January 22, 2013 Shrimp sautéed in bacon with Spinach, mushrooms and garlic in a cream sauce over pasta.

January 22, 2013 Shrimp sautéed in bacon with Spinach, mushrooms and garlic in a cream sauce over pasta.

We still had about ½ pound of large shrimp (Pro’s Ranch Market, $5.99/lb.) that needed to be eaten, so I looked in my Japanese Cooking A Simple Art cookbook and found a recipe for fried shrimp which illustrated a technique for deveining the shrimp and cutting a slot in the center of the shrimp and pushing the tail through the hole to make a flower.  So I deveined and made a deep slit down the length of the shrimp so the two sides could be flattened and cut through the shrimp in the middle and twisted and pushed the tail through the hole.  This changed the shape of the shrimp from flat to a rounded opened up shape like the petals of a flower and the two tail fins of the shrimp sticking through the hole resembled a stamen of a flower, rather lily like.

We did not want to make the recipe with fried shrimp and I wanted to use some of our abundant spinach.  Since I love spinach in cream sauce, I jumped at Suzette’s suggestion that we make a cream sauce for the shrimp and spinach and serve it over pasta.   We had an open bag of Casarecce (two about two inch long tubes joined together) organic pasta made by Garofalo in Italy (Costco), so Suzette started a pot of water boiling and I sliced 5 mushrooms and chopped 2 cups of the spinach and 1 Tbsp. of parsley. 

Suzette melted butter and a dash of olive oil in a large skillet and then squeezed a clove of garlic into the heated oil and added the mushrooms.  When the mushrooms had softened she added ¼ cup of white wine and the spinach and parsley and covered the skillet for a minute or two to steam the spinach.  Then Suzette added the shrimp and cooked them until they turned pink on all sides and then added 1/3 cup of cream and reduced the sauce a bit to thicken the cream, while I chopped 3 or 4 Tbs. more parsley for garnish.  When the pasta had finished cooking I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of Cutler Creek California Pinot Grigio.

Suzette put a new table cloth on the table for our new dish and we filled pasta bowls with pasta and the spinach and mushroom cream sauce and garnished with the fresh chopped parsley and filled glasses with the chilled pinot grigio that was still so cold that it immediately frosted the glasses.  When Suzette tasted the wine she immediately said that the wine tasted oaky, so I tasted it and its buttery taste indicated to me that the wine had been made with malolactic fermentation.   This would be consistent with a cheaper wine that was high in tannins and needed to be softened, but the wine maker did not want to invest a lot of time and money in aging in oak barrels, especially for a white wine that is usually fermented in steel and can be malolactically fermented in the same steel barrel, so the wine is malolactically fermented to soften the tannins.  Malolactic fermentation is often confused with oak aging because both give the wine a buttery flavor.   

Here is the story on malolactc fermentation from Wikipedia:

Malolactic fermentation (or sometimes malolactic conversion or MLF) is a process in winemaking where tart-tasting malic acid, naturally present in grape must, is converted to softer-tasting lactic acid. Malolactic fermentation tends to create a rounder, fuller mouthfeel. It has been said that malic acid tastes of green apples. By contrast, lactic acid is richer and more buttery tasting. Grapes produced in cool regions tend to be high in acidity, much of which comes from the contribution of malic acid. MLF is also thought to generally enhance the body and flavor persistence of wine, producing wines of greater palate softness and roundness. Many winemakers also feel that better integration of fruit and oak character can be achieved if MLF occurs during the time the wine is in barrel.

After we finished our lovely dinner, Suzette took another couple of sips of the wine and said, “It definitely tastes better with food.”   

The combination of spinach and sautéed mushrooms with the shrimps in a garlic cream and wine sauce was really delicious.

I loved the new elegant flower shape of the shrimp.  I will definitely add this to my repertoire of shapes for shrimp.

Bon Appètit