Brain Needed Space

You remember that movie Julie and Julia where the girl blogs about recreating each of Julia Child’s recipes from her “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook? Yeah, well this particular post is a 100% total and complete rip-off of Julie, Julia, and Mr. Keller. Food-bloggers’ prison, I’m waiting for my tickets.

I was the lucky recipient of T.K.’s “Ad Hoc at Home” this Christmas and the first recipe I tried was his roast chicken, page 22.

I killed three people with the flavor, it was so intense.

So of course I had to do it again, but better! This post is about that second cooking session.

I’m not going to recreate page 22 of the cookbook, but I’ll write what I did based upon the contents of my local Public grocery store, those turnip-absent bastards.

Starting from the blade of the knife and going clockwise:

• Five springs of Thyme
• Six peeled garlic cloves, which get smashed
• One 4lb chicken, whole and on-sale
• Four carrots, peeled, sliced so they were all even lengthwise, then in half, then into 1/2″ sections
• Two parsnips, peeled, sliced like the carrots, (Mr. Keller says the more identical your cut your vegetables, the more identically they’ll cook)
• Two leeks, washed and sliced into circles
• One rutabaga, the rind (rind?) removed, then cut in twain, then quartered, then eighth-ed, then into little pie-shaped wedges, cause it’s a rutabaga and I don’t know how else to cut up the thing
• One onion, peeled, quartered at the root, and the root left attached
• Eight little red potatoes, whole

Not shown: kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, five tablespoons of unsalted butter, one cup of chicken stock, canola oil, (Mr. Keller said no olive oil, so we moon-walked into the canola), and some butcher’s twine.

Interesting story: I searched that Publix for three days and couldn’t find butcher’s twine. So I ran my shopping cart into the double-doors that led into the back of the meat department, stood up in the kid’s seat — yes my tiny seat belt was used — pelted the bald guy with the hair net with potatoes to get his attention, and demanded to know where in this great garden of dead animal carcasses was the (expletive deleted) (twice) butcher’s twine. He lumbered over to his stainless table, opened a little tub, ripped out five feet of twine, stuffed it in my mouth, and spittle-shrieked, “Thank you for shopping at Publix!” then kicked my @ss out of his kingdom backwards, my noggin smacking the exit sign with not a little force.

But I got my twine.

Preheat the oven to 475. No kiddin’; crank that monster up high.

Smash three of the garlic cloves and take them and all the vegetables and slap them into a bowl.

Add 1/4 cup of canola oil, one of the sprigs of Thyme, then salt and pepper the beejezus out of it.

Take the chicken out of its plastic sarcophagus, remove the little plastic bag of organs from the cavity, rinse the entire chicken in cold water, pat pat pat it dry, slap it on a plate of its own, and bring it to your prep station.

Smash the other three garlic cloves, grab em along with the other four sprigs of Thyme, put them all inside the chicken’s chest cavity, and rub rub rub the inside of the bird thoroughly. Then rub salt and pepper inside the bird as well.

Rub a little canola oil over the outside of the entire bird, then carpet bomb with salt and pepper.

Now Mr. Keller has a wonderful picture-series of how to truss a chicken, and I don’t want to cut/paste it here. But basically you put the chicken with the legs toward you and the breast up, and tuck the wings under the bird. Then put the twine under the neck, bring it along the sides of the breast, then tie a little knot under the breast. This will elevate the breast meat. Then take the rest of the twine, come under the leg tips, over the legs, and tie the string off, discarding any extra twine. Like this…

And this.

And notice I didn’t put my raw chicken on my beautiful new Christmas cutting board. Wash your hands frequently, too. And call your mother.

Take your biggest cast iron pan and spread all your vegetables out in it, leaving a crater in the middle of the stuff so your chicken has a resting place of honor. In my picture you can see the bottom of the pan through the vegetables.

Note that if you place your onions so they contact the metal, you won’t regret it.

Take your trussed bird and slam-dunk it in the middle of the vegetables, foshizzle!

With delicacy and care, place four 1tbsp pats of unsalted butter on the chicken breasts. Then heave the whole 4000lb creation into your oven.

Leave the temp at 475 for 25 minutes. Then lower the temp to 400 for another 45 minutes.

BING!

Take the thing out…

PRAISE BE TO CHICKEN! GLORY TO CLUCK-ALMIGHTY IN THE HIGHEST!

Take the holy chicken out and place on a cutting board with a trough at least three feet deep to catch all the juices. I actually set mine in another cast iron pan, one that has raised ridges for searing steaks. Tent the chicken with aluminum foil and let it set for 20 minutes.

