Dedicated to Brad.
The garlic shrimp pasta from Cooks Illustrated was a definite keeper. If you get the magazine, you will notice it asks for 5 cloves of garlic, which when I put them through my Zyliss press, only gave me about 2 teaspoons of garlic. I figured that was enough. The recipe was interesting because you use garlic in different stages–once to marinate the shrimp, then some smashed cloves to flavor the oil (later discarded) and a bit more goes into the sauce. I added some julienned sun dried tomatoes with the sauce ingredients. Everyone liked the dish! We drink a very nice Soave with it and a Vermentino with the apps.
I tried something interesting and very easy for the apps. I mixed some pesto I had in the refrigerator and some goat cheese–the soft, spreadable kind–and used it as a spread for crackers. Very tasty!
The dessert experiment was less successful. I made some traditional biscuits, adding a little sugar and a bunch of choopped crystalized ginger. They were good–no problems. I grilled the pineapple, just plain. I think I let it cook too long because, although it had great grill marks, it tasted almost like canned pineapple instead of the fresh juicy stuff I know it was beforehand.
I added some spiced whipped cream to each plate but the over all dessert was just a bit dry. I needed some sauce–maybe if I had caremelized the pineapple in a pan with some rum and sugar… Oh well, next time.
To make up for the dessert failure, we drank some grappa and limoncello.
Too bad our home team, Seminoles lost in an ugly game, which we watched after dinner.