Friday, July 8, 2011

GTTC - shrimp pasta with garlic cream sauce and basil oil

This week's Garden to Table Challenge post would have looked much more elegant with spaghetti, angel hair or linguine, but because of our Chinese superstition of never eating long noodles before travel (as any superstition, makes no logical sense but it's tested and true!), I had to choose elbow mac.

To make this dish, I started with my new favorite trick shared by Entangled - I made a medium-sized saucepan's worth of broth with shrimp shells first. Next, I blanched a handful of purple and Italian basil (from the garden) in hot water and then blended it with 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. In a large pan, I sauteed finely chopped onions and LOTS AND LOTS of fresh garlic till soft. To the pan, I added the strained shrimp broth and about 3/4 cup of rice wine and reduced this down to about 2 cups. I then added a cup of heavy cream and reduced the whole thing down again. To serve, I tossed the pasta with the sauce, added cooked shrimp, and drizzled the strained basil oil on top. There is so much flavor in this oil, and the garlic cream sauce is JUST decadent enough!




What are you harvesting and cooking this week? I'd really like to know! Post about it with a link back here and then add your info to Mr. Linky below. Doing so is just plain fun and can win you prizes! As I mentioned in last week's post, I will be sharing my fall garlic stock with a lucky winner. The winner is...Julie, of one of my all time favorite blogs The Little Things.



6 comments:

  1. Interesting superstition, Wendy. I hope your travels are safe. Yummy looking dinner!

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  2. Wow, that sounds just like a trendy restaurant dish - Deconstructed Shrimp Pesto Pasta or something ;-)

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  3. Oh my goodness, Wendy, thanks so much! Gosh, and I feel terrible because I've totally fallen off the bandwagon with this - so much busy traveling this summer makes it hard to keep up with blogs and blogging.
    Thank you. I'm so excited about this, garlic is one of my favorite crops!

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  4. Ooh this looks delish! I have never heard of that superstition before and my parents are super Chinese superstitious. I'll have to ask them about that one!

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  5. Congrats to Julie. Wonderful dish...oh I should try to make broth from shrimp shell too.

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