Put your plates in the oven now! Hot plates hot plates hot plates!

The rest of this recipe I totally made up. If it’s wrong, don’t blame Mr. Keller, but I wanted more broth than was in the bottom of my pan, and I wanted to get rid of the excess fat.

I removed the vegetables from the pan and put them in a separate bowl. I took the remaining broth and dumped it into a fat separator. I added chicken broth to it until I had 1 1/2 cups of liquid, then let the fat rise to the top.

I poured the fat-separated broth back into the cast-iron pan on the stove, and turned the heat on medium high. I used a wooden spoon to scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any stuck-on bits. When the broth was simmering, I added one more tbsp of unsalted butter and stirred until it melted.

The vegetables went back into the cast-iron pan, turned the heat to low, and basted those veggies occasionally while the chicken rested.Then I taste-tested the broth to see if it needed seasoning. It didn’t. In fact, it was so good I went past Happy and Delirious all the way ’round to Angry.

“TASTE THIS! IT’S TOO D@MN GOOD!” And it was.

Take your plates out of the oven, carve the bird, place a heaping of vegetables on a plate, top with chicken, and then spoon some broth from the pan over everything. And then spoon some more.

Serve and die happy.

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Lookie what we’ve got here! That’s a 4lb pork shoulder just beggin’ for some cookin’. Let’s start with:

• 4lb pork shoulder, duh
• one head of garlic, pealed and sliced (not diced or minced)
• one bay leaf
• two leeks and one fennel bulb, sliced thin (in the same bowl here)
• one apple, peeled, cored, and sliced thin
• one onion, sliced thin (not diced or minced)
• three cups of chicken broth
• one cup of Marsala wine
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp of canola oil
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put you dutch oven on a burner, pretty high heat. Not high heat, but not medium either. We’re using canola oil instead of olive oil because we want to put a mean sear on this piggie, and it’s huge. We need the heat! Now then, let’s start with…

Salt and pepper that pig. Don’t be stingy. Every side gets the rub treatment. Once your pig is seasoned, add canola oil to the dutch oven. Remember that this is not olive oil so it’s not going to smoke as easily. Hot oil is key, but we’re not frying so don’t put to much oil in there. So in plunken der mit das piggie!

If there is a fattier side, put that down first and let the fat render. Five minutes per side should bring out a beautiful color, and don’t forget to do the ends as well. Some people love an end piece just for the extra sear, so don’t deprive them. Turn that pig, but don’t poke it. Use tongs or wooden spoons, but no forks. We want to
maintain as much structural integrity as possible so we get slices of pork, not pulled pork.

Turn it nicely…

And that’s one side done. Turn, turn, turn, and we get this…

All sides seared, take Mr. Pig out of the pot and place him with reverence on a side plate.

(The above pic isn’t the best, but below, look to the right of the pot to see a much better color spectrum of a fully-seared pork shoulder.)

Into the pot now goes the leeks, fennel, onion, and garlic!

Let the vegetables soak up the juices in the pot for a minute, then add 1/2 cup of the Marsala wine.

Nice! Let the smells waft for another five minutes, letting the Marsala cook off a little bit and the vegetables soften. It’s time for Mr. Pig to make his reappearance. Make a space in the bottom of the pot for our pork and nestle that boy down in there with love.

Grab the other 1/2 cup of Marsala wine, chicken stock, apple cider vinegar and pour ‘em on in. Stir gently, then slap down the apple slices like Pringles into the sauce.

Bring the sauce to a gentle simmer, then slam your lid on, punt the enchilada into the oven, and sit back and relax for three hours. Or clean the kitchen, whatever.

BING!

Take out the bay leaf!

Make sure your carving knife is as sharp as a light saber so that you can serve slices of the most tender pork you’ve ever tasted without everything falling apart. Serve a slice of pork in a crater of mashed potatoes, with the fennel, leeks, onions and apples on top of the pork.

And don’t forget to heat your plates before you plate your food!

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You remember beer-braised pot roast? Well we can use a very similar technique with chicken. Let’s make Chicken Cacciatore!

Ingredients:

• kosher salt
• fresh ground pepper
• one onion, chopped
• one clove of garlic, finely chopped
• one can of diced tomatoes
• 10 oz sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup of red wine
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1/2 tsp dried sage

And chicken. My favorite is skinless, bone-in chicken thighs, but tonight I’m using skinless chicken breasts. Dry them, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Put the dutch oven, (you bought one now, yes?) on the stove top, medium-high heat. Add olive oil to coat the bottom of the pot, wait for the oil to shimmer, then add the chicken. Let the chicken sear for six minutes, then flip the chicken. The seared-side will be nicely brown.

