Penne a la Betsy

It's Tuesday, that means Melanie and I are sharing our 'Pioneer Recipe' with you all today :-) Last week I chose a pasta dish, the dish is called Penne a la Betsy - a recipe PW got from her sister.

This dish to me sounded delicious . . . . what's not to love about cream, garlic, butter, wine and shrimp? I couldn't wait to try this dish. I made this last Friday night. My neighbor Cheryl had popped over and we (hubby and I) were sitting outside having a glass of wine chatting with her. I said I was going in to make the pasta dish so Cheryl came in too and chatted with me while I made it. And for that reason, I didn't actually get many photos (or even good quality ones, I took these with my Google phone!)

This is such a simple dish to make, you start off sauteing a small onion in butter, then add chopped garlic, then a 1/2 cup of dry white wine (this I borrowed from Cheryl because I only had sweet Liebfraumilch in) ;-)

then add a 14oz can of tomato sauce and a cup of heavy cream! Meanwhile you've been boiling 1lb of penne pasta. Add this to the creamy sauce and then stir in your 1lb of shrimp (which you've sauteed earlier, or if you're like me you just defrosted some cooked shrimp) and then your fresh herbs, parsley and a little basil.... and voila!

A delicious dish of creamy shrimp pasta.

As I said, I didn't get many pictures while making this, I just managed to snap a few shots before we all tried a bowl. The pictures don't do it justice, this was a pretty salmon kind of pink creamy sauce, and I loved the taste of it. Hubby tried it too (and he doesn't even like shrimp) and he said he liked it. My intention was to half the pasta mix and add shrimp to one half and chicken for him to the other half, but I didn't really have time to do the chicken. Jason said he didn't care about the chicken, he would try this anyway.


Both Cheryl and Jason said it was really nice.

The verdict: Get ready for the good news and the bad.... the good news, this was a quick and simple yet decadent meal, I think it would be great for a quick weekend dinner with a nice fresh salad and a cool glass of white wine. You better intend to eat all of this in one sitting though, because the bad news is, it doesn't reheat well the next day - trust me on this one, I tried it and . . . yuck! The pasta absorbs all of the sauce so it's very dry and the pasta itself is very 'mushy'. I couldn't eat it so I'm sad to say the rest of it went in the trash the next day :-(

PW has this recipe on her cooking blog so CLICK HERE for some delicious looking photos AND the recipe. I did notice the online recipe is slightly different from the book. The main thing being the online recipe tells you to just use an 8oz can of tomato sauce and the book calls for a 14 oz can. I used a 14oz can and would say this made it nice and 'saucy' ;-)

Don't forget to head over to Melanie's blog and see what she thought. Oh, and "what are we cooking next Mel?" ;-)

I'm linking up with Jen for Tasty Tuesday and Lisa for Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Head on over to these great blogs for more wonderful recipes.