Random Recipe Monday - Salt & Pepper Shrimp

After a week of Irish recipes, here's something inspired by chinese food. I know, it's St. Paddy's day, but if you haven't picked up your corned beef or started your Irish Stew, you aren't going to now. So, here's something else you might enjoy - heck, even NR liked it (of course, he does like shrimp, so that helps).

There are several salt and pepper shrimp recipes* floating around the Internet (get it, floating? I know, bad....) but this one is about as easy as you can get. It literally takes a few minutes from fridge to plate, which is always nice. What I liked best about it was the simplicity, the freshness of the flavor. Nothing complicated but the flavors worked well together. Eat it up hot out of the pan or even refrigerate it and have it later cold on salad.

1 1/4 pounds of large, deveined, "easy peel" shrimp - leave the shells on
Canola oil
four cloves of peeled garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of peeled ginger, finely chopped
6 green onions, chopped
Salt
Fresh ground pepper (I use a pepper melange that has white, black, pink and green peppercorns)

Heat a large skillet or wok, adding enough canola oil to cover the bottom of the pan (about 1/2 cup or so)
As the oil is heating, add the garlic. Keep stirring the oil and don't let the garlic burn. Once it starts bubbling, carefully add the shrimp.
Lightly stir the shrimp until the shells turn pink. Add the ginger. Keep stirring.

For the salt and pepper, it depends on your taste. I added about 1/2 tablespoon each of pepper and salt, which was good for me. You can always add more later so start off easy. Add your amounts of salt and pepper, add the green onions.

Keep stirring everything for another minute or two, just to incorporate the spices and warm up the onions. Make sure the shrimp are fully cooked before removing from the heat.

Serve with rice (I made jasmine rice with a bit of peanut oil) or your side dish of choice.

*For another take, check out Ming Tsai's recipe at Food Network.com. His version calls for deep frying the shrimp, more garlic and more ginger.