jeffreyw/Flickr Creative Commons
There’s nothing simpler than cooking up a mess of pasta on the ol’ stove. All you have to do is heat water, throw in the pasta of your choice and wait til it reaches that “al dente” state right? Well, yeah. Kinda. But what are you going to have with it? What kind of sauce? Well let’s look in the cupboard and the fridge and see what we’ve got laying around. Hmmm, we’ve got some shrimp in the fridge, that would be nice. There’s a little bottle of capers there in the door, some fresh baby spinach down in the veggie drawer…what else have we got? Let’s see there’s some basil left over, a couple lemons, here’s a box of spaghetti. We’ve even got some olive oil left in this bottle and I know I’ve got salt and pepper, let’s do this!
I guess first thing, let’s chop about a quarter cup of fresh basil, then let’s get the shrimp peeled and de-veined. We’ve got a pound of it, and that’ll feed four folks I reckon. Once the shrimp is all prepared, we’ll need to get the water boiling in a pot and we’ll need a pan to cook the shrimp. We’ll get three quarts of water boiling then add about eight ounces or so of spaghetti. While the spaghetti is going, we’ll put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and heat the pan until the olive oil just begins to smoke then throw about half the shrimp in as well as some salt, pepper, and even a pinch of sugar is you’re so inclined. Shrimp cook pretty fast so keep an eye on them, when the edges turn pink and they’re spotty/brown take the pan off heat, grab some tongs and pull them out and put them on a plate, so you can cook the other half of the shrimp.
If you were a short-order cook back in high school or college running the pasta and the shrimp at the same time is no problem because they’ll cook in about the same amount of time, but if you get flustered and overwhelmed in the kitchen, cook the shrimp first and pasta after. Once the pasta has reached that al dente goodness level, strain it then pour it into a mixing bowl. In the bowl stir in the chopped basil, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a couple tablespoons of capers, a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, then salt to taste. Grab four plates, put a handful of fresh baby spinach on each plate, a serving of pasta on top of that then crown it with the shrimp! This stuff is so good you should eat it immediately and thank me later, or swing by PPL Motorhomes.com after dinner for any parts and accessories you may require.