Best Pasta Ever

Saturday, Matt made a delicious pasta dinner - linguini with shrimp. It was so amazingly good, that we were still talking about it the next day. There was no recipe, just improvisation and instincts.

• 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined (Honestly, one lb was too much for two people. I'd do 1/2 lb next time.)


• good olive oil


• salt and pepper


• dried linguini for two people


• leftover liquid from two cans of regular stewed tomatoes (the stewed tomatoes were used for a side dish for a mac-and-cheese meal, earlier in the week)


• 1 15oz can diced tomatoes


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• fresh Italian parsley


• fresh lemon wedges


• bottle of good red wine (mostly for drinking)

Marinate the shrimp in olive oil, salt and pepper for 20 minutes or so. Boil the water for the pasta. While pasta cooks, saute the garlic in olive oil for less than 30 seconds - just until you can smell it. Pour in the diced tomatoes and the stewed tomato liquid. Throw in a splash of wine and some salt and pepper and let simmer while pasta finishes cooking. Drain pasta while still al dente and add to pan with sauce. Meanwhile, saute shrimp in olive oil in a separate pan until just cooked. Toss with pasta and sauce. Sprinkle with parsley and add another drizzle of olive oil. Serve with lemon wedge. Be sure to squeeze some lemon on the pasta becaue it adds a nice bright finish.

This was amazingly simple and good. If we were to make this again, I'd use less shrimp and I might try it without the stewed tomatoe juice. It just so happened that we had saved the leftover liquid. Alternatively, instead of the diced tomatoes, maybe I'd use all stewed tomatoes and just chop them up myself.