Shrimp Alfredo: My little brother's birthday

  
 My brothers & I don't do birthday presents for each other any more, but I wanted to do something nice for them. Jonah lives a few hours away, so inviting him up for dinner isn't really feasible. Especially considering that, when he is up here, he is spending all his time hunting, fishing, or both. He's getting a to-be-determined treat when he comes up next week. (And, since he's giving me no ideas on what he would like, I really have no idea what I am going to make for him.) 

Kyle, however, has no qualms about telling me what he would like. Since he lives so close, he also was able to come over for dinner. (And dessert, which I already posted about.) It was quite the party, too. 

Sometimes, there is a certain little boy who isn't quite sure of his Uncle Kyle....


Anyways, for dinner he requested crab alfredo. When I told him I would be using imitation crab he changed his mind and wanted shrimp alfredo. Which I've never made before. So, I got on Google and found a copycat recipe for Red Lobster's Shrimp Alfredo. 

The recipe I decided to follow was on food.com, and there were a lot of comments. Quite a few of the comments stated that it was too thin, so I added some cream cheese. I think it turned out great! Kyle & Gabriel did too. (Poor husband, he works second shift so he couldn't be there.)

Shrimp Alfredo

Ingredients

• ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined and tails removed
• ⅔ cup clam juice (or chicken broth)
• ⅓ cup white wine (or chicken broth)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 ounce cream cheese, cubed
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
• ¼ teaspoon dried basil
• ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
• 8 ounces pasta, cooked and drained

Directions

1. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; reduce heat to low. Simmer until garlic is tender.
2. Add shrimp and cook over medium-low heat until opaque. Remove, reserve liquid in pan.
3. Add clam juice (or chicken broth) and bring to a boil. Add wine (or chicken broth); cook over medium high heat for three minutes, stirring constantly.
4. Reduce heat to low; add cream and cream cheese, stirring constantly and continue until cheese is mostly melted. Add Parmesan, stirring until smooth. Cook until thickened.
5. Add shrimp back into sauce. Heat thoroughly. Add remaining ingredients except pasta.
6. Put pasta in a large bowl and pour sauce over pasta; toss gently to coat.
7. Serve with additional grated parmesan cheese.

Yield/Time

5-6 servings

20 minutes

Source (for original): Food

Now, I added pre-cooked shrimp (it was on sale, and honestly I can only go so far out of my box--cooking shrimp sounded intimidating), so I skipped the step of cooking the shrimp and cut down on oil.

I think that, next time, I would cut down on the shrimp (that's a lot of shrimp for each serving) and probably would add a bit more garlic. However, I have a serious love for garlic, so you should probably start with 3 cloves and go from there.