All Photos © Christine Elise McCarthy 2012
This is a total cheat meal but it was so good, I thought I’d post it anyway. As is so often the case – last night I found myself with an odd mix of ingredients & the challenge of making a combination of them into something edible. I had shrimp, pasta, arugula & two half jars of pasta sauce. I also had something unexpected in my refrigerator – do you see it?
Who is THAT in the upper left corner?
There was a grasshopper in my fridge! Alive – and he had been there many hours – because I hadn’t opened the fridge all day. Grasshoppers have been showing up in my kitchen sorta frequently lately which is odd because 1) they never have before & 2) because I just shot a movie called Grasshopper! and since then – several of us involved with it have been having strange grasshopper encounters. My boyfriend found one in his air-tight-to-preserve-the-air-conditioning ELEVENTH floor condo. How would a grasshopper get in there? Or in my fridge? One crashed a party I had in July. Crazy. Anyway – we got him out & set him free. Now – back to the pasta:
Penne with Spicy Garlic Shrimp, Vodka Sauce and Arugula
INGREDIENTS
1/2 jar of Gia Russa Hot Sicilian Pasta Sauce
1/2 jar Bertolli Vodka Sauce
6 cloves garlic
12 shrimp
1/2 box penne pasta
1/2 bag fresh arugula
olive oil
crushed red pepper
S&P
Parmesan or fresh mozzarella – if putting cheese with fish doesn’t make you go mental.
DIRECTIONS
Heat the olive oil & saute the garlic cloves – whole – for about a minute. Add the shrimp with a tablespoon of crushed red pepper and S&P to taste. Saute until the shrimp are pink. Set aside.
I heated the two sauces in a pan & blended them. I added crushed red pepper to this sauce.
Cook the pasta according to directions. Drain. Put pasta on two plates, top with fresh, raw arugula & then some sauce. Arrange shrimp on top of this & serve. It is considered a sin to put any cheese on fish – so this dish is best served without Parmesan – but my boyfriend likes cheese – so I added some sliced, fresh mozzarella to his.
