Taste: 4.5 of 5
Difficulty: Easy
Time: About 1 hour
Cost: About $20
This recipe comes from a collection of books I have cornered off in a special section of my bookcase--the "restaurant" section, where the lesser-know chefs sit all alone next to their food network celebrity cousins. 9 out of 10 of these recipe books contain recipes with ingredients well outside the grocery store norm--like, what aisle would I find squid ink? These are recipe books with funny names like "Spago", "Sorrella" and "Delmonico." I like these books because if you can pull these recipes off you can be a superstar to your friends. These are the recipes that have made restaurants and their chef's famous. Many of these recipes are so complex it may take a whole day to cook. Many feature difficult techniques and equipment that most home chefs do not have. However, Carmine's family style cookbook does not fall into this category. It is a collection of easy-to-make Italian American soul-food recipes that in the Carmine's restaurant in the Upper West Side in Manhatten.
Carmine's restaurant is the brainchild of businessman Artie Cutler, who, after being inspired by the food at a big Italian wedding, wanted to open a restaurant that served gargantuan portions of family-style Italian food. He then hired the late chef Michael Ronis to create the menu. It was said that Artie Cutler made Michael "kick-up" the boldness of the recipes to give it the trademark Carmine's flavor. I believe this just translates to tons of garlic, because most of the recipes in this book require an obscene amount (upwards of 2Tbsp of garlic). The restaurant quickly grew in popularity and opened up five other restaurants in Times Square, Atlantic City, the Bahamas, Washington, DC and Vegas.
I have cooked from this book many times before. So much, in fact, that the pages are falling out. I have to cook from it because it has become one of my go-to cookbooks for crowd-pleasers. I bought the book out of a knee-jerk reaction to a failed dinner party. For the meal, I served a complicated dinner that was a bit too complex for my friends. The friends politely ate my food, but it was one of those things where you know they didn't like what they were eating--either they were too picky, or I cooked it poorly or whatever--it was not a good feeling to put people in that scenario. Cooking for friends is a very difficult thing. While many of my friends are experimental and would eat anything I put in front of them, I have also found that many of my thirty-something year old friends grew up as chicken finger kids and were as picky as me when I was a kid--only they never overcame that. They only will enjoy familiar food. They grew up with chicken fingers and mac and cheese. When something unfamiliar is placed in front of them, they panic, and have the look of a 3 year old faced with a plate of broccoli.
For the friends that are picky, I bought the Carmine's book. Everybody loves Italian food, I said. Who doesn't like a whole plate of warm pasta in marinara? (except for my gluten-free friends ---sigh) Italian food is a whole category of food that people have warm memories from childhood. When people are impossible to please, I always come back to this book.
So the story behind why I chose this meal, is because my wife requested that I cook it. It is her birthday, and as we do in our house, birthdays put the opposing spouse in a week of indentured servitude which we affectionately call "birthday week". The birthday boy/girl can make requests which must be fulfilled by the spouse. This usually results in me cooking, giving foot massages, and just forced into watching just plain bad movies and tv. My wife's birthday request this week was shrimp with linguini. I must confess, this was not the first time I made this meal. It has been so successful in the past my wife asked for this for her birthday. I lucked out because this actually is a simple one to do. Follow this recipe to the nose, and it works.
The recipe starts with adding a ton of garlic to brown in some oil, followed by fresh herbs, chopped tomatoes and some white wine. The white wine is cooked down until almost gone.
The shrimp are only cooked for a minute in the sauce reduction. They are only partially cooked, and are finished right as the pasta comes out. I think this is what really makes it great--having perfectly cooked shrimp. Nothing is better than when the shrimp have that perfect snap to them when you bite into them. The recipe calls for them to be cooked an additional minute in the warmed up sauce after the linguine is cooked, I maybe cooked for 2 minutes (just to make sure the were cooked through). I use the big frozen shrimp you get in bags at the grocery store (thawed). These particular shrimp turned out A+ but I have had some mushy ones recently. Not quite sure what makes them mushy, my cooking or something else.
After the shrimp are par-cooked you boil the pasta in your heavily salted water. The recipe tells you to cook one minute before what the package says. The package already told me that to make it al dente to cook it 9 minutes. I wasn't sure what to do, so I tasted the pasta at 7 minutes and 8 minutes. Both times the pasta was hard in the middle. I decided to cook it according to the package instructions. The texture was perfect when I finally served the pasta.
Here is the plating...a little rough. The pasta is tossed with the shrimp and sauce.
Like I said, this recipe came out perfect. It is such a simple soulful Italian recipe. The San Marzano tomatoes cut through the slightly briney sauce. The fresh herbs make this dish very fragrant. The shrimp were perfectly cooked, just slightly giving with each bite and absorbing all the sauce flavors. Big chunks of garlic gave it that family feast smell and flavor. There never is enough garlic for Uncle Joe. I would serve this recipe to anyone who like shrimp--it is a real winner.
My wife was very happy. I was happy too, as this recipe was a cinch too cook and much simpler than many of her other favorite recipes.
Until later,
Steve
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