This recipe goes together quickly and tastes great, making it perfect for a weeknight dinner. Add a glass of Chardonnay for a special touch!
DH and I are super busy in the summer, which means not a lot of time to cook. It’s times like this that I resort to semi-homemade cooking. Even though I can make everything from scratch, doesn’t mean I’m going to. I figure it’s still better than takeout!
So when 14 Hands Winery asked me to develop a summer recipe that would pair with their wines, I knew right away that I wanted to do something fast and easy. You don’t have to save wine for special occasions; DH and I have been known to drink a $30 bottle of wine with $5 pizza!
And so, this recipe starts with boxed pasta. If you want to spend more time on this, you can make your own pasta. I’m sure it would taste better but as I mentioned, I was going for speed here.
Hint: DO salt your water when making pasta. I used to skip this step, thinking it was a waste of time, but I found that it does make a difference in taste. It adds a lot of flavor. So now I ALWAYS do this.
Next, I decided to use a bell pepper from my garden, add some onion because you can’t go wrong with onion, and then some heirloom garlic that I picked up at the farmers market a few weeks ago. I LOVE this garlic – it’s a bit sweeter than your run of the mill stuff.
After sauteeing the vegetables to make them soft, I briefly considered adding tomatoes or beans, since they were also sitting on my counter. In the end I decided to keep it simple and not add either of those.
Then I added the shrimp to the vegetables and heated them through and added jarred Alfredo sauce. You can make your own Alfredo sauce if you’d like, but I’ve been cheating a lot this summer and jarred works fine by me.
I decided to finish it off with some parsley snipped from my garden, and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Here’s where you shouldn’t cut corners–the stuff in the shaker can is no comparison to freshly grated!
Now, to choose a wine. The fine folks at 14 Hands Winery sent me a selection to try, and I have enjoyed every single one that I’ve sampled. None were too sweet, which is a common complaint that DH and I have of wines. I looked online and was pleasantly surprised to discover they are very affordable (under $15) and available at our local Meijer. Score! I think this will become my go-to wine when we don’t have any on hand from our winery visits.
I decided to go with the Chardonnay to pair with this dish, since it’s a traditional choice for seafood and creamy sauces. There’s something fun about having a nice glass of wine with a dinner that didn’t take long at all to make.
The Verdict: I can always tell when DH likes something because he goes for seconds before I’ve even finished my first helping. He LOVED this dish, and so did I. He did tease me about using jarred sauce but you know what? Life’s too short. Which is why having a lovely glass of Chardonnay with my husband on a weeknight with jarred-sauce-and-frozen-shrimp-and-boxed-pasta dinner suits me just fine. Cheers.
Ingredients
- 1 package frozen shrimp
- 1 package angel hair pasta
- 1 sweet bell pepper, chopped
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 jar Alfredo sauce (or make your own Alfredo sauce from scratch)
- 2 Tbsp parsley, chopped
- Parmesan cheese, grated
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Thaw shrimp according to package directions.
- Cook pasta according to package directions.
- In a large skillet, saute peppers and onion in a splash of oil until soft. Add garlic, stir until fragrant.
- Add shrimp and Alfredo sauce. Salt and pepper to taste.Lower heat to simmer and let it warm up while the pasta finishes cooking.
- Serve sauce and shrimp over noodles. Top with parsley and Parmesan cheese.
Disclosure: This post sponsored by 14 Hands Winery. All opinions are my own.
This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday
Right on! Mostly-homemade is great and totally agree this is still worlds better than “pre-fab.” Besides, you made backbone ingredients count by adding good garlic, good wine and freshly grated Parm. It’s really important, IMO, to encourage people to do from-scratch when they can, and make use of tiimesavers at other times as common sense dictates. Sure there are writers and bloggers who are purists and insist that no prepared ingredients sully their kitchens, making every single thing from scratch… But I think they tend to scare off people who feel “guilted into” spending more time in food preparation than they actually have available. Or, there are others who feel cooking from scratch is an all-or-nothing proposition and if they can’t make the full commitment, why bother. You do a great job of showing the way with alternative “baby steps” that give your readers a way to have some fun in the kirtchen without becoming a slave to it. That’s a lot more empowering than a purist approach. Anyone who’s won over to using even a few more local ingredients, or at least considering them in their meal choices, is a step further along the path of becoming their own version of a Local Cook, and studies prove that even a 10% change in buying habits has a significant effect. (You could probably contact Elissa Hillary at Local First for some specifics from the study that was done right here in Kent County a few years back. Nice tie to the annual Eat Local events, even!) I, personally, think you could add the adjective Realistic to your blog title and wear it proudly and accurately. Keep up the good work – glad to see a responsible food journalist on the job!
Thanks Sue, I appreciate your kind words. I think a lot of us get overwhelmed sometimes and feel guilty about not doing everything perfect so we don’t do anything at all. I might steal your “realistic” idea!