savory sunday // garlic + feta shrimp
How delicious does THAT look, eh? Today I'm starting a new feature at Shuttersmack HQ, and it's called Savory Sunday.I decided that one of my goals for 2014 was to take more (and better) food photos. And how do you do that? You practice! So each Sunday I'm going to give you a recipe -- about half will be old standbys of mine and about half will be something new I'm trying. I'll walk you through how it's made (which is usually pretty simple as I like easy meals) and hopefully you guys will get some ideas for Sunday dinner! And yes, obviously I am a big believer in a nice Sunday dinner. Must be my Midwestern values.Also! Many of you might remember that I've been eating Paleo for about 2.5 years now. What does this mean? It means that I don't eat sugar or grains. I cheat and eat dairy because cheese is amazing. However! My husband has zero eating restrictions and loves bread and pasta and the like. So many of my recipes will be offered both ways.Anyway! Today we're starting with garlic and feta shrimp. This was a brand new recipe to me, and I found it on the internet and then altered it a bit for my own tastes. So here we go!
First off, what you'll need:1.5 lb cleaned, peeled and deveined shrimp2 Tbsp olive oil3 Tbsp butter3 garlic cloves, minced1/4 cup chopped flat, Italian parsley3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice (roughly the juice of one large lemon)1 Tbsp chili powder (I like the smoked ancho chili powder from Penzey's)1/2 teaspoon salt1 cup feta cheese (or more if you love it like I do...)
You start by slicing the butter and creating a "butter layer" on the bottom of a cool frying pan (leave the heat off for now). And yeah, we are off to a good start, right?
Next you chop up and dice all of your yummy garlic and parsley etc.
Now, you start to "build" the dish. The pan is still cold, but you are basically building layers like a lasagna. So it goes butter, then half of the shrimp, half of the garlic, half of the parsley, half of the salt and then half of the chili powder. Next, you drizzle half of the olive oil on top.Once that layer is done, you do it all again!
So now you put the rest of the shrimp, the rest of the garlic, parsley, salt and chili powder on the second layer. Drizzle the remaining 2 Tablespoons of olive oil on top, cover the pan and cook on medium-high heat for 8 minutes.Go pour yourself some wine. Scratch the dog behind the ears. Enjoy the amazing smell coming off of your oven.
Once your 8 minutes are up (or the shrimp are opaque in color), open the pan up (omg, lovely right?) and sprinkle on the lemon juice and the feta cheese. Spoon some of the butter sauce from the bottom of the pan over the top of the shrimp, replace the lid and cook for another eight minutes until the cheese has melted and is all gooey and wonderful.
While it's cooking this time around, I toasted some leftover dinner rolls we had for Jamie. I thought this would make a divine open-faced sandwich, and I wanted him to have that. I used very buttery rolls, but after we ate he said super thick and crusty bread (sourdough!) would have been better, so that's what we'll do next time.
Once the food was done cooking, I spooned it over Jamie's rolls and then made myself a small bowl.
Overall, this was an amazing dish -- we had it for our New Year's day dinner. I will warn you though, it is super rich and has produced about eight servings for us. However, if you are from The Heartland and love buttery, rich food, it might make less for you.Oh! And I'll be including the calorie counts for my dishes as well. For the small bowl (sans bread) this was 272 calories.And that's it for my first Savory Sunday! Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions or ideas on how to make the dish even better!