Back at it!

Monday morning, I watched the weather before venturing out. It's supposed to be cooler (high of like just 50 degrees F.) with afternoon rain. So, I grabbed my thin rain jacket and headed to work. What I didn't factor into the equation was the damn wind! So, just walking into work from the parking lot chilled me to the bone!

And, coming home from work, the rain that was falling was icy. Odd, that the first full week of Spring should be colder than the last few weeks of Winter.

When I was digging around in the freezer for that cauliflower, I found a bag of small, cooked shrimp I must have gotten on sale. How do I know that? Because I rarely buy small shrimp and never, ever cooked!

Why never cooked? Because, unless you are using them thawed and as is for, say, shrimp cocktail or an addition to a cold salad, they are useless. Shrimp (and scallops) are the easiest things to overcook, you see. Once overcooked, they taste rubbery. So, by cooking the already cooked shrimp again, you have doomed your dish to failure!

But, I have my own remedy that sometimes works. I put a jar of room-temperature Alfredo sauce into a pan, add the shrimp and slowly (slowly) warm it up. Stir frequently. Do not let this come to a boil or anything, just get it warm.

So, after taking all the tails off (with larger shrimp, I might leave them on for presentation sake) I put the rinsed shrimp into the sauce and started the long process to get them warm without cooking them again.

Meanwhile I cooked a pound of penne pasta to al dente, drained it and added it back to the pot. I folded in the now warm sauce and shrimp and let that get happy for a few minutes. I plated some, topped it with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and went in to see what might be on TV.

Dinner was excellent, BTW.

I was in luck! Turner Movie Classics (TMC) had back to back Bogart films!! I watched "The Big Sleep" and then "The Maltese Falcon." The nice thing about TMC is that they show the whole movie without commercial interruptions. I went to bed at midnight or so.