PASTA WITH SHRIMP AND
GARLIC
Ask an Italian what “shrimp scampi” translates as, and he
may look at you a little funny.
It’s one of those quirks of translation like the “queso
cheese” or “carne asada steak” you might find at a fast-food
taco chain. Scampi are shrimp; a particularly large variety
often cooked with white wine and garlic. But the false
nomenclature for the dish is so ingrained at this point that
there’s no fighting it. I’ve even seen restaurant menus these
days offering “Scampi Scampi,” served with a wink and a
nod.
As anybody who comes from a culture that eats shrimp
with the shell on can tell you, the shell is where the
shrimpiest, sweetest flavor is housed. So for my version of
shrimp scampi, I extract that flavor by cooking their shells
in olive oil along with the garlic. The shrimp-infused oil
doubles up on the shrimp flavor, coating all the pasta with
its fragrance. The shell-infusion technique is one I use every
time I sauté shrimp.
ALL ABOUT SHRIMP
First things first: if you’ve been buying precooked