Last Night's Dinner #88: Shrimp Tagliatelle with Asparagus and Cream

I had no clue what to cook last night so I took a quick inventory of what I had and here's what I came up with - Shrimp, asparagus, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, cream, and smoked paprika. Fortunately I had two boxes of leftover tagliatelle so I was all set.



I used about 1/2 bag of thawed frozen shrimps with tails on, 4 cloves of garlic minced, 4 fairly big asparagus spears cut into small discs, 1 tbs butter, 1 cup heavy cream, 1-2 teaspoons of ev olive oil, pinch of smoked paprika + red pepper flakeds and salt & pepper.

Boil a large pot of water, add salt before pasta. Begin cooking your pasta (I used half of a box) - the sauce takes minutes to cook so you want to time it so that your pasta is ready by the time you're done with cooking the sauce. You'll be transferring the pasta directly from this large pot (with tongs) to the sauce pan. The dripping water will help the cream sauce from drying up. If you find this difficult to do or if you don't have tongs or a spider strainer - then you can drain the pasta out with a traditional colander/strainer but make sure you reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

Clean shrimp and season with salt.



Heat up the butter and drizzle in the oil. Immediately add the garlic and red pepper flakes - you don't want to brown the garlic, so you want to add it before the butter/oil gets too hot.



Add the shrimps and cook for a minute then add the asparagus. Season. Cook for another minute or two then add cream. Allow to simmer then add paprika. Taste for seasoning.




I'm guessing that a couple of saffron threads would also work in this dish (instead of the paprika)

Depending on the amount of pasta you're cooking, you can adjust the amount of cream and smoked paprika.



Add the pasta to the sauce and mix. A quick and easy tasty meal.