Pioneer Woman: Quiche and Scampi Part II

So, the quiche was in the oven for an hour and I had to tutor for an hour.  Worked out well.  While I was tutoring, Mick did the dishes.  Then when I was done, I came back to the kitchen to make the scampi. It's really easy to make, so it was pretty much a one-person job.  Mick ran interference (also known as keeping the kids busy and out of the kitchen) while I whipped this little number up.

Let me say this little bit here:  Mick is absolutely wonderful in the kitchen, and for him to do the dishes is not at all unusual.  I cooked the quiche and we knew we were having scampi, so he took the lead on transitioning from kitchen prep 1 to kitchen prep 2.  He's awesome about stuff like that, and I am not just saying that because he reads this blog.  When we first got married, one of the things I wished we did more of was to cook together.  Now it's ten years later, and cooking together has actually become one of our favorite things to do together. He's also a great wingman when you need the kids distracted but feel a little guilty tying them to their chairs sending them to play by themselves in the playroom when two perfectly play-with-able parents are home.  (Side-side note:  most of the time, I let the kids cook with me, aprons and all, but because the quiche had just come out of the oven, there was too much "hot stuff" going on for me to feel like it was safe.  And that's our number one concern.)

Shrimp Scampi

Verdict: Very yummy and a nice twist on what we usually do
Cook it Again:  yes, but double the recipe
Cost Factor: if you have lemons on hand, the only other big expense is the shrimp (and wine, if you don't have any).   You'll notice that we had a large bottle.  Don't judge us.

I've mentioned in other posts that I cook scampi a fair bit, and we always have the ingredients in the house.  (Well, what's to have, really?  Shrimp, angel hair, garlic, lemons and butter.)  But precisely because I cook scampi often enough, I wanted to stay as true as possible to the Pioneer Woman recipe.

Here are the ingredients.  See if you can figure out what I left out of this photo (because you know I left something out!)

They look like oranges, but they are Meyer lemons.

The recipe starts out calling for sauteeing the garlic and onions in butter and a little oil.  I am of the mind that good scampi = lots of butter, so I didn't worry too much about how much butter it called for, but some of my cooking club friends have noticed (correctly) that Ree's recipes are butter-heavy.  I'll probably talk more about that in future posts, but for the scampi, at least, I was okay with the butter content.  

Mick and I both enjoyed the little punch of Tabasco -- I didn't overdo it, because although WHM could drink Tabasco straight out of the bottle, CAM balks at the mention of pepper.  She told us recently that her milk was too spicy.  So I added some Tabasco, but not as much as I might have.  Sorry I didn't snap a photo for you to see how much.  In any case, everyone at the table was happy, because even CAM ate all her dinner, and Mick and I could taste enough of the Tabasco to not need more.

We/I also don't generally make scampi with wine (because we don't usually have white wine in the house, first of all, and because when we do, it is because we bought it specifically to drink, right then, second of all.)  That was a nice, different touch as well.   I have to say that I much preferred the wine in the scampi to the wine in my glass.  I'm just not a chardonnay girl, but for some reason we happened to have this giant bottle in the house, so that's what we used.

Anyway, the scampi was delicious -- and nice and light, and the sauce was perfect to cover the angel hair without needing any reserved pasta water to thin it out.  But, for a hungry family of four, this simply wouldn't be enough.  As it was, all four of us ate everything, plus dessert, and if we'd not polished off an entire bag of Lay's BBQ potato chips while we were cooking snacked a little before hand, we would have been left hungry. 

My plate.

Speaking of the dessert, it was actually brought to us, still warm from the oven, by my lovely, sweet tutoring girl.  Cinnamon Apple Pie Cupcake Strudel Thingies from a Pinterest Recipe!  Thank you, Miss A!  They were amazing!

WHM enjoying his warm, fabulous dessert!

--Jen

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