Simple Shrimp Scampi

Wow, I am so behind.  The following meal occurred on or about Thursday, July 8th ... which makes this post belated, to say the least.

Anyways... SHRIMP!

Shrimp, as a concept, kind of gross me out.  Like, if someone showed me a pool of live shrimp, with all their little legs wiggling around and their little white muscley bodies bouncing off one another, and asked me to eat one, I would say HECK. TO THE. NO.

This is where processing helps us; it divorces the animal from the eating, so that we don't think about how what is now lying so temptingly on our plate was once a creature struggling to get from this day to the next.  This is why I have such respect for those who farm and slaughter their own animals (see forthcoming post re: Matt killing chickens with Katie and Greg).

Shrimp are different, though.  I wouldn't not want to eat a shrimp because of a deep moral dilemma about the value of its life and the selfishness of my killing it.  Live shrimp are just creepy.

But I digress.

We melted a couple tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, then popped a pound of shrimp in with a couple cloves of crushed garlic, letting the shrimpies cook for just one minute before flipping them over.  One minute on the other side, and we took the shrimp out into a bowl to wait for the juice. (This way, they didn't get all rubbery and overcooked while the sauce heated.)

We deglazed the pan with the juice of a lemon and a couple cups dry white wine (we used a crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc, the rest of which we drank with the meal).  Once the sauce was simmering again, we added back in the shrimp, tossed in a couple handfuls of fresh parsley, and immediately poured it all over a big pot of fresh linguine.

We served it with a hearty bakery bread -- great for mopping up the runny, lemony sauce that pooled in the bottom of our bowls -- and some slow-roasted vegetables Matt made in the oven.  The result was a summer feast:

I loved this sauce, because scampis are delicious (especially in summer) but often too rich for me.  Because we used such little butter, relying on the parsley, lemon, and wine for taste, this one was light and refreshing.

This meal happened too long ago to remember, but I think it's a safe bet that I licked that bowl clean.