Creamy Pasta with Shrimp – But with a Twist.
Here’s a dish that I guarantee will surprise you with the flavors involved. I’ve been using ground black limes in quite a few recipes lately. And for good reason. They brings such a punch of flavor to the table. When combined with warm spices, like cumin and coriander seeds, the balance of flavors strikes me as perfect.
I thought that combining those flavors into a spice rub with some olive oil and salt would be great on shrimp. Wanting to add a creamy component, I opted for a cream sauce made with Greek whole milk yogurt, rather than cream. Yogurt is really lovely when used in this way. It’s not nearly as heavy as cream, but as I learned from Ottolenghi, when combined with egg yolks and a little cornstarch, it produces a beautifully silky sauce.
I happened to have some black garlic stashed in my freezer and thought a finishing oil infused with some of it would be a very good thing. After letting it heat up all it needed was a little soy sauce. If you’ve never tasted black garlic, let me explain. Black garlic is regular garlic that has gone through a fermentation process. You end up with cloves of garlic that are black in color and soft and gummy in texture. The flavor is nothing like normal garlic. It’s sweet and tangy with a little funkiness. That’s why the salty soy sauce balanced it out so well.
After cooking a pot of bucatini, I couldn’t wait to put this altogether and see what I thought. Well, the only thing missing was a little bit of heat, so I sprinkled on gochugaru and this dish was now really speaking to me. Any red chili flakes would work well.
It couldn’t have gone over better with my family and ended up being a lick-your-bowl-clean type of meal. While bucatini is most definitely my pasta of choice for this recipe, any other long stranded pasta would work. But slurping up those long strands, filled with the creamy sauce in their centers is truly a thing of beauty.
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Shrimp Pasta with Black Lime, Yogurt, and Black Garlic
6
servingsSautéed shrimp is first rubbed with black lime, cumin, and coriander. It tops bucatini in a creamy yogurt sauce and is drizzled with black garlic infused olive oil. Yep, it's as good as it sounds.
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Ingredients
- Black Garlic Finishing Oil
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon minced black garlic
2 teaspoons soy sauce
- Shrimp and Pasta
1 pound extra large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and patted dry
1 tablespoon ground black lime
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
3 cups (375g) Greek whole milk yogurt, room temperature
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
Kosher salt
1 large shallot, minced
1 pound bucatini
Red pepper flakes, such as gochugaru
2 tablespoons finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Crispy fried shallots - optional
Directions
- Black Garlic Finishing Oil
- In a small saucepan, add the olive oil and black garlic. Stir over medium low heat, mashing the garlic with a spatula. As soon as you see a few bubbles, add the soy sauce and remove from the heat. Set aside.
- Shrimp and Pasta
- In a small skillet over medium heat, toast the cumin and coriander seeds until fragrant. Let cool and finely grind in a spice grinder. Mix with the ground dried lime, salt, pepper, and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Rub the spice mixture all over the shrimp and set aside.
- Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to a 12 inch non-stick skillet and heat over medium high heat. Add half the shrimp and cook for 1 minute. Flip the shrimp and cook for 1 more minute. Remove to a plate, cover and keep warm. Repeat with the remaining shrimp, adding a little more oil to the pan, if necessary. Cover and keep warm. Do not wash out the skillet.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, egg yolks, and cornstarch until thoroughly combined. There should be some oil left in the skillet in which you cooked the shrimp. Add enough to equal 2 tablespoons. Add the minced shallots to the skillet and cook over medium heat for a couple of minutes, until softened. Turn the heat down to medium low and add the yogurt mixture to the skillet. Cook, while stirring, until a few bubbles appear. You do not want to cook this over too much heat. The sauce could break.
- In the meantime bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta until al dente, saving 1 cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta quickly and add it to the skillet with the yogurt sauce and toss over low heat, adding pasta water so that you end up with a loose saucy consistency. This will seem like a lot of sauce, but it’s light and never feels gloopy and heavy. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and black pepper as necessary.
- Serve the pasta, topped with the shrimp, sprinkled with red pepper flakes, and drizzled with some of the black garlic oil and solids. Scatter the parsley over the top and optional crispy fried shallots. I forgot to add the fried shallots when I took the photo. Enjoy!
2 Responses
Reneé, I loved everything about this dish! All the ingredients worked together beautifully, each holding its own, delivering unmistakably delicious flavor! Additionally, I loved that I got a chance to use some “new-to-me” ingredients. I look forward to using my newly discovered “friends” (black garlic and black limes) in future dishes!
And what a beautiful job you did with this, Sherman! I’m so happy you loved it. It’s so much fun to discover new flavors, isn’t it? It’s what keeps me interested in cooking. Thanks so much!