little bitty girl

I always find pasta to be very comforting winter food. It's got a heaviness that I always feel I need or want when it's cold. I discovered this pasta quite by accident and it has turned out to be one of my all time favourite pastas to make. It actually happened on a very cold Sunday, where it was snowing out and we literally had empty cupboards.

Actually, I lie. My cupboards are never bare like Mother Hubbard's but for us, it was still pretty empty.

What I like about this pasta is that it's quite light and the colours make me think of summer.

Ingredients -
Linguini
Olive Oil
Sea Salt or Coarse salt. I prefer using this because you don't need a lot to make it flavourful but regular salt is fine too
Pepper
Lemon juice
Chopped Garlic
Shrimp
Chilli Flakes
Baby Spinach
Fresh Basil
Frozen Peas

How to cook it

Boil water for pasta, add salt when water starts boiling.

In a colander, add as much peas as you want and run warm water to slightly defrost it.

Saute shrimp with olive oil. Add salt, pepper and a bit of lemon juice. When all the shrimp turns a gorgeous orange, turn it off. You don't want to overcook it. Put this aside in a bowl.

In a pan, heat up some oil and add the baby spinach. Toss it with lemon juice and it should wilt pretty quickly. This literally takes a couple of minutes. Take it off stove.

Meanwhile add linguini to boiling water.

When linguini is cooked, toss it in with the peas in the colander. The heat of the pasta will cook your peas without making it mushy.

Toss this pasta and pea mixture in a large bowl.

I usually have frozen cubes of basil in the freezer that you can get in the supermarket but dry is good too. Add about two to three cubes to the pasta.

Add shrimp and wilted spinach.

In a small saucepan with about 3-4 glugs (depending on how much pasta you made) of good olive oil. Heat oil up. Add chopped garlic and chilli flakes. When the garlic gets slightly golden, take it off the stove. The garlic and chilli flakes flavour the oil and makes a sauce.

Add this to the whole pasta mix. Add some salt, pepper and lemon juice. Toss everything and serve.

This literally takes about 20-30 minutes. It's salty, garlicky, spicy flavour counters so nicely with the soft flavours of the shrimp, spinach and peas.

Unfortunately for me, I went overboard again and made enough pasta for 20 people. So, I'll be eating it for a couple of days.