Shrimp fra Diavolo

There are certain blogs that I check every day, without fail. One of my favorites is The Pioneer Woman Cooks. She has a regular blog, but honestly, living out in the country on a farm isn't all that interesting to me, so I skip that. I'm a city girl, born and bred!

One thing I do love though, is food. I've got the fat butt and have given my husband a bit of a belly to prove it! Fortunately, I'm a pretty decent cook, and I know how to follow a recipe, so I can take care of us here. Tonight, as I was getting ready to make dinner, I thought it would be fun to post a recipe for one of our favorite meals. While I was at it, why not do an homage to PW herself?

Okay, so I was a little bit bored.

This is my recipe for Shrimp fra Diavolo. It's got a little bit of a kick to it, but it's not terribly spicy. I don't like spicy food, and I can eat this. It's also very easy, and pretty dang quick to make too. Usually, when I ask my husband what he wants for dinner for a specific occasion, this is what he requests. His needs are simple!

First, boil up some pasta in salted water. I usually like to do this with linguine, but the store only had whole wheat spaghetti. I'm trying to make healthier choices, so I went with the spaghetti.

I also don't put any oil into the water, and I don't have any problems with it sticking. I think that's an old wive's tale. I do salt it VERY liberally though with kosher salt. I read somewhere that pasta water should be as salty as the sea.

Now, take five cloves of garlic, peel them, cut off the ends, and...

push them through the garlic press. I suppose you could mince them finely with your knife, but I'm kinda lazy.

Now, take a plain old yellow onion...

and give it a good rough chop. Not too big, not too small.

Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a skillet and let it heat up while you're chopping your onion.

When it's nice and hot, toss in the onions and garlic. Saute for a minute or two, until that onion is all nice and translucent.

Add in 1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper, and saute for another minute.

Go ahead and open up a can of diced tomatoes (I prefer to use the kind with Italian seasonings already mixed in) and a can of tomato sauce. I recently switched to this brand because it was the only one in the grocery store that didn't have any high fructose corn syrup listed in the ingredients. If they're available, I'll get the organic kind, otherwise, Hunt's it is.

Why do tomatoes need HFCS anyway?

Pour the can of tomato sauce into the onions...

and the liquid from the diced tomatoes.

Place the tomatoes themselves onto your cutting board...
and chop finely.

Toss those into the pan as well and give it all a good stir. Let it simmer for a minute or two.

Next you need a pound of shrimp that has been peeled and deveined. Some people like to leave the tails on, so that they look all decorative and fancy, but honestly, who wants to deal with that mess when they're hungry? I pull all that off.

Add the shrimp to the pan.

Stir it in, make sure they're all kinda submerged into the sauce, reduce the heat, and allow to simmer until the shrimp is pink and cooked through.

Yum, yum.

Spoon the shrimp mixture over your hot, cooked pasta, and sprinkle with a little finely chopped parsley for garnish. You know, if you want to be decorative and obnoxious (haha) like that. I put a piece of bread on the side of this (yeah, carbfest, I know!) and it was GOOD.

This supposedly makes 4 servings. My husband and I, well, we usually have seconds and then whine afterwards about how we ate too much.