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!

Zucchini soup

I haven’t been feeling too hot these days and unfortunately it is not the weather. Something has upset my stomach since Saturday evening and I am still not feeling 100%. I haven’t had this before and it really annoys me because it takes away my cooking mood. How can you think of food if your stomach is screaming louder? So no cooking or experimenting for me till everything calmed down.

Lucky me I’ve already made some pictures for this delish zucchini soup I made way back. It is super simple but sooo good.

All you need is some raw shrimps and 1 or 2 zucchinis. And to finish it off some coriander and some spring onion.

I always keep a bag of frozen headless raw shrimp in my freezer so I have it at hand every time I need it. For this soup I only needed a couple, but you can use a much or as little as you want.

I defrosted them first and then pealed and deveined them and put the shell aside for the broth later. Since I don’t have a food processor I have to chop my shrimps by hand. I lined them up and sprinkled some salt, pepper, garlic powder and some drops sesame oil on top. Then it was chop, chop till you get a nice chunky shrimp paste.

In a pot I boiled some water and normally I would season the water, but not this time. The seasoning is in the shrimp and as I don’t know how the water would taste I’d rather wait till the shrimp is in. First the shrimp shells went in. Then after boiling for a couple of minutes I’d removed the shells. Make sure you keep the water. It’s ok to skip this step, because the shrimps will give you plenty of flavor, but I like to use a much as I can and this just takes little effort.

I put the shrimp paste in a big serving spoon and submerged it in the boiling water. I used my chopsticks to break them apart, but a fork will do the trick as well. I want to break it down in big/small junks of shrimp.

After boiling the shrimps for a while I seasoned the soup with some salt and pepper. I chopped some zucchini and added that to the broth. I didn’t peal the zucchini because I like the contrast in color. But I noticed that if your zucchini is slightly old it is better to peal the skin off first. It tent to be slightly bitter.

I cooked everything till the zucchini was soft and at the every end I added some chopped coriander and spring onion.

This is exactly the way my mom makes this soup and it is soo good with some simple white rice.

Ps: whoever is allergic for seafood can substitute the shrimp for chicken or even pork. It will taste awesome as well.