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Growing up with an Italian father, we ate a lot of pasta incorporated into dishes from all throughout traditional Italian cuisine. Tuscany is infamous for its hearty meals, being one of the peasant centers of Central Italy, historically, with the staple dish Ribollita. Contrastingly, Northern Italy is great for experiencing the slightly less popular but brighter francese, scallopini, and piccata. What I've done is try to combine this idea of spinach/kale and hearty white beans with the light/fresh lemon flavor and capers that you'd expect and some light coastal flavors of shrimp (gamberetto).
Shopping List:
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Hardware:
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Prep:
Take your chef's knife or Santoku and put it back in the block; you won't need it.
Get a couple of quarts of heavily salted water boiling for your pasta. You can cook the pasta ahead of time since you'll be stirring it into the rest of the pan later.
If your cannelini beans are raw, cook them. If they're canned, drain and rinse, please. Sometimes, I like to peel the skins off of beans after they've cooked, just for texture considerations; getting that film in your teeth is unpleasant. To do this, take your beans and rub them gently between two tea towels and pick the film off if you can.
De-stem the spinach if you aren't a fan of the texture, otherwise, leave it be, although it never hurts to rinse the spinach off.
Roast your garlic ahead of time, peel it, extract it from the head/bulb, and mash it into a paste. A recipe will follow in the coming days on how I make roasted garlic.
Season your shrimp with some lemon zest, oregano, salt, and pepper.
De-stem your parsley, but don't chop it up, lest it clash with the 'whole-ness' of the rest of the dish. Recall, there's no chopping necessary.
The Business:
Heat up some olive oil in a large, high-walled pan over Medium-High heat. Once it's shimmering, quickly add your shrimp until mostly cooked. Like with the shrimp and grits, you want it a little undercooked. Throw in the beans and keep it moving around until the shrimp has mostly finished cooking. Hopefully your beans are cooked well enough that they just need quick warm-up. Toss in the spinach and cover the pan (if you can) to let the spinach wilt. Toss in capers to your liking and swirl in some lemon juice and stock to make a quick sauce. The spinach and beans will soak up some of the sauce, but you'll want some liquid to coat the pasta. Toss in the cooked pasta once you've got your liquid reduced a little bit, as well as the handful of roasted garlic cloves that you've hopefully mashed into a pasta. If it's too wet to your liking, just continue cooking the stock down with the pasta in the pan until you're happy.
Serve. Garnish with whole parsley leaves and a hefty turn or seven of fresh cracked pepper.
Mangia!
Take your chef's knife or Santoku and put it back in the block; you won't need it.
Get a couple of quarts of heavily salted water boiling for your pasta. You can cook the pasta ahead of time since you'll be stirring it into the rest of the pan later.
If your cannelini beans are raw, cook them. If they're canned, drain and rinse, please. Sometimes, I like to peel the skins off of beans after they've cooked, just for texture considerations; getting that film in your teeth is unpleasant. To do this, take your beans and rub them gently between two tea towels and pick the film off if you can.
De-stem the spinach if you aren't a fan of the texture, otherwise, leave it be, although it never hurts to rinse the spinach off.
Roast your garlic ahead of time, peel it, extract it from the head/bulb, and mash it into a paste. A recipe will follow in the coming days on how I make roasted garlic.
Season your shrimp with some lemon zest, oregano, salt, and pepper.
De-stem your parsley, but don't chop it up, lest it clash with the 'whole-ness' of the rest of the dish. Recall, there's no chopping necessary.
The Business:
Heat up some olive oil in a large, high-walled pan over Medium-High heat. Once it's shimmering, quickly add your shrimp until mostly cooked. Like with the shrimp and grits, you want it a little undercooked. Throw in the beans and keep it moving around until the shrimp has mostly finished cooking. Hopefully your beans are cooked well enough that they just need quick warm-up. Toss in the spinach and cover the pan (if you can) to let the spinach wilt. Toss in capers to your liking and swirl in some lemon juice and stock to make a quick sauce. The spinach and beans will soak up some of the sauce, but you'll want some liquid to coat the pasta. Toss in the cooked pasta once you've got your liquid reduced a little bit, as well as the handful of roasted garlic cloves that you've hopefully mashed into a pasta. If it's too wet to your liking, just continue cooking the stock down with the pasta in the pan until you're happy.
Serve. Garnish with whole parsley leaves and a hefty turn or seven of fresh cracked pepper.
Mangia!