Two years ago, a lot of people rekindled their relationships with their own kitchens. We were starting to feel out this new pandemic and cooking at home kept us away from people and was easier on our wallets. It is also when I started asking around to see if there was a community local Facebook page for people who cook in their own kitchens.
There wasn’t and that’s how the Connect in the Kitchen group was formed. It doesn’t take a whole lot to start a group on Facebook. You press the button and hope that people contribute to the page. And boy did they ever! With over 2,200 members to the page today, local community members have been encouraging and inspiring new dishes and ideas in each other’s kitchen’s.
That’s exactly where the inspiration for this simple dish came from. I featured Christine‘s recipes before because her cooking styles are so similar to my own. I like to make an Alfredo sauce with garlic, butter, cream cheese and heavy whipping cream and this Parmesan sauce is a thinned down version of that.
Christine made a dish with the sauce that included asparagus which looked wonderful. I think there are a lot of veggies that would play nicely with us, and you could use any proteins you’d like, but I highly recommend shrimp. I, of course, purchase all of the vegetables off of the dollar-basket table at Jebbia’s order to keep the cost of this dish low.
Along with a portion of the shrimp and the remaining ingredients, this is a five-dollar dish and, for me, was two servings.
In saying that I also should mention that I love black truffle salt. It’s a high-dollar value for a container, but it lasts quite some time and it really elevates a cream-based dish like this one. So, I did sprinkle that on top of this dish which to me takes it to the next level.
It’s all about balance!
Ingredients:
- 10 to 12 frozen shrimp without tails
- 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms
- 1 red pepper
- 1 zucchini
- 1/2 onion
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- half stick of butter
- 4oz of cream cheese
- 1/4 cup of having whipping cream
- 1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan
Directions:
- Slice onion, mushrooms, peppers, and zucchini.
- Place shrimp and a bowl of room temperature water to thaw.
- Melt butter in skillet.
- Add thawed shrimp.
- Once the shrimp is cooked and turns pink remove them from the skillet.
- Add minced garlic and sliced onion to the skillet.
- Sauté for two minutes and then add remaining vegetables.
- Sauté for 3 to 4 minutes and then add cream cheese and heavy whipping cream.
- Stir until a thin sauce is covering the vegetables.
- Add shrimp and Parmesan cheese.
- Remove from heat and stir until combined.
Enjoy!
(I added a sprinkle of black truffle salt after plating which I love with a cream sauce dish!)
