When Costco has their seafood display, I simply cannot resist checking out everything.  The fish looks good but is generally all farmed (versus wild caught) and I have yet to decide whether farmed or wild caught is better.  Plus, I am still wondering whether the whole Fukushima disaster is impacting fishing in the Pacific.  I am not an environmental scientist or a marine biologist, but I have just read way too many articles advising people to avoid pacific caught fish.  Is this legitimate?  I have no clue, but it makes me a little nervous I’ll admit.

In contrast to the fish, the shellfish simply beckons to me.  The crab legs look delicious and beg me to take them home.  The dungeness crab is no different.  This time though, I settled on some shrimp.  Typically, I either saute or grill the shrimp but I was really craving some sort of pasta.  This, however, presents an issue.  Shrimp pasta usually means “cream sauce”, which also means unhealthy.  That is not acceptable.  There must be a better solution.  I mean, healthy recipes cannot be that hard right?  I should be able to find or create some easy healthy recipe to satisfy my shrimp pasta craving.

So, after an exhaustive Google search for healthy recipes, easy healthy recipes, and healthy shrimp pasta (that lasted about five minutes), I had found enough healthy recipes to give me some ideas and direction.  With a little of this and a little that, I knew what I was making and it turned out awesome while being relatively healthy.  So, here’s my version of a healthy shrimp scampi recipe:

Ingredients:

1-1.5 pounds of uncooked and peeled shrimp

2 tablespoons butter (you can use less, but this is what I used)

2-ish tablespoons olive oil

0.5-1 medium onion (white or yellow), finely chopped onion

4 cloves of garlic, minced

0.5 cup white wine

2-3 whole lemons, halved

2-4 dashes of Tabasco (or more, depending on your spicy preference)

salt and pepper to taste

whole wheat pasta (I prefer thin spaghetti or angel hair)

chopped fresh basil and parsley, to taste

fresh grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

1.  (See if you can follow this one…) Boil water and cook pasta until al dente (meaning, just done) and set aside.  Reserve one or two cups of the water for later.  Note, you can easily cook the pasta later if you do not want it waiting until you are ready.

2.  Melt butter and add olive oil to pan over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic and saute until onions are just slightly cooked, usually about 2-4 minutes.  Do not overcook the onion/garlic mixture.

3.  Add shrimp to cooked onion/garlic mixture and cook for a couple of minutes.  Squeeze in lemon juice, depending on taste.  (I used three whole lemons and did not find the flavor overly lemony.  I would err on the side of too little rather than too much with the lemons.)  While continuing to cook shrimp, add white wine, salt/pepper to taste, and dashes of hot sauce.  (I did not use any salt or pepper and used about four dashes of Tabasco.)  Continuing cooking shrimp and reducing liquid mixture.

4.  Once shrimp is fully cooked (it should be entirely white/pink), add pasta and toss.  If the mixture needs to be thinned, add the reserved water until it reaches your preferred consistency.

5.  Add basil and parsley and toss until mixed.

6.   Top with parmesan cheese and serve!