I confess that I have never cooked shrimp before in my life. I grew up in a kosher home, and therefore couldn’t eat shellfish in the house. However, because I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted outside of the house, I was thankfully introduced to a vast array of foods that I would have otherwise never experienced, including shrimp.
Despite certain objections to its menu presence, shrimp scampi quickly became a restaurant favorite for me. Frequently, it was disappointing. Restaurants would add too much butter, too much garlic, overcook the shrimp, serve too few shrimp over a veritable mountain of pasta, or otherwise mess up the dish. Side Note: I’m not really sure I philosophically agree with the idea that there can ever be too much garlic, but it has happened on occasion. But then there would be the times when it was made beautifully. Succulent, juicy shrimp seasoned with garlic, in a creamy, silky, yet tangy sauce, atop tender pasta that soaked up all the flavors so perfectly.
It was these times that have kept me addicted to shrimp scampi, and the hope of recreating the experience at home that inspired me to make my first attempt at tackling the enigma that is shrimp. For direction, I turned to the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook, The New Best Recipe, which I recently received as a graduation present. This cookbook promised seriously well-tested, well-thought-out recipes that would work at home, and I wanted my first shrimp-scampi-making experience to be a hit. Their recipe looked delicious, but I wanted to serve it over pasta, so I doubled the amount of sauce, and halved the amount of shrimp (pasta always seems to suck up so much sauce). The result: perhaps not one of the world’s most original dishes, but one that far surpassed my expectations of the delicious classic.
