I had a hankering for a creamy pasta dish.  Shrimp was a cherry on top.  I’m all about seafood when it’s available.  I found this recipe on Pinterest that fit the bill perfectly.  I love the intense flavour of sun-dried tomatoes and the sharpness of the “king of cheeses,” parmesan.  Garlic, in our house, is always a given.

I put a large pot of lightly salted water on to boil for my spaghetti (you could use fettuccine or linguine). Prepare as you go along to keep this recipe super quick.  If multi-tasking is not your thing, you can cook it beforehand or after your sauce is ready.  It’s better not to rinse it, though, as the sauce ‘sticks’ better, so bear this in mind if you’re making it ahead of time.

• 8 oz package of pasta (I cook extra for my carb-loving boy who does not eat seafood)

I began the sauce with a generous splash of olive oil plus a tablespoon of butter in my frying pan.  (this Vegetalia pan is awesome.  It is a non-stick pan that does not use teflon, but a vegetable based coating.) along with:

• 1/2 an onion, finely chopped (this can be omitted, garlic is really the star here, I just love the smell of onions cooking.)

I started soaking:

• 1/2-1 cup of sun-dried tomatoes (depending on how much you enjoy sun-dried tomatoes, I used 1/2, but a little more would have been better)

in boiling water.  If you have sun-dried tomatoes in oil, you can skip this step. While these were soaking, I minced

• 4-6 cloves of garlic (we are garlic-lovers, you can reduce it if you’re not a huge fan)

I started softening the garlic.  Once the tomatoes were softened, I removed them from the water (don’t discard), and roughly chopped them and added them to the garlic in the pan.

I only had frozen, cooked shrimp, so I ran them under cold water to make sure they were  completely thawed.

To the garlic and tomatoes, I added:

• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 heaping teaspoon dried basil
• salt and pepper
• pinch crushed red pepper
• the reserved tomato water

Let the spices get aromatic.  Add your shrimp to the pan to heat them up.  

Gently stir in:

• 1 cup cream, half and half or milk (I used coffee cream)

Finally, carefully mix in:

• 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated (freshly grated would be wonderful, but I had a little leftover pre-grated, I added some shaved, as well, to make up the difference)

Toss in your prepared pasta.  Et voila…er ‘e voilà’?

This was so fast and easy–a little more than thirty minutes, I’d say.  Italian restaurant worthy at home.  Mangia!