Garlic shrimps

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was filled with grocery shopping and watching movies. With the snow and all I’m not really in the mood to do anything else. But today it started to rain. I never thought I would be so happy to see rain. The snow just melted away. Having 2 weeks of winter with snow and scrapping my car windows is more than plenty for me. Please let the spring start soon.

On Saturday I bought a bag of frozen, peeled and deveined shrimps. Talk about shortcuts. Normally I buy them with shell, so this was a nice change. I always try to have a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer. Never know when I need them.

I don’t know if I should call this post garlic shrimps or shrimp garlic given the amount of garlic I marinated them with. I know my boss will not be too happy tomorrow at work. Somehow he always knows when I had garlic. But that doesn’t stop me from eating it. I just love garlic!

For these super simple garlic shrimps I used:

-       About 25 pieces of peeled and deveined shrimps

-       4 cloves of garlic

-       1 teaspoon of salt

-       Fresh ground pepper

-       Some slivers of fresh chili

-       1 teaspoon of garlic powder

-       Dash of olive oil

I started with mincing the garlic and sliced some slivers of chili. I don’t like it too hot so just a couple would do.

To this I added the salt, the pepper, the garlic powder and the olive oil.

Then I butter flied the shrimp, making sure I didn’t cut them all in half and mixed them with the garlic mixture. I let it marinate for a day, but if you are in a hurry you can use it after a couple of minutes also.

In a hot wok I added a bit of olive oil and one teaspoon of butter. The moment the butter melted in the oil I added the shrimp.

Shrimp cooks so fast, so the whole process took no longer then 2-3 minutes. There is no doing anything else while the shrimp is cooking so you’ll have to be there and keep an eye on them. When one side was done I turned them around and after everything turned pink it was time to serve it.

We ate it with some toasted bread, but it was good just like that also; a great, fast and simple snack before dinner.

PS: try these shrimps on top of a salad!

Spaghetti with shrimps and zucchini

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was quite packed with social activities, but I manage to bake some cookies and will share the recipe very soon. So happy I’ve got some baking done.

Monday’s is always somewhat busy for me because every Monday night at around 7 pm I have a date. A play date that is. It started when my hubby and my Greek neighbor John had Dutch lessons together one evening a week. Me and Georgia (the wife) would get together and cook and hang out. There is not much cooking going on nowadays, but lots of playing with Spyros aka “the monster”. Since we are not blessed with any kiddies of our own I love my play time with Spyros. We play with trains, puzzles, footballs, balloons; basically whatever he gets his hands on. He’s starting to talk and sometimes forget that I don’t speak Greek. I try to pick up some words here and there, but thank god he does understand English as well. It’s always good fun. Because he has to go to bed in time I try to go over there at around 7. This means I have about 1 hour to make and eat dinner. That’s very tight considering the time I need to cook. Today I actually had time left. I made this super easy spaghetti dish using just a few ingredients:

-       Spaghetti (one handful)

-       Shrimps (as much or as little as you like)

-       Some white wine (again as much or as little as you like)

-       1 zucchini

-       Garlic (I used a lot, about 5-6 cloves, but you can use more or less)

-       About half a lemon

-       1 big tablespoon of crème fraîche

-       Salt and lots of fresh grounded pepper

I started with cooking the spaghetti in water with some teaspoons of salt. I always salt the water after it boils because if you do it ahead it takes longer for the water to boil.

As my shrimps came out of the freezer I put them in a bowl with some lukewarm water so they could defrost enough for me to peel them. If you have fresh and peeled shrimp you could make this dish even faster. To make it look more I sliced them in half.

I used a potato peeler to cut my zucchini in nice thin ribbons. Now it’s time to put it all together.

I put some chopped garlic (2 cloves) in a bit of olive oil and let them brown a bit. Then I added the shrimp shells. The shells have lots of flavor so I normally keep them and try to extract as much flavor as I can. When the shells change color I added a bit of white wine so the flavor could infuse in it. Then I put it all aside. You can skip this step if you are in a hurry.

Again I added some olive oil and the rest of the garlic. I started on low heat so the garlic can flavor the oil a bit. Then I put it on high and added the shrimp. I seasoned it with some salt and lots of fresh pepper.

Then I added the zucchini ribbons and the liquid I got from the shrimp shells.

When they soften a bit the spaghetti went in and another splash of wine. And to make it nice and creamy I added one big tablespoon of crème fraîche. To finish it all I squeezed a good amount of lemon on top.

I’ve never made this before so I’m very happy it turned out like this. It was so good my hubby and sister went back for seconds. Yah to stress free Monday meals!

Quick stir fried shrimp

Ok its Friday finally! Some days goes by in a wink and others…well every minute feels like a minute. But I’m happy it’s relaxing time. I’ve just finished my very easy dinner...buttery mussels and French bread. A last minute change of dinner plans.

We still had some rice left and I had my bitter melon soup that I made yesterday (recipe will follow) and we (well actually I) were suppose to eat that, but I was feeling like having some party food. Anything that takes me less then 30 minutes to make is party food.

I also asked my hubby to take some shrimps out of the freezer so I could make some stir fry shrimp for him to eat it with some rice since he is not a fan of bitter melon. These shrimps were all ready to go and had to be cooked…today!

Because I only have 45 minutes before my movie starts I thought I’d do a quick post. I’ve been looking forward to watch Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix so I’m quite exited about it. It’s true that there’s a kid inside everyone =)

So with no further delay…

Shrimp with oyster sauce.

This literally took me 5 minutes to make. I started with frying some onion and garlic (don’t add the garlic till the onions are brown) and then I added a dash of oyster sauce and some sesame oil. Then the shrimps went in….wait till they turn pink and voila…stir fried shrimp! How quick was that? It was so quick I didn’t have time to take more pictures then this one.

It’s a great snack. I know because the hubby went in and out of the kitchen each time munching on a piece of shrimp. If there’s any left for tomorrow it will be good with rice as well.

I’m getting read for movie time with my hubby, if I get him to watch it with me. Hope you all have great plans for the weekend. If weather permits we’ll bike down to Delft tomorrow. It’s like a mini holiday, but then one close to home!