If you have to sear your chicken in batches, that’s fine; we’re going to braise the chicken later. Finish the other side of the chicken in the pot, take the chicken out, and place on a side-plate.

After all your chicken is browned, add the mushroom and let them sweat for five minutes. Don’t try to scrape-up all the brown stuff on the bottom of the pot. We do indeed want the Flavor Country down there, but scraping it up isn’t the way to get ‘er done.

Add the onion and garlic. The onions will release their juice which will dissolve the brown stuff on the bottom of the pot, foshizzle! Cook the onions for three minutes…

And kablooie! See how beautifully the onions turn the color of the seared chicken? And the Flavor Country residue in the pot has been absorbed nicely. Wanna see?

Tada! Can you imagine the chickenie-goodness that’s been absorbed into the onions and mushrooms? It’s phenomenal!

The kitchen is now starting to waft, and your dinner guests are mumbling, “Wow something smells really good.”

Add your tomatoes…

And the wine…

Your rosemary…

And the yummy sage, (which you really don’t want to forget, even though it doesn’t seem like a lot.)

Stir stir stir… and inhale deeply. Grab your metal skewers and use them to fend off the people demanding a taste.

Now add the chicken back into the pot!

Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the temperature to low. Put the lid on the pot, set the timer for 40 minutes. When the timer dings, take the lid off… and marvel.

Put some chicken on a plate, use a big ladle to dump a huge mess of mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes on the chicken. We’re also serving rosemary-roasted potatoes tonight. If you’re really feeling gnarly, put enough juice on the plate so the crispy potatoes get to soak it all up!

And yes, this last picture was taken after a few bites were taken. It smelled so good that I forgot I was taking pictures.

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Peanut butter and jelly is for eight-year-olds. Time to upgrade your sandwich-game with this gastronomic nuclear explosion.

My Ingredients:

Hormel® Black Label® Thick Slice Bacon
Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise
Grand Rapids lettuce, (big leaves with the frilly edges)
Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
Chicago Italian bread, unsliced
A big, red tomato, (whatever is in season)
Olive oil
Salted butter

Set your broiler on high, put a rack as high as it will go. This is assuming you have an electric oven and that’s where the heating element is. If you have a gas stove, you can put your bread in the special grilling drawer on the bottom. You probably don’t want to toast right on the flame as we’re going to put some olive oil on the bread.

Speaking of the bread, slice your loaf.. you bought it unsliced, yes? Slice your bread on an angle to make Uber Pieces. Don’t buy baguette bread; we want Big Bread Country. Slice on an angle, make each piece about 3/4″ thick. Two pieces per sandwich, no foolin’!

Slice your tomato, two pieces per sandwich.

Two pieces of lettuce per sandwich. Rinse each leaf then pat them dry.

Grab a big non-stick pan, medium-high heat, slap two slices of bacon per sandwich down, let ‘em get crispy on one side, flip, crisp the other. When your bacon is done, place the pieces on a piece of paper towel on a plate. Let the bacon cool and solidify.

Put your sliced bread on a cookie sheet, drizzle each piece lightly with olive oil, then put close to the direct heat to toast. This won’t take long, so pay attention. Check the bread after one minute, then if not lightly brown and toasted, check every 30 seconds. Burned bread is Fail. Once toasted, take out of the oven and flip each piece over so the toasted-side faces down.

Take one piece of bread, place on your plate. Spread mayo lightly all over the bread, (not the plate!) Then take a pinch of kosher salt and sprinkle it everywhere, including the plate. The salt becomes decorative, but also will allow the sandwich-consumer to dip their eggie-morsel into more salt, should they want to.

And yes, they will want to.

Place your lettuce on the mayo-coated bread, then slap down some tomato, then the bacon. The lettuce protects the bread from soaking up bacon grease, so don’t mess up the stacking-order.

Clean the bacon grease out of the pan and reheat that sucker, medium high again. Put a small pat of butter in the hot pan and let it melt. Crack open an egg and spill it into the butter. Cook that egg, but do NOT break the yolk. Once the egg white edge looks slightly brown, flip the egg and do NOT break the yolk. Cook for 30 seconds more.

Sliiiiide the fried egg onto your sandwich. Top with another leaf of lettuce.

Take a second slice of bread, mayo the thing, sprinkle salt on it, and with love and reverence, place it atop your sandwich.

Cut the sandwich in half at a big angle. When you divide your prize, the egg yolk will break and allow the warm yellow mush to coat the bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Move one half of the sandwich slightly apart from the other and serve.

Much, much better than PBnJ.

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What the (expletive deleted) is braising, you ask? It’s cooking food in a liquid. In this case, we’re going to cook our beef shoulder in a beef-and-beer broth until it’s fall apart tender.

Why not just use a slow cooker? Because we want to sear the outside of the beef so that it doesn’t just fall to pieces. If one wants a big pile of shredded beef on one’s plate, slow-cooking is fine. If one wants a beautiful slice of tender, juicy pot roast, one braises.

So we braise!

This is our brought-to-room-temperature beef shoulder, about 3.5 lbs.

We used our kosher salt and fresh, ground pepper on all sides. This is the side of fat that will go into the pot first. The fat will render in the heat and help make our beef-sear flavorful.

We’ve preheated our oven to 350F, put our dutch oven on the stove top on medium-high heat, then put in enough olive oil to coat the bottom but not allowing the oil to pool. We are going to sear our beef, not deep-fry it. When the oil shimmers, it’s ready for our beef.

Into the pot it goes! Sizzle, sear, and don’t touch it for 10 minutes. Some people do less time, I like a really heavy sear, dark brown in color. Do not touch the beef! Do not poke the beef! Do not tease the beef! After 10 minutes, go ahead and turn it onto another unseared side. Do not use a fork to pierce the beef when you turn the beef. Use large tongs or two wooden spoons.

These are most of the other ingredients to our pot roast. We love carrots, especially braised, so we go heavy on them. An onion, 2 teaspoons of dried Thyme, a 12oz bottle of good beer, (we’ve had fabulous success with Guinness Extra Stout!). 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (not shown), and a cup (or two) of beef broth, (simmering on the stove.)

After turning the beef for the first time, we can see the lovely color of the sear. This beef is not cooked; it is seared so that the flavors are sealed inside and so that it has more structural integrity to not fall apart during the braising, carving, and eating. We’re going to sear every side, even the small ones. The fat we seared for ten minutes to render as well as sear, every large side can sear for eight minutes, the small sides for five.

While the beef is busy searing, prep your other ingredients. Our carrots are peeled and sliced into big hunks. Three hours in a braise will turn these carrots soft, tender, and juicy, but still firm. Small pieces of carrot will completely dissolve, so keep ‘em biggies!

Onion sliced large, as well. We’re not doing steak-n-onions where we want small slivers of onion. Make ‘em Big Pieces so they can survive the braising, capice?

There’s a big side of our beef nicely seared. Pretty? Yes, yes it is. Keep searing!

See below? We want to sear every side, so move that beef around!

When you’re done searing, take the beef out of the pot and put on a plate of honor. Don’t worry about covering it to retain heat; we still have to braise it for three hours.

This is what the bottom of your pot should look like: black, brown, just dirty. But it’s Pure Flavor Country, and we’re not going to let it go to waste!

Inputten das veggies dar das potten! Cook ‘em for five minutes, same heat setting. Stir occasionally, but don’t try to scrape the bottom of the pot. As the onions wilt, they will release juice that will allow the Pure Flavor Country to migrate all over the vegetables.

After five minutes, you’ll be blown away by the amazing smells, the bottom of the pot will be almost completely clean (see pic!), and your carrots and onion will be coated in PFC-greatness. Don’t eat yet!

Add the Thyme and stir. The wafting air changes from beef-and-onion to a woodsy musk, and your guests will start meandering into the kitchen asking for samples. Beat them off with a clean wooden spoon.

Add the beef broth. One cup for a hearty, thick, pungent sauce, or two cups for a thinner, less gravy-like consistency. For this recipe I went with the one cup as I love the dense flavors in the thicker broth.

Add the beer! This is one occasion where spilling your beer is not a personal foul.

Now you want to scrape the bottom of the pot with your wooden spoon! Scrape it, baby! Get every ounce of PFC into your broth.

Two tablespoons of tomato paste get dunked. Stir it up!

Bring the whole enchilada to a slow boil. Send the dog to his kennel and the guests onto the back porch or you’ll have no room in the kitchen; it’ll smell so good.

Put the beef into the broth, kinda shoving it around until the beef is halfway covered in the stuff. Any beef juices on the plate? Pour ‘em on top of the beef.

Put the lid on, put the pot in the preheated oven for 90 minutes. Swagger a bit; you’re earning it.

Here’s out main course after it’s first trip through the oven.

Take your tongs, flip that beef over, reinsert into the broth, cook for 90 more minutes… then remove the pot, take off the lid, and marvel at yourself!

Take the beef out, put it on a carving board, cover with aluminum foil, and let set for ten minutes. Then carve it up against the beef’s grain and put the slices back in the pot.

Take the pot to the table and serve family-style. Although I didn’t make roast potatoes, herbed egg noodles, or any other side, (because it’s frickin’ late!), perhaps you can imagine your own favorite side dish with this place setting.

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I don’t like Coq Au Vin. Red wine and chicken just looks putrid. So I looked long and hard eventually found a white wine Coq Au Vin recipe that I love.

First step is to get an oval braising pot. You can blow $300 on a brand new Le Creuset like this one, or buy it used from Craigslist or at a garage sale. These things last forever, so don’t worry about getting a used one. Mine cost $100 after finding it on Craigslist.

But you don’t even have to get something this name-conscious. Heck, my small round pot came from Ikea, and they sell an oval one as well.

You want the oval one because it will hold an entire chicken, which we will cook later. My round one is great for small roasts, but it can’t hold an entire chicken. For this recipe, you’ll want the oval one.

Now that you have the pot, you need the ingredients:

• 1 roasting chicken, 4-5 lbs, giblets removed, rinsed thoroughly inside and out, deconstructed into drumsticks, thighs, breasts, and wings. Leave the bones in because they impart the massive-percentage of flavor. Do we need to do a show on how to deconstruct a chicken?
• Kosher salt. No, Morton’s salt is not acceptable. Get Diamond Crystal brand. It’s cheap and use it for almost all your cooking needs. Keep the Morton’s to make salt water with which to gargle, but don’t cook with that stuff any more.
• Fresh ground pepper.
• Olive oil. Not extra virgin, just regular.
• 2 strips of bacon, diced. You don’t need the highest quality, but you’ll need to control the bacon-fat that is created when you render it. I’ve used the best bacon and stuff called Carolina Pride, (say it with gusto: CAROLINA PRIDE!!) that was 99% fat.
• 8 oz of mushrooms. I love baby bellas, but any will do. Clean and quarter them.
• 1 yellow onion, sliced.
• 5 carrots, peeled and diced. This is a deviation from the recipe I found because I love carrots and everybody I’ve served this to loves carrots. Cut them about 1/2″ in thickness. Carrots shrink when you braise them, but this is only going to cook for an hour.
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth.
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves.
• 1 cup dry white wine, get some Sauvignon Blanc. Don’t get the $1.99 brand at Walmart, but don’t spend $20 a bottle either. You can serve the wine with the dinner, so get something you won’t mind drinking and also won’t mind using for cooking. I use a $7 bottle of wine when I know I’m going to drink it too.
• 12 small potatoes, red or white, quartered. Leave the skin on, ’cause that’s the tastiest part. I’ve also used extra-wide egg noodles.
• 1/4 cup fresh minced Italian parsley. It costs $1 per bunch at the store so don’t use dried.

Let’s cook!

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Put your pot on the stove-top, medium-high heat.

If you want to remove all the chicken skin, you may. Usually we leave it on so that it renders, gets crispy, and tastes fabulous. However, when we braise chicken skin it will not get crispy and many people dislike wet chicken skin.

Liberally coat all the chicken pieces with kosher salt. Don’t be skimpy with the salt. Have you ever watched Food Network?

Add enough oil to the pot to coat it evenly, but we don’t want a pool of oil. We’re not frying, here.

Add the chicken pieces, skin down if you left the stuff on. If you can’t get all the chicken in the pot at once, do the pieces in bunches. Sear the chicken until it’s browned. Remember that you never force chicken to release from the pot. If the chicken is sticking, it’s not done. When the chicken releases from the pot and is browned, turn the pieces over and sear the other side. Five minutes per side should be plenty, if the pot is hot enough. Transfer the cooked chicken to a plate and do the other bunch..

Add the bacon to the pot and cook until done. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and put them on a paper towel on a plate. If you’ve got more than 2 tbsp of rendered bacon fat in the pot, remove some until you only have 2 tbsp in the pot.

Add carrots and onion to the pot, stir with a wooden spoon, cook for 5 minutes until the onions are loose and slightly brown from the bacon fat.

Add the mushrooms.

Add 1/2 cup of chicken stock.

Add the thyme.

Stir and scrape the bottom of the pot, getting the brown stuff to release. The brown stuff is Flavor Country, so don’t leave it stuck to the bottom.

When the liquid comes to a boil, cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, cook for 7 minutes so the mushrooms release their liquid to the stock.

Add the wine, bring heat back to med-high, and let come to a boil.

Add the potatoes and season the broth with salt and pepper.

Tuck the chicken pieces into the broth in one layer; don’t stack the chicken.

Pour enough broth so that the chicken pieces are halfway covered, but no more. We want half of each piece of chicken exposed to hot, dry air in the oven.

Bring broth back to a boil, then put the pot in the oven, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

Flip each piece of chicken, tucking the pieces back into the broth, cook uncovered for another 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven, taste the broth. If it needs more salt or pepper, add it.

Sprinkle with parsley and the bacon pieces, cover the pot.

Carry the entire pot to the table, and when everybody is seated, remove the lid. A mushroom cloud of flavor will erupt, engulf your diners, and they will lavish you with praise.

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One of the things I will never order at a restaurant is Alfredo anything. Alfredo sauce is so easy to make that I refuse to pay $15 for butter and cream.

Another stupidly easy recipe is Shrimp Scampi. If you ask the waiter for this, you’re wasting your money and the chef’s time.

The first thing you’re gonna need is a 12″ stainless skillet. Do not use a Teflon or a non-stick pan, as you WANT some stickiness.

Invest in a good-quality stainless skillet. You don’t need this, but this will work just fine.

Grab this stuff:

• 3 tbsp of olive oil
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1 diced shallot
• 5 smashed garlic cloves
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 lb fresh shrimp, (not the pre-cooked pink ones, get the white, uncooked buggers)
• 1/2 of a fresh lemon
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• linguine pasta for four

How to dice your shallot? Watch this:

Put the oven on 300. Don’t ask why, just do it.

Start boiling salted water for the linguine.

Peel and de-vein the shrimp. Place them in a ziplock bag. Add salt and pepper to the bag, shake to coat the shrimp, set the bag aside.

(Most recipes will have you toss the shrimp in a bowl , but I only have two stainless mixing bowls, and I’d rather throw away a Ziplock bag than clean my bowls over and over. You wanna use a mixing bowl, go right ahead.)

Heat your pan to medium-low — on my oven, medium-low is “3″ on the dial-scale of 2-4-6-8-Hi — and add olive oil until the bottom of the pan is barely filled, approximately 2 tbsp. Remember that the boiling point of olive oil is 572 degrees Fahrenheit, so don’t put your burner on Nuclear, ‘k Mario? If your oil is boiling, it’s WAY too hot.

Add the pasta to rapidly boiling, salted water. The typical cook time is 8 minutes, so we want to get our shrimp cooked in that time.

Add 1 tbsp of unsalted butter to the heated olive oil and allow to it to melt.

Add the garlic, shallot, and red pepper flakes. Cook for 1 minute, inhaling the entire time. Smell that stuff, let it entrance you.

Add the shrimp, spreading them out so the entire side of every shrimp is being cooked. Stacked shrimp is the devil.

When the shrimp tails turn pink — approximately 2-3 minutes — turn the shrimp one at a time so the other sides are cooked. You don’t want raw seafood but you don’t want rubber, either.

Cook the shrimp another 2-3 minutes, then remove them from the pan individually onto another plate. Lift them out with tongs; don’t pour them out and end up losing the liquid in the pan.

Add the wine and use a wooden spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan. Scrape up the brown bits and stir it all together. This is called deglazing the pan, and is what makes the brown (not black!) bits taste so freakin’ great.

(Black bits are burnt and attempting to deglaze them will give you crap in a pan.)

Add the juice from the 1/2 of a fresh lemon, allow the sauce to come to a boil.

Add 1 tbsp of olive oil and 1 tbsp of unsalted butter.

When the butter has melted, add the shrimp back into the sauce.

The pasta should be done at this time. Drain it and add to the shrimp in the skillet.

Put your plates in the oven!! They won’t need to stay in there more than 60 seconds.

Stir the linguine into the sauce with the shrimp.

Add the fresh chopped parsley, stir it all together, and serve immediately on your warmed plates.

WARMED PLATES, DANG IT!. There’s nothing worse then spending time and energy to make a hot dinner and serving it on cold plates. Seriously.

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