Ex Libris

Tom and Steve stocked the house with burgers and hot dogs and chili for their B-movie-marathon this past weekend, so I cooked only for me and left me to cook lighter than I normally do when I am trying to feed both Tom and I (yeah, trying to feed a 6′5″ man and myself is an interesting balance). I put together this dish:

Garlic Lemon Shrimp and Brocolli

Ingredients

1. Lemon juice – fresh squeezed or from a bottle
2. Chopped garlic
3. Uncooked shrimp – fresh or frozen
4. Head of broccoli, chopped up to the size you’d like your clumps
5. Salt, pepper, and bay leaves.
6. Shredded Parmesan cheese.

1. Start steaming the broccoli. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the broccoli and splash a little olive oil on it, rub everything together.

2. Spill just enough olive oil into a small pan to cover the bottom, add chopped garlic, let simmer. Add enough water to give about 2 inches of depth, and then salt, pepper, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Add the shrimp. I used frozen, so I cooked it until the water boiled again and then for about 2 minutes after.

3. Once broccoli is steamed, squeeze lemon juice over it. Spread on plate, add shrimp to the mix and then squeeze more lemon juice on top. Finally, sprinkle Parmesan over the whole mix of it.

I came up with two dishes to have during a wine drinking getting together I hosted last night (that I am still feeling this morning…) that I thought I would share.

For our Cabarnet, I wanted to do something with gorgonzola and french baguette. So I took the baguette and sliced it up into about 1 inch think rounds. I then crumbled the gorgonzola on top and cut up a bunch of blackberries, mixing those up with the gorgonzola crumbles. I then took a blackberry syrup and drizzled it over the top. The result was pretty tasty and complimented the Cab well.

My second dish I didn’t actually get to eat myself because I’m a vegetarian, but for our Tempranillo I started with the recommendations that both olives and spicy sausage would go well with it. So I simmered some garlic and crushed red pepper in a very liberal amount of olive oil and then diced red and green peppers, and white onion, into very small pieces and added them to the garlic, red pepper, and olive oil mix. I then cut up the sausage (Portuguese Linguica) into small rounds and added that to the concoction and sprinkled some salt over the top. Letting that all cook together, I diced Spanish green olives and black olives and finally added those. It ended up cooking together for quite a long time because we had to go through Viognier (paired with hummus), Gurtzweiner (paired with fetuccini alfredo), and Fume Blanc (paired with brie cheese) before we moved onto it.

Once we got through all the wines and were thoroughly drunk we played Apples to Apples and Shout About Movies long into the night. It was a good time.

So as a vegetarian, I need to get creative with food. Fortunately, I’m one of those people who can poke through my cupboard and usually come up with something on the fly. Sometimes, though, what I come up with is better than others. This one I did tonight and wanted to record for my own purposes, but thought, “Hey if I blog it, I can share.” It’s definitely not something I’d make very often, as it’s far from healthy eating, but it’s a good treat every once and awhile.

I don’t know what to call it… maybe, “Parmesan Lover’s Macaroni”.

Ingredients

1 can cream of mushroom soup (I used healthy request Fat Free)

Approx. 1/2 c ricotta cheese (I used skim)

Approx. 1/2 c shredded Parmesan cheese

1 1/3 c mozarella cheese (again, I used part-skim)

Chopped mushrooms and white onion (as desired, I used about 7 large mushrooms and 1/4 of a medium white onion)

2 cloves garlic, chopped fine

2-3 c dried pasta

Approx. 2 Tbls olive oil

Salt and Pepper to Taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil, add water so the overall level is about 1/2 inch of liquid. Add the chopped garlic and let it simmer for a few minutes. Add mushrooms and onions and let simmer until thoroughly cooked. Drain any excess fluid, add cream of mushroom soup (meat eaters could probably substitute cream of chicken), cook together on medium heat for about 4-5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, bring your favorite pasta to boil in salted water. I used bow-tie pasta, but macaroni, ravioli, tortelli, etc could probably all work. Cook until tender, drain.

3. In a 9×13 pan, mix together the noodles and mushroom sauce with pepper to taste. Distribute the ricotta across the top of the mixture and sprinkle about half the Parmesan across the top. Mix it all together so you have a decent amount of ricotta and Parmesan throughout.

4. Top with mozarella until there is a decent layer. Sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan on top. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes or until everything is melted.

All of the amounts are definite approximates as I didn’t keep track of how much I was using, but I am sure if you look at it and it looks like too much or too little (I was being conservative with my estimates, so you might want to go up from my numbers).