Shrimp & Sweet Potato Rigatoni

Ok,so for my first night I took a recipe and ran with it. A sweet potato pasta sauce over rigatoni topped with sautéed shrimp. The recipe came from Giada De Laurentiis, but of course I followed it "loosely."
Here goes...

Peeled and chopped one medium sweet potato, chopped it up into small cubes and threw it in a big ole pan with some hot oil and salt and pepper. Let that sit on medium high and caramelize while I diced up a shallot, peeled 12 shrimp, threw some baby spinach into a bowl and chopped up one tomato (which ended up in the same bowl as the spinach).

Alright so now, if you've taken your sweet time and remembered to stir the sweet potatoes a couple times, you can throw in the diced shallot and a pinch of crushed red pepper with the potatoes. Stir it up and leave it. Add a splash of oil if the pan is getting dry. Spin yourself around and take 2 big garlic cloves and grate them, yes grate them. Super easy way to get a super fine dice on garlic. Just grate that bad boy. I have a micro-plane which is perfect, but the small side of a good old fashioned grater works perfectly. Now for my favorite part... homemade salad dressing. Warning, tangent ahead.

Store bought salad dressing is one of the saddest things that has happened to our society. Dressing is one of the simplest things to make, it lasts forever in your refrigerator once you make it and you can make it with things that you have in your house anyway! I am not making this up AT ALL. Do you have some type of oil? Some type of vinegar or a lemon? Perhaps a little salt and pepper? Mustard? Honey? Every bachelor with an empty fridge has mustard, but even if you don't have those last two, you can make salad dressing. Well, you can't make ranch dressing, but that is not a dressing, it is a dip. Yeah, I said it. Ranch is a dip, not a dressing. Get over it. Anyway, back to my rant. So you have all allowed the Krafts and Paul Newmans of the world to continuously sell you something you don't even need. Something that tastes like salty plastic. Gross, vomit. Store bought salad dressings are for the weak, the very weak. You take 2 parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice. If that is too complicated... put in some oil and then put in some vinegar, but less vinegar than oil. Add salt and pepper, add a squirt or spoonful of mustard, a big squirt of honey and shake/stir it up. Voila! Real, tasty salad dressing. Even if you left out mustard and honey, you are still good. And to close... if you hate raw vegetables so much that you have to slather them in things labeled "Thousand Island," "Chunky Blue Cheese," and "Catalina" then just get over it and stop eating salads. It's like watching someone swallow a raw oyster whole in .5 seconds and then swear that they love oysters. You eat salad because it is what the cool kids do, the "in" crowd. Just man up and say you hate raw veggies. It's lame to say, but not as lame as turning your delicious baby romaine organic salad mix pink with neon orange French "dressing."

Are we back? Ok, so if you read the rant then you know how I made the salad dressing. Put some water on to boil for the pasta, add oil and salt to this water. In a smaller pan, I got all whimsical tossed in a splash of oil, a pat of butter and a third of my grated garlic. I also threw in about a cup of chicken broth to my potatoes and stirred them around. Just as the butter in the little pan started to melt i threw in a few slices of yummy french bread and browned each side. Pulled them out of the pan and let them sit out on the counter until I was ready to plate. They became this indulgent cross between buttery garlic bread and a crunchy crouton. Yummmm.

Hopefully by now your potatoes are starting to get smushy. Just kind of squish them with your stirring utensil to see. If they aren't mushy enough keep cooking and adding a little bit of broth if the pan dries up. Hopefully your pasta water is starting to boil. Once your potatoes are smushy you want to scoop them into your blender or food processor and add about a half cup to a cup of milk. If you are using a blender, put a rag over the lid please. Or you could just be like the hubs and turn is on sans lid, but be prepared to burn your face off. Blend this up until smooth, maybe adding a little extra milk if you need to. You want it to be saucy. Ow Ow! Add salt and pepper to taste. Once you got it right, toss it back in the big pan and leave it there on super low heat.

Put yo rigatoni in da burlin' wata. Do it!

Drizzle that homemade dressing over your spinach and tomato salad. Use HALF of what you think you need. HALF!!!!!!!!! Then sprinkle a big pinch of parmesan cheese over it and toss. Resist the urge to pour dressing on your salad like it is A1. Plate up your salad, it's done. Plate up those yummy garlic toasts as well.

Now back to my small pan. Add some more oil and a pat of butter and the rest of the garlic. Once you can no longer see the "pat" of butter add in the shrimp. I only cook my shrimp a couple minute on both sides, but some people are weird about skrimps. So cook them however you like and then turn the heat off. Now, if you turn the heat off when they are almost done, they will continue to cook and be done when you need them. However, if you cook the crap out of them then at least move them to a plate so they don't turn into shrimp jerky. Personally if you can figure out how to get your shrimp a few minutes away from being done and then cut off the heat that is perfect. Then they will still be warm when you plate them.

Take the al dente pasta and strain and then dump into the big pan with the sweet potato sauce. Stir around and add parm cheese. I personally add tons of it, you add what you want, makes no difference to me.

I plated my noodles right up next to my salad and sprinkled them with more parm (if you know me this makes perfect sense) and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Topped it off with 6 shrimp each and voila! Dinner by Carly Brown.

Oh, and by the way I had tossed 4 chicken breasts into a baking pan before I started all of this, drizzled them with olive oil and red wine vinegar. I covered them in salt (lots), black pepper and dried parsley flakes and left them unattended the whole time at 375 degrees. I turned the oven off when I was done making dinner and there, right before my eyes, was lunch for the next couple of days. Some things in life are just easy. Cooking is one of them.