Cajun Shrimp Pasta

Cajun Shrimp Pasta

This recipe was love at first sight. I’m not usually knocked out of my socks so quickly, but even in the briefest glance I knew it was love.

However, once I composed myself and wiped the drool off my chin, I realized that the original chef, Leslie of scrumpdillyicious.blogspot.com, intended this to be an appetizer. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to take this recipe and put it center stage: as an entrée.

Home run.

I’ve made this dish twice in about a week so I think it’s definitely made its way into the weekly dinner rotation. I’ve served the shrimp over both spaghetti and fettuccine; fettuccine was better. I took about a tablespoon of the Cajun spice mix, combined it with 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and used that as my Cajun “sauce” for the pasta. It was very tasty. I did find that if you use too much of the spice mix on the pasta it can taste a bit gritty. Though 1 tablespoon is enough to season pasta for 3-4, without being texturally odd.

I am considering trying to turn the Chipotle Mayo into a sauce for the pasta. My main hang up is that I loathe mayonnaise, but I imagine Greek yogurt would make a great substitute. I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

Even so, you really can’t go wrong with this one. Quick. Easy. Delicious. My favorite dinnertime adjectives. I marinated my shrimp for about 45 minutes and they were very flavorful. If you’re busy, you could probably devein your shrimp the night before and allow it to marinade over night. Then dinner the next day should take about 15 minutes. Boil water. Cook Pasta. Sauté shrimp. Fin.

Very, very tasty, I highly recommend.

Dinner Party Update:

After exhuastive Internet searching (really exhaustive, I think I actually burned a few calories) I decided to throw caution to the wind and make a pumpkin spice cake.

Despite how popular pumpkin has become, I was really underwhelmed with the amount of pumpkin spice layer cake recipes I found that didn’t incorporate a cake mix. My opinion is that when baking go big or go home. No cake mixes in this kitchen.

I stumbled across a recipe used by Willow Bird Baking, and I was nearly stunned into silence (nearly). I’m not so ambitious, on this occasion, as to make the cake, with the chai mousse and profiteroles (though I have been DYING to make profiteroles, so perhaps their day in the sun is on it’s way). I will be making the pumpkin cake with a cream cheese frosting. I’m very excited about it. I’m baking tomorrow, though I won’t post until after it’s been tasted (Saturday) so… look out for the results Sunday or Monday.

Should be good fun!

Happy Eating 🙂