Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Garlic Cream Sauce

Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Garlic Cream Sauce Okay now I’m going to make a very simple dish, again its being summer time here in Las Vegas, at this time a year I like to make dishes that don’t involve the oven and aren’t really too complicated, so you don’t have to heat up your whole house. So in this edition you make entirely on a stove top. It just sautéed shrimp with angel hair pasta, usually our pasta cooks really quickly, so again like you don’t have to be toiling over the stove. And the roasted garlic cream sauce. So it’s kind of rich but I lighten it up with some lemon and stuff, so it’s not as rich as it sounds. I’ve already got some water boiling here where I’m going to cook my pasta and I took the liberty of starting to cook my garlic, you can just buy like a whole cloves of garlic already peeled is the easiest way to do it, or you could buy or like the whole head of garlic and you could peel and just get the cloves and make sure there’s not a little stem part here like your little woody part. What I did is I’ve got some extra virgin olive oil and I’ve just simmered it. So I’m kind of just like slow cooking the stuff, you pour a little salt in there, little black pepper. Always make sure that you season your pasta water liberally, let’s say, it should taste like sea water. This is the most important tool in the kitchen, it is your spoon not your In The Egg Wranco Egg Scrambler as some people might think. So you just want to taste the pasta water, because this is important in every single element of your dish should be seasoned properly, otherwise it just throws off the balance. It should taste disgusting and you know. But not then much we’re just going to be absorbed into the pasta. So I got some angel hair pasta here. I’m breaking in half just to make it easier to work with, throw that in. It’s going to cook in like four or five minutes. You want the water at a rolling boil; just give it a little mix so it doesn’t stick. You want to cook your garlic very slowly for about 15 or 20 minutes until it’s just soft, it’s pretty much poached in olive oil. So if you see this, I took it out and you and you could just crush it. So that’s going to mix it really nicely into our sauce. What it does is it thickens the sauce. So it actually acts as a thickening agent. A lot of sauce which will be thickened with like cornstarch or flour, so this is just like a little lighter way incorporate flavor and that introduce things that don’t need to be used in the sauce. Also you could save this oil, it’s really good stuff, you just brush it on some bread and you can grill the bread or you can use this oil for vinaigrette, this roasted garlic oil is great. I saved this oil and then at the restaurant and then we used it for all different kinds of things. I used it for, put a little saviche, put a little bit in my gazpacho, or like I said you could just brush bread with it. And you don’t want the garlic to get too toasty, there’s nothing worst than burnt garlic. You will ruin your dish. So I’m going to drain this, I’m not saving the oil, because I don’t need it at this moment but I would definitely recommend saving the oil at home and you could just put it in the, put it in the refrigerator and it will stay for up to a week probably. Okay, we got our pasta going nice and strong there. The next thing I’m going to do is I’ve got some heavy cream. I’m going to put some heavy cram in the hot pan and reduce that a little bit. By reduce, I just mean you want to kind of simmer it to evaporate some of the water from it. I’m going to season that with some lemon pepper, this is a nice little trick, again it adds a little bit of acidity to the cream to cut the richness of the cream and gives a little spice too. So I’m going to put like about a tablespoon in there and a little bit of salt. Okay, while that’s going, I’m going to put my garlic in here, so I’m going to puree this beautiful roasted garlic with this cream when it’s ready and my pasta looks about ready. You want to cook it a little under because it’s going to continue cooking after you strain it. Toss the pasta with a little bit of olive oil, so that doesn’t stick, don’t rinse the pasta because that takes a lot of starch off of it. I’m just going to toss it with a little oil. I’ll going to leave that to steam. This starting to reduce, I’ve got shrimp here, these are like black tiger shrimp. You can use any kind of shrimp. In fact you could pretty much substitute almost anything for this dish—salmon or chicken, but I’m going to use shrimp today. These are already peeled. When you buy them at the store you want to get them with the peel on, it just adds to the flavor. You’re going to peel them down to the, I like to leave like one or knuckle at the end there. Kind of take it underneath and pull with a little cute little legs are. You could save these and make stock out of it, but that’s a different show. Make a little cut along the back, kind of butterfly it and then you just going to rinse with cold water. When you’re sautéing anything, one key is to make sure that your pan is nice and hot. I’ve been heating these pans over here for a few minutes on a low heat. So I’m going to let that get hot, my cream is just about ready over here. You don’t want to burn it but just let it just kind of a little slow bubble and in a few minutes that will thicken up. Okay, you don’t want to put too much in the pan, just enough to cover the bottom. Otherwise you want to get a little bit o f color on the shrimp and hope this still at the shells on. If the pan isn’t hot enough or if you put too much shrimp in the pan then you just going to steam the shrimp, they’re not going to get any color, they’re not going to get any flavor. Again, like seasoning is all important, so season every step you go, season a little bit and then at the end you just kind of tweak it. That’s one of the first things I learned when I went to culinary school. This, the three ingredients are the most important are salt and pepper and parsley, they said of all things you know. I didn’t know a lot about food when I started at the culinary school which is good because otherwise I probably would have gone. I didn’t know how little I knew until I know a little bit more and by then it was too late to turn back. So you don’t want to overcook the shrimp, just till they start to curl up like that, that’s nice, it kind of turn a little translucent. These are 16 to 20 count shrimp which means they’re16 to 20 per pound. You can use smaller shrimp, you can even use a little bay shrimp is good. So what I’m going to do is I’m deglaze with this cream, this is going to make my sauce and stop the kind of the cooking process there. In the mean time, I’m going to puree my garlic with the rest of this cream, here you go. You can also use a regular blender or you can use a food processor or you can even just like mash it by hand if you want, but these were great because you don’t have to get an extra pot dirty, just stick in there then you rinse off the end. So this is going to get nice and thick. So I’m going to add some of my puree here. This is great like you can even just do this straight up with pasta. I’m going to mix that in and it’s kind of just makes a kind of velvety sheen on a sauce, my pasta here still nice when warm. Now you could toss the pasta right in the pan if you want but I’m going to try to make like a sexy chefy presentation here. So I got a little bowl of pasta in the center and put your shrimp around the side. See it always tastes better if it’s symmetrical too. Like make sure all the tails are sticking on the same direction, just like little visual queues help a lot and you could toss then a big bowl and put it on a plate and slap it on there and still going to taste good but it taste better if the tails are lined up just right. My nice cream sauce on top, chop some parsley. Again like this is—usually people think it as garnish but it’s got a lot of flavor in it, plus it adds a nice vivid color to the dish. And some tomato for color again and for flavor and texture, it gives a little some nice, fresh summer tomatoes. You can also chop up some red peppers or roasted red peppers or nothing you know, but for me this just gives it a little bit of a bite, because the sauce is so rich and creamy. I’ve also garnished this dish with like, with fried onions like very thin fried onions but it’s not necessary. Here we go, just some chopped fresh tomatoes on top and you have your angel hair pasta with sautéed shrimp and roasted garlic cream.