Saturday, May 14, 2011

Bowties w/ spinach

Ok..here's our ingredients. a box of bowtie pasta, some garlic, and onion (we'll only use half of this big sucker), 2 containers of heavy cream, and a bag of fresh baby spinach, and 2 bags of fresh frozen shrimp.


So, put the water on to boil for the pasta. in the meantime, you chop the onion.


I make everything in my iron skillet, so add some olive oil to the skillet


add the chopped onion to the skillet.


Then we come to my favorite part...THE GARLIC!!!! I lovelovelove fresh garlic, and put garlic in almost everything I cook. so I think we have 8 cloves of garlic here. smash em with a knife to get the skins off...the chop chop chop it all up.




add the chopped garlic to the onion in the skillet, and saute till soft and the onions are translucent.




I but frozen shrimp. Not gonna get the really fresh stuff in OHIO, so we go the frozen route. I put the shrimp in a bowl of cool water to thaw out.




These still have the shells on, so pull that stuff off.


Water is boiling, so add your box of pasta. salt the water now too...you want ocean water to cook the pasta in...its the only chance you get to really season the pasta itself.


So back to the skillet....the onions are soft and the garlic is soft...DON'T BURN THE GARLIC!!! or you'll have to throw it all out and wash the skillet and start from scratch. Add the shrimp to the onions and garlic.


Add both cartons of heavy cream to the skillet.




it doesn't take the shrimp long to cook..minutes really. Once the shrimp turn pink, they're done. But you want to bring the heavy cream to a boil to let it thicken some....


Now you can add the whole bag of fresh spinach to the skillet too. really, you should probably have TWO bags of spinach, cuz once it cooks down, there's hardly any spinach at all.




Drain the pasta when it's almost done. you want a little "bite" to the pasta, cuz it will cook a little bit more when you add the cream and shrimp.


Add all of the cream, shrimp and spinach to the pasta and stir to combine.


then you're gonna add a butt load of fresh Parmesan. This is what I think really makes the dish SING! and it helps to thicken the sauce.




dish it up, add a little more fresh parm to the top and enjoy!!!

This will feed my family..me my husband and 3 teenage boys, with no leftovers. I could easily cook 2 lbs of pasta. This is such an easy recipe to double or triple. and it's great as leftovers too.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this recipe. It looks DELICIOUS! I am going to make this for dinner tonight with some homemade bread. Mmmm.

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  2. mmm, homemade bread. a baker, I am NOT. wish I was tho. :)

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