Roasted Shrimp & Potatoes (with green stuff)

After my normal Friday bread bake for the neighborhood, the oven was still plenty hot for me to cook some dinner. Easy to say, but you do need to have some idea of what you’d like to cook and actually have the ingredients to follow the idea through...who said cooking was easy? In addition, I wanted something simple after baking 24 loaves of bread...some might say I was being lazy, but I was just hungry & pooped (well, and a bit lazy 🤔).

I started looking around for something to cook and miraculously I came across some frozen pork belly all sliced up and vacuum packed--Jackpot. OK, now with bacon (basically) at the ready, I’m pretty convinced that you could make something tasty out of darn near anything that would be safe to consume and couldn't walk away fast enough. Next to the pork belly was a bag of frozen, peeled, tail-on shrimp...Jackpot! (As Susan once said loudly in Costco when she found 1.75 L bottles of Hendricks Gin..."Look, what the good Lord has provided!") Now to flesh the dinner menu out (boy, that sounds a bit morbid in this context), I needed some carbos for bulk (fiber for those self-appointed culinary elitists). Looking into some of the baskets in the pantry, lo & behold...I spied a bag of small red & Yukon gold potatoes peeking back at me with all those cute little potato eyes--Jackpot #3 (maybe I should be headed for Las Vegas instead of fixing dinner).

At this point I knew that the “proper & balanced diet” police were going to step in and take away my dinner plans if I didn’t add some green stuff of some kind pretty soon 👮. Now, I really like most salads (without tomatoes or cucumbers thank you!), but I was holding in my lazy/pooped pattern for dinner and Lordy! Lordy!, I’d already been working really hard foraging for this dinner and just wanted something easy & simple to make it at least look healthy. Voila! I discovered a small bag of "organic" baby spinach leaves in the crisper (triple washed already–yahoo!)

Cut potatoes, face down & ready

The evening meal was now coming into focus. One pan, one meal...no Julia Child’s kitchen mess here tonight. I sliced about six of the little potatoes and put them in an oiled steel pan, cut side down. I let the frozen shrimp thaw in a small bowl with some lime salt (and wandered a bit in the garden looking for some evidence of spring...no luck). It didn’t take long for the shrimp to get mostly thawed, so I took the pan of spuds out to the den and placed them in the oven (at about 475°F now). I didn’think it would take more than 15-20 minutes for the spuds to cook and get some of that brown & tasty crust on the cut side.





As soon as the potatoes were cooked and browned, I moved them onto a plate.











Adding a little more oil in the pan, I tossed the shrimp in and stuck ‘em into the oven. Didn’t take more than a minute or two to cook them on each side. I was able to watch them and flip ‘em over pretty quickly so they didn’t toughen up.

When I thought they were almost done, I pulled the pan out and tossed the baby spinach on top and...you guessed it...back in the oven. I just wanted the leaves to steam a bit and absorb some of the shrimp flavors.






It only took a couple of minutes more to wilt the spinach...I will say that if anybody had stopped in at that moment they would have thought I’d absolutely lost my mind frying up a batch of wilted, green leaves (certainly didn't look like spinach anymore).

I brought the pan & cooked potatoes back into the house for plating. I thought about being proper and transferring to my dinner plate with a spatula...but remember I was not channeling Julia Child for this meal to fill the dishwasher. The quickest and easiest transfer method was to just up-end the pan on my plate, so the shrimp were on top of the wilted spinach. The hot shrimp juices and remaining flavored oil gave the spinach even more flavor as they flowed down and over the greenery. A sprinkle of potatoes on top rounded out the volume factor with a toasted baguette slice added for atmosphere & crunch. To give the dish even a little more pizzaz, I added some Petits Poivrons (Sweety Drop Peppers) for color. Not quite as flavorful as Peppadews, but still give a nice pop & flavor to a dinner.




This simple dinner was exactly what I was hoping for...tasty, easy, & filling...now, what’s for dessert...(burp)?

Oh crap! I forgot all about the pork belly slices...I wish I had a great excuse here, but the fact is I just totally spaced it. This is probably where some smart-a** foodie would remind me that "mis en place would have prevented this grievous error"...but I didn’t even make it to the mis en place step. However, the oven was still hot and I had quite a few little potatoes left in the bag...hmmm...

OK, follow up plan is to wash up the little spuds, dry them and plunk them in a Dutch oven. Add EVOO, salt, pepper, and cut up pieces of the pork belly slices (AKA lardons at this point) and I’m Bon Appetit bound again. I tossed ‘em all together and planted the covered Dutch oven in the WFO. After about 25 minutes at 475°F, I pulled the pot out and stirred everything. I was hoping most of the pieces of meat would drop to the bottom of the pot and they did. Back into the oven for another 25 minutes and the lardons got some color to them and infused a whole lot of goodness into the little potatoes. I took the Dutch oven out of the WFO and brought it inside to cool. I planned that these tasty little treats would adorn my dinner entrees for several upcoming meals.  😎

I am now a firm believer in having roasted red & gold small potatoes available at all (or most) times. I use them to make my favorite pesto potato salad, hearty breakfasts with eggs, as a whole wheat bread “additive” to help keep in moisture, and--of course--for just plain snackin’ -- Yumm!

Now where was I? Hmmm...oh yeah,  ...burp, dessert!