Lately in our house we’ve been getting the bulk of meats from frozen sources. Or at least from large hunks we’ve purchased at a warehouse style store (BJ’s, Costco, etc) and then carved up at home. So the meats haven’t been fresh. There’s even a bag of tilapia in our chest freezer. But damnit I just wanted something fresher, and walking by the meat and seafood department at Wegmans has left me drooling the past few weeks. Gorgeous ribeyes and porterhouse steaks have been calling to me, and then I ironically choose the shrimp this week. Ironic because shrimp are frozen before being shipped off.
I also decided on the wild shrimp for the simple fact that they were larger than the sustainable farmed shrimp right next door. The pasta dish I envisioned had a little heartiness and bite to it, so there was no doubt a large and plump shrimp was required. The 35’s were just going to be lost in the penne.
The real problem with tonight’s meal came with how I’d dress the pasta. In the past I normally do shrimp pasta with butter, garlic, olive oil and some other small time things. Then toss with a long thin pasta like spaghetti. Very simple. I wanted the simplicity to remain with tonight’s meal, but for there to be much more to the bite. So I settled on my favorite pasta, penne rigate. Now I had a choice between having nice hunks of items tossed throughout such as tomatoes, or going a dressing route. Cooking for my wife means having to avoid hunks of most vegetables, especially onions and tomatoes. So dressing it would be.
But what to do? My mother has recently begun working at the college near my hometown in the dining hall. She essentially prepares sandwiches, but they have a nice array of food to choose from. One of which is pesto. On the phone with her a week ago she mentioned how all the kids keep asking for the green sauce and she had to ask one of them what it was. Despite my having made her pesto on a few occasions she insisted that she’d never heard of or tried pesto. With that conversation in the back of my mind I decided to finish up the bunch of basil I had in house with a pesto. For some reason I thought that macadamia nuts would really work well with the lime marinated shrimp, and boy was I right. I think this might be my new go to pesto as a general rule.
Overall this is one of my more successful new recipes. There is some great subtle depth of flavor, and it’s a hearty dish that allows you to bring shrimp into the fall season.
Photos by Kelly West.
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