lemony shrimp scampi, my style

I planned on making shrimp aglio olio last night but changed my mind the last minute and decided I'd cook scampi pasta instead. I haven't made it before so I went online and searched for the recipe. I found one at Food Network but then as I went through the list of ingredients, I realized I didn't have all of them. I had most of them though so I decided to just for it.

This pasta dish was a quick fix. The preparation and the cooking only took me 35 minutes leaving me with enough time to whip up a simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, pineapple and cheese.

Ze hubby and I found the acidity just right so had I followed the original recipe, the dish might've ended up too sour for our taste. I'd love to have fresh parsley next time though. I think it will bring the entire dish to life.

Here is my recipe but you can go ahead and check the original here.

Ingredients

6 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped

1 onion, chopped

250 grams shrimp, peeled and deveined (keep the heads and shell)

zest of 1 lemon (you can use the juice too but my lemon was overripe so I scrapped it)

a teaspoon of chilli flakes (we only had packets of Pizza Hut chilli flakes so I used one of those)

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons v\olive oil (I only had extra virgin so I used that)

250 grams pasta (the recipe calls for linguine but I only had instant spaghetti so I used that)

a dash of Italian herbs (I didn't have parsley)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Pasta: Cook pasta according to package instructions.

2. Shrimp stock: Put the shrimp shells and heads in a pot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Heat the olive oil in a pan then melt the butter. Saute the garlic, onion, lemon zest, Italian herbs and chilli flakes until the garlic and onions are cooked. Be careful not to burn the garlic so it won't taste bitter.

4. Put two ladles of shrimp stock and simmer for a while. Add some salt and pepper to taste.

5. Put in drained pasta and toss. Serve immediately and enjoy!

This recipe can easily serve four moderately hungry people. Don't ask me how many it fed last night. Haha.