Yield: 1 portion

Ingredients:
4 oz. Shrimp (26-30), deveined, seasoned
2 oz. White Wine
3 oz. EVOO
2 oz. Butter
3 cloves Garlic, minced/sliced
1/2 Shallot, minced
1/2 Lemon, juice
Red Pepper Flakes to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste
1T Parsley
1/4 lb. Linguine (make the dish gluten free by switching this to GF pasta!)

Equipment:
Stock Pot
Colander
Sauté Pan
Wooden Spoon 

 Procedure:

1. Drop the linguine in the boiling salted water and cook to al dente.
2. In sauté pan heat oil and butter, add shallots and cook a few minutes to translucent.
3. Add sliced garlic and red pepper flakes, cook to aroma. Add shrimp and cook on both sides for color but do not cook through, set aside. Add wine and lemon juice and scrape up any fond formed by the shrimp, reduce liquid then add shrimp back to the pan to fully cook. Watch it here, nothing ruins a great Shrimp Scampi like over cooked shrimp!
4. Add the linguine and toss, add parsley. Check/adjust seasoning. As always, use your pasta water to adjust your sauce if needed!

I wrote this recipe for one because it is such a quick and easy meal to make for one portion, especially if you keep a bag of high quality shrimp in your freezer like I do. Simply adjust the portion for the amount of people you are cooking for.

About Shrimp Scampi: When I was little, whenever it was one of our birthdays (I am the youngest of five kids), our dad would have us pick the menu for our birthday dinner. Most years I requested his shrimp scampi with sautéed spinach. His shrimp scampi was full of garlic and crushed red pepper flakes, it was buttery, spicy, acidic and bright with perfectly cooked linguini and shrimp that were perfectly tender and juicy. His sautéed spinach almost melted in your mouth with the same garlic and crushed red pepper flake seasoning as the scampi, they went very well together. I can still smell my parents house when I think about those dishes, I can see the steam rising from the stovetop and from the sink when the pasta water was drained and I can remember my mom setting the table while my dad cooked as if it were yesterday (we didn’t do any work on our birthdays, so I sat back a enjoyed those days). 

Although I always thought that the shrimp scampi that I grew up with was a dish that originated in Italy, I was wrong! According to Waverley Root in “The Cooking of Italy”, scampi is actually a close relative of shrimp which has no exact equivalent outside Italian waters. He explains that one of the popular ways that scampi are served in Italy is grilled in butter and garlic, which is similar to the shrimp scampi that I grew up with, but traditionally not served on pasta. Shrimp scampi was named for cooking shrimp in the way scampi was cooked in Italy making the name a little redundant, but no less delicious. According to Lidia Bastianich in her book “Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen”, immigrants adapted Italian techniques to American ingredients which is why there are many variations of the dish in America.

Bastianich, Lidia. Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Print.

Root, Waverley. The Cooking of Italy. New York: TIME-LIFE Books, 1968. Print.