Fancy Pants with Shrimp in Orange Red Wine Reduction Sauce

Reading break! Well, reading week more like. A week of reading. With commitment to cooking to the side. I have got a line up of cooking and baking to do. This is including experimental gnocchi coming up tomorrow and ginger apple butter which I'm super duper stoked about.

Since this is the first post of this series and it has been a week since my last one, I will briefly update you on my crazy life. Serious. Crazy. Life. I am now volunteering 3 days a week with permanently scheduled times, another volunteer post at school helping recruit volunteers, and still working, and completely dropping the ball at school. I lived on 6 hours of sleep a night and much too big of cups of coffee. Although I have managed to go to the gym everyday for so many days that I have lost track. It's my outlet for the built up anger/frustration/depression/misery/stress and sorts. It works, for while I'm there. Otherwise, my poor parents have been taking it all. Thank goodness for parents. 

I think that is enough about my rant on the current life or lack of actual life. We should get to tonight's feature. Shrimp in orange red wine reduction sauce. That's the basis of it. I put it on a bed of slightly cooked arugula. I would LOVE to have it as just arugula salad and I think it would be absolutely fantastic, but with my present intestinal issues, it's not the best for me to eat raw anything.

This came from an inspirational scallop recipe. It has nothing to do with any part of the scallop recipe, except for the seafood part. The grocery store had fresh shrimp, I had to jump at the opportunity.

Fresh, never frozen. Actually!

My friend Erin and I also bought a bottle of sweet red yesterday, so I wanted to do something that would pair well with that. This is a mixed wine from Australia and it is quite sweet. But it was cheap. And it's good. They were sampling it at the liquor store. 

This took surprisingly little amount of time. For those of you who cook during the week, it's definitely a good quick fancy dinner for the weekday. I was eating, looked at the clock and realized I was at they gym an hour ago. And by then I had already showered and put on a load of dryer and washer. And so here it is. Something a little fancier, and oh so tasty to kick off the week of reading and cooking and blogging.

SHRIMP IN ORANGE RED WINE REDUCTION

Time: 20 min

Serves 1--> or more if you want to double

Ingredients

6 shrimp (shrimps)**

1 large shallot

Juice of 1 large orange (about 1/2 cup)

zest of 1/2 an orange

1/4 cup sweet red wine

1 tsp cooking oil

salt and pepper to taste

**any kind you want, I just happen to have fresh ones, but DON'T defrost if you use frozen!

Directions

Look at that yumminess!

1. Slice the shallot into thin rings.
2. Heat oil in a skillet on high heat until hot.
3. Put shallot into hot oil/skillet then turn it to medium heat.
4. Cook shallot until it starts to soften. Salt and pepper to your liking.
5. Add orange juice. Be careful here, there will be steam. And lots of it. I learned the hard way. Let the mixture cook until it reduces and thickens a bit.
6. Add wine. Again, cooking until it starts to reduce.
7. Add the shrimp. Cook until shrimp is cooked through.
8. Plate the shrimp on whatever greens you like (something dark though, not lettuce, please don't put it on lettuce, unless it's the nice kind). Or serve as is like an appetizer.

Happy fancy mealing:)

I decided to add a fancy slice of orange and plate it all nicely and such.