Wine and Lemon Juice

Yum yum wine is my friend. I really do love to splash it on any meat. I like it with pasta too, which is not a new idea, but I love it just the same. Once in college when I was being cheap I bought some really bad red "cooking wine" because I was not a big fan of drinking red wine and I knew cooking wine had salt in it and would last a while. (Times have changed) Finally after trying to recreate the wonderful red wine sauces I had eaten at "Chefs de France" at Epcot at Disney World without success, (Chefs de France IS a really tasty French restaurant inside the park and the first place I ever had mashed potatoes cooked with truffle oil) I decided to use it all up by cooking it with some garlic and chicken broth and eating it with spaghetti. I partially cooked the spaghetti and finished it in the wine/broth mixture. It was so good and pretty and purple. Well, tonight I cooked shrimp with garlic, white wine and lemon.

It was quite tasty. I first cooked garlic and heated crushed red pepper flakes in olive oil, then I added the shrimp and cooked about 2 minutes per side. After removing the shrimp I deglazed with wine and added a little broth to keep the wine from completely evaporating away. I put in the zest of about half a lemon and let it reduce. The zest turned the sauce pale yellow which I wasn't expecting but liked. I added the shrimp back to the sauce and squeezed tons of lemon juice over the top. I then put a few handfuls of spinach in the bottom of a bowl, put the hot pasta over it and then for safe measure, I squeezed lemon juice and sprinkled salt over the spaghetti before pouring the shrimp and sauce over top. Finally I topped it off with parm. After this meal I am sure citrus and wine are my favorite flavors and will be the new food trend in my life. At least until I move on to a new flavor.