Pasta, pasta, pasta!

Hey yall! So I have two pasta dishes that I'm posting. One is from Olive Garden... mmm... and the other Adam and I made. First off is the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno from Olive Garden. This was really good. The zita was baked in a five cheese marinara sauce with more melted cheese on top. It was delicious but I got full easily and tired of it. So I had it a couple of days later and it was once again awesome. So my final verdict is... I'd get it again eventually but I'd like to have meat or something in it for more variety.



So second is a dish that Adam and I made Friday. We were watching the Food Network channel... well I was, he was humoring me. And the Barefoot Contessa came on which we don't like so much but she has some good food every once in awhile. When she made Lemon Pasta with Roasted Shrimp, we were in. Here is the link for the recipe if you'd like to print it, but I'll sum it up a bit on here too.

Ingredients:
* 2 pounds (17 to 21 count) shrimp, peeled and deveined


* good olive oil
* salt and pepper
* 1 pound angel hair pasta
* 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
* 2 lemons, zested and juiced



So just a side note, 2 lemons was too much for us. I'd rather just have 1 lemon but it's your choice.

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Place the shrimp on a sheet pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Toss well, spread them in 1 layer, and roast for 6 to 8 minutes, just until they're pink and cooked through.
3. Meanwhile, drizzle some olive oil in a large pot of boiling salted water.


4. Add the angel hair, and cook al dented, about 3 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
5. Toss the angel hair with the melted butter, 1/4 cup olive oil, the lemon zest, lemon juice, 2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, about the 1/2 cup of reserved cooking liquid. Add the shrimp and serve hot.



So there it is, really simple. There was a lot of leftover pasta so we reheated it a couple of days later and ate it with chicken. So it's versatile. You could probably put it was Italian sausage too. Just something to thick about :) So the final result: A-MAZE-ING! Apart from too much lemon, which was remedied with more butter, it was delicious and super easy. I encourage you to try this recipe. The most expensive ingredient was the shrimp. We had everything else in our cabinets except for the pasta which was just a dollar. And the shrimp was six dollars. So an amazing meal (for more than one night) for under 10 dollars. Great deal to me :)