Beard on Beard Recipe Two: Shrimp Scampi on Angel Hair Pasta
“I imagine pulling her plate to me, my tongue beneath that first bite of shrimp—pools of its velvet sauce coating my cheeks. Wine and garlic. Lemon zest and maybe shellfish stock? Crushed red pepper. Parsley. So much butter. Creamy, though, not greasy. Perfectly emulsified. Still warm from the kitchen. About to be tossed into a garbage bag in the back of the restaurant kitchen.
But I don’t take the plate.
Instead, I gnaw the green spine of my last romaine leaf, and wash it down with warm lemon water. When the waiter asks, I say I am full.”
—Me, Beard: A Memoir (forthcoming, Eerdmans)
Photo Credit, Amerigo Restaurant, Brentwood, TN
So, if you know me, you know that one of my death row meals (I would have many), is Amerigo’s PEI Mussels with their grilled apple and Gorgonzola salad. Maybe also their Sunday Heritage Pork Chop with the Asiago mash and the grilled veggies. Or that perfect cannelloni. Or Chicken Couvillion (the one with the Bloody Mary mix in the sauce). And if you happen to live close to one of their locations in Mississippi, Alabama, or Tennessee, and you aren’t eating there at least once a week, what the hell are you doing with your one wild and precious mouth? Know better, do better, people.
My Shrimp Scampi chapter is one of my favorites and also one of the more tragic in my little tragicomic book. I partly like it because I drafted the entirety of it on an airplane after my then-toddler had thrown up on me, and after getting cleaned up, had then crashed in a Baby Bjorn affixed to me, while I drafted these scenes on the back of extra Delta napkins the flight attendants brought me. And that feels like the authorial version of walking to school uphill both ways and barefoot.
I used this recipe from Eat Drink Mississippi as the basis for my meal, which worked out great, except they forgot to include the petite diced tomatoes that Amerigo’s adds (also, I’m pretty sure Amerigo includes more butter). So Ben and I added a little of Susan Spicer’s perfect Sundried Tomato and Pistachio Pesto (which I learned from my friend Patsy Ricks and had made for a separate dish), and it gave it that one missing thing.
Here goes:
Amerigo Style Shrimp Scampi on Angel Hair (with my variations from Eat Drink Mississippi)
Ingredients:
1 lb Angel hair pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb large shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Juice of two lemons, plus their zest
1 14.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes, drained (I forgot this bit because I followed a recipe that forgot this bit—in short, Kids, you shouldn’t follow recipes)
1/2 cup dry white wine or shellfish stock (I think clam juice could also do in a pinch?)
5 tbsp butter, chopped into bits
1/4 cup chopped scallions (because I didn’t have parsley, but you could do that instead)
Okay, so you start with your mise-en-place if you’re extra fancy like me, and also because you were bored because your husband, who was supposed to take your pictures, was finishing a work call, and you were like, “Might as well prep this stuff in advance.” So this is the butter, wine, zest, lemon juice, garlic, pepper, and scallions.
Then you heat a big old pot of heavily salted water, and when it hits a rolling boil, add the angel hair. Cook a couple minutes shy of package directions.
2. Then salt the shrimp (I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt because America’s Test Kitchen and Samin Nosrat told me to) and heat olive oil in a nonstick skillet at medium high heat. Once it’s hot, add 3/4 of the lemon zest and the shrimp. Sauté 3ish minutes or until just cooked through. The last thing anyone needs is a shrimp that bites back because it got cooked too long.
3. Remove shrimp and reserve. I added my shrimp to my drained angel hair because I’m not trying to wash a hundred plates.
4. Add garlic and red pepper. Cook until you smell the garlic (for me, about a minute and fifteen seconds). Then add lemon juice and wine (you could also add a bit of stock/clam juice—I had neither, so I didn’t) and cook until reduced, 3-ish minutes.
5. Add butter and a bit of pasta water. Take it off heat and let butter melt/emulsify. Add tomatoes to warm (if you remember them—I didn’t).
6. Put chopped scallions and remaining lemon zest into bowl with shrimp and pasta because you have ADHD, and you need something to do with your hands while the butter melts.
7. Add the sauce to your bowl full of drained pasta, shrimp, scallions, and zest. Toss.
8. Notice that without the tomatoes or parsley, this smells delicious, but looks like “What if flaccid was a color?”
9. Tear up some arugula, and yay! Pretty! Enjoy!
See you next month for some Halloween on Halsted Seven-Layer Dip!! Yum!!
