The other day I was feeling too lazy to leave the house, so it was one of those, "What can I make for dinner with whatever is in the fridge?"
Fortunately, when mom and dad were here last month we did a Costco run and in the freezer I had a bazillion shrimp and mango chicken sausages. Okay, well not a bazillion, but when you buy stuff at Costco for one, the amount of food you get can feel ginormous. I'll probably be eating that frozen shrimp until the end of the year.
A shrimp scampi was sounding pretty good, and when I looked in the pantry, I didn't have any pasta, but I had a package of organic Cha soba noodles infused with fresh green tea leaves. My friend @bmok likes to, what he calls, "bastardize" culinary traditions by combining things you'd not normally see but just might be good together.
As you know, I'm totally into experimenting with ingredients, so I thought, why not make a scampi using soba noodles instead of a fettuccine, and then using the mango chicken sausage instead of bacon? I like to use bacon in my scampi dishes. It's like East meets suburban Italian. Talk about melting pot ay!
I'm so glad I got creative because this dish was awesome, so this week it becomes my, "I tried something new" eats. Best yet, my concoction was easy to make!
I used olive oil in this recipe instead of butter because I have the cow milk allergy. If I didn't have the allergy, I'd totally be using slabs of creamy butter. I also use shaved manchego cheese because it's made from sheep milk which I can eat and have recently become addicted to as seen in this golden beets with shaved manchego and pecans dish I made last week. If I could have cow, I'd try shaved asiago or gouda.
Ingredients (serves 2):
- 2 cups cooked soba noodles
- 12 large frozen pre-cooked shrimp (thawed)
- 1 mango chicken sausage sliced into thin pieces
- 4 cloves of diced garlic (use more if you want more garlicky taste)
- fresh manchego cheese to shave on top
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- garlic salt and black pepper
Let's get cooking:
- Cook the soba noodles according to the package, drain and set aside.
- In a sauce pan, pour in 1 tbsp of olive oil, heat to medium, and then fry the mango sausage until brown on both sides. I fried the sausage slightly not too much just to give it a bit of a crunchy bacon like experience.
- Add in the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil into the pan, along with the garlic. Saute the garlic with the sausage for about a minute. I like the amount of olive oil on the dry side to help reduce fat content, but if you want a bit more of a wet scampi, then add one more tbsp of olive oil.
- Toss in the shrimp and add in garlic salt and pepper to taste. I added just a tad bit more salt then I normally add because when you mix everything with the noodles the salt taste will calm down some. You can also wait until you mix the shrimp, sausage mixture with the noodles first, then taste, and determine if you need more salt or not. Better to start salt light than with too much.
- You won't need to cook the shrimp long because it's already cooked. You just want to heat it up like a couple minutes. Continue to stir the sausage, shrimp, and garlic while cooking the shrimp.
- Take the pan of the hot burner and put on a cool burner. Pour the soba noodles into the pan with the sausage, shrimp, and garlic. Mix everything well together.
Plate the scampi, and then shave fresh manchego cheese on top. Enjoy!
