Respect, Accept, Love your guests when hosting! Shrimps Tagliatelle Recipe with Fresh Made Pesto

If you are a foodie and love cooking like myself, I bet you are the popular and social member among your group of friends and family. You always feel that it is your job to gather people around the table. When doing that, you learn more about the people when you listen to their stories.  Even the young learn from the elders, they learn about their culture when listening to tales about the past. 

For you to make this happen, as a cook and a host, you always have to make sure that people are comfortable enough around the house. And to achieve that, they need to be themselves, and you need to accept them even if they have different mindset from your own or are from a different culture or have different habits. 

You need to learn to accept and respect your guests that may come from different environment, similar to when you add a new ingredient to a dish, or when you challenge yourself to try a new cuisine. Even if you don’t like the taste or the food, you should at least respect the fact that history, multiple generations and hard work have been invested in this cuisine.

Same when meeting new people, you don’t have to think like them, you can be as unique as you want to be, but at the same time don’t judge a person based on the taste on his mind. You never lived his life, you don’t know the background story and the culture he was placed in to get to where he is today. Every single person has made an effort to grow and to reach to a certain stage where he is in peace with himself, his thoughts and his life. So never underestimate that person and bring him down with judgement.

In the contrary, Respect, Accept and Love!

Coming to my recipe this week; Ingredients are similar to humans. Each Ingredient comes from a different background and has their own flavor. But while cooking, all these ingredients embrace the other ingredients flavor so we can have eventually a beautiful dish. So for this week, I decided to make a pasta dish with shrimps and fresh pesto sauce. 

Hope you enjoy my recipe!

Ingredients:

- Tagliatelle Pasta

- 500 g Fresh Peeled or Frozen Large Shrimps.

- Handful of walnuts

- Fresh Basil Leaves

- 2 table spoon butter

- 1 table spoon olive oil

- 1 table spoon flour

- 1 cup of cold milk

- Parmesan Cheese

- 2 cloves garlic

- 1 table spoon chopped ginger

- Salt, Black Pepper and Italian Seasoning

Directions:

- Start by chopping the ginger and garlic.

- In a medium heated pan, Add some olive oil, then the garlic and ginger.

- If you have frozen shrimps, Defrost the shrimps first then add them into the pan. Add Salt, Black Pepper and Mix till cooked. (It took me around 30 minutes with mixing it every couple of minutes just to make sure the shrimps doesn't stick to the pan).

- Off to prepare the pesto sauce, The pesto sauce jar we buy from the store is very oily, and normally they use pine nuts with it. Since Walnuts are much cheaper and less oily, I decided to add it to the pesto.

- With a food processor, Grind the Walnuts. Then wash the basil leaves, chop them in big chunks, add them to the grinned walnuts with one table spoon of olive oil in the food processor. Pulse it till you get a smooth paste.

Tip: You can prepare a big quantity of the pesto paste and freeze it so you can use it later on different dishes.

- In a medium heated pot, Boil some water, Add some salt then the tagliatelle to cook. Once it boils, move it to a low heated cooker and don' cover the pot, Once it boils, it will pour on your cooker if you cover it.

- I normally leave it for 5-7 minutes, Like Italians I don't like my pasta very cooked. If you like it well cooked, leave it up to 15 minutes (please read on the pasta box as well the cooking time for each type of pasta, it is different from one brand to another).

- After the tagliatelle is cooked, drain it. Bring it back to the pot, Add some olive oil and cook it for a couple of minutes just to make sure that all water vapor in the pasta is gone.

- Final Step is to prepare the sauce, On a medium heated pan, Add the butter, let it melt, then add one table spoon of flour, mix it with the melted butter till it turns into a smooth paste. Add one cup of milk, Mix it at low heat till the sauce turns slightly thick. Add Salt, Black Pepper, Italian Seasoning and 2 table spoon of the pesto paste you have prepared. Mix it well till it gets smooth and thick.

- Keep the heat low, Add the Shrimps,Grate some Parmesan on top and mix it well, Finally add the pasta in the same pan and make sure the sauce is all over the pasta and shrimps.

Bon Appétit!