Sunday Afternoon Experiment: Cooking Light's Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo

The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind! With starting a new job, I haven't done too much cooking, well, experimenting in the kitchen at least. With my new job, I took it easy on the weeknight meal front, and then ended up traveling to Florida for training, so wasn't able to cook. We did manage to sneak in a little family entertaining for  few nights, but that consisted mostly of basic grilling: marinated steak tips, chicken, burgers, and dogs. Since this weekend was free, I have been able to catch up on some house work and had time to test out a Cooking Light recipe from this month's issue: Fettuccine Shrimp Alfredo.

The recipe came out really delicious - both my husband and I agree. It was big on flavor even without all the fat that is often in Fettucinne Alfredo. The Cooking Light version is made with lighter ingredients, keeping the total fat count down but with big flavor.

The thing that I like about the recipe is that it is really easy and super fast. Obviously shrimp take hardly any time to cook so that contributes to the speed and ease of the recipe, but the key is the fresh refrigerated pasta that cooks in 4 minutes!! I hadn't ever thought to use fresh pasta from the refrigerator case, but the recipe called for it, and it came out great!  I will definitely be using that as a recipe shortcut and weeknight meal time saver.

If you do try the Cooking Light recipe, I recommend adding salt and pepper when sauteing the shrimp, and then when making the pan sauce. Cooking Light often doesn't mention that as a step in the recipe, so do keep that in mind. It will definitely boost the overall flavor of the recipe. Also, if you can't find Parmigiano-Reggiano, you can subsitute grated Parmesan. I did, and the recipe still tasted fantastic.

In the magazine, they suggested serving the Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo, with Roasted Asparagus:
Ingredients:
1 pound asparagus, trimmed
2 tsp olive oil
1/8 tsp ground red pepper
1/4 tsp salt

Combine olive, salt, ground red pepper, and asparagus on a jelly-roll pan. Bake at 450 degrees for 6 minutes or until crisp-tender. Serve with lemon wedges.

For the asparagus, I substituted fresh ground black pepper for the red pepper, and it came out excellent. Flavor was excellent without the heat, which is my preference.

Hope you get a chance to try these recipes! I'd love to hear how you like them and what variations you come up with.

Enjoy!