Another luxury looking, but not expensive Christmas first course
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 6 € pp)
- salt
- 500 gr small scampi
- 1 large ripe tomato
- 1/2 chilli pepper
- 1 garlic clove
- 40 ml vodka
- 320 g linguine
- EV olive oil
- fresh thyme
The people who live in a Mediterranean country have the possibility to prepare excellent and luxury looking dishes without spending a lot of money. So, yesterday I found very fresh and cheap scampi with only 14E per kg. Half kilo is enough for 4 fantastic pasta dishes, a cheaper alternative of spaghetti alle vongole and an also attractive suggestion for the Neapolitan Christmas dinner.
The “secret” of this dish is to create a quick and easy stock, which will enrich the dish’ s aromas. So, after washing well the small scampi, we take 100 gr of them and we make it pulp with the blender or the pestle.
In a small skillet we add a tbsp of olive oil, the chilli pepper, the vodka, the garlic clove, the melted scampi and 100 ml of water. We bring to boil, we lower the heat and we let simmer for about 20 minutes. We wait 20 minutes more and we pass them through a fine sieve keeping the stock and discarding the solid parts.
In a wok or large skillet we add some olive oil, the stock and the fresh tomato, peeled, seeded and cut in dice. We add and check the salt and we leave to cook about 10 min.
Meanwhile in a pot we bring to boil salted water and then we add the linguine. We stir them, because the linguine tend to stick and we let them boil till al dente, 1 minute less than the written time on the package. 3 minutes before end we add the remaining 400 gr of scampi
We drain them and we carry them into the wok with the tomato and the stock. We stir well, trying to create a “sauce”, we add some fresh thyme and we serve.
