I’ve been sharing my cooking (and life) adventures here for several years. Here, I’m Mama D, home cook and blogger. I answer to a few other names as well. I’m Mom to my sons, Wife to Papa Diehl, and proudly, I’m Nonna to my beautiful grandchildren. As the holidays draw to a close, the magic of family is the star on my Christmas tree.
Sitting under that tree right now is a small book that was a special gift from my grandson, Jakob. It’s a “fill in the blanks” book designed to preserve recipes. As a new year dawns, one of my “resolutions” is to use this book to record my favorite recipes. It is an exercise in an art that has been lost to me for many years, and perhaps something my grandchildren will look at one day.
I know in this day and age most of us preserve our recipes and many of our thoughts and ideas, for that matter, on the computer. We post them on social media to be shared with an audience of friends, family, and total strangers. It’s easy, it’s quick, but there is a certain amount of de-personalization in the whole process. We don’t write letters any more, and the paper trail we leave is in the “Cloud” wherever that may be. Most children aren’t learning to write cursive and struggle to read the few words that are written on a birthday card. I’ll get off my soapbox, now. I’m not against modern technology, far from it ( this blog is small proof of that). So, while I will continue to share my recipes here, many will also live on in that little book that’s under the Christmas tree.
For the first entry in my cookbook I’m sharing my Scampi recipe. I’ve learned that the word Scampi in Italian means prawn (a.k.a. a large shrimp) thus making “Shrimp Scampi” somewhat redundant. Translations notwithstanding, this is my favorite way to make shrimp, no matter where they are going to wind up. In this recipe, the magic is in the marinade. The ingredients are simple and always available in Mama D’s Kitchen.
Lots of garlic, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, and parsley mingle with lemon juice, dry vermouth, and quite a bit more than a little extra virgin olive oil. This mixture gives the sweetly bland shrimp a culinary pair of big girl panties and prepares them for any kind of introduction to heat.
After a few hours resting in-robed in plastic within the cool confines of the refrigerator, they are ready for anything; a hot grill basket, a quick bake in the oven, a turn in a skillet, or a brief visit under the broiler. Where they go after that is up to the cook’s imagination, but it is always delicious and never results in left overs.
So here without further ado is Mama D’s Scampi recipe.
The recipe will live on as part of this blog post. It is also preserved as the official first entry in “Nonna’s Cookbook.”
Happy New Year!
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You’re absolutely right about everything you said here, my granddaughter struggles reading cursive! What a great and thoughtful gift for your grandkids.
Thank you, Marie. Happy New Year!