Greek-Style Shrimp Scampi with Linguine

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So, how do people feel about shrimp?

Shrimp is definitely a food that’s grown on me, from something I didn’t think I liked at all, to something I could tolerate when really hungry, to something I now actually crave at times.  It has such a distinct texture, and, as most people who eat shrimp know, if you cook it a couple minutes too long that distinct, special texture becomes pretty distinctly rubber-like.  That kind of distinctiveness has probably turned many people off of shrimp, I imagine.

If shrimp is looking a little too strange to you, may I suggest popcorn shrimp?  Coat just about anything in deep-fried batter and it’s tasting pretty OK.  Remember that time I told you I ate deep-fried bees?  Yeah, pretty much anything will taste OK deep-fried.  Someone should notify the folks at Fear Factor.

But I digress.

Quel suprise.

I’ve made this shrimp dish improperly a couple of times and both times it disappeared too quickly, and at too dark an hour, to be photographed.  At last, I made it the way it’s meant to be made, apparently, and fed the kids leftovers from meals past since shrimp tends to get the ol’ stink-eye when it shows up on their plates.

So how is the way I made it different from the way it’s meant to be made?  Well, the first two times I didn’t make it with pasta.  For some reason in my head this was an appy or something (I saw the idea ages ago in an oooold issue of Cooking Light magazine, so my recollection was foggy).  I made it that way a couple times, as a baked appy and as a side dish/rice topping for a Greek night and finally googled it and found a very similar recipe from Cooking Light displayed atop a plate of linguine!  Oops.  And also, I think everything will be good with pasta, so I don’t know how I managed to forget that.

But actually, I highly recommend the appy route. So easy, warm and fresh and cheesy, and something a little different for a gluten free option!  Mind you, it was just as tasty served over pasta, and you could certainly use gluten free pasta – really, how could tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and cheese go wrong when paired with pasta?

My kids may not want to try it, but Carl and I didn’t mind keeping it all to ourselves…and did I mention it takes 20 minutes, from start to finish?  Always a win in my books!  If you can’t quite wrap your head around the shrimp, this is just as good with chicken :)