mix. Serve pasta on the bottom and spoon the shrimp on top. Oh yeah.