Shrimp Pasta with Avocado and Ricotta cheese

The best inspirations come from staring at the contents of your fridge and thinking "This is about to expire; I should make something with it. What goes well with this?" That's how I came up with this recipe--ricotta cheese and ripe avocado needed to be eaten. Originally I was going to cook a hot pasta with spinach, onion, and peppers until I started chopping up vegetables and preparing the avocado. I realized that all the ingredients I was using were in guacamole except for the spinach. I should rename this post "Shrimp Guacamole Pasta Salad." There's a couple of things I would do differently next time: more avocado, less ricotta. The dish came out pretty good but I couldn't really taste the avocado underneath all that ricotta.

Ingredients

• 16 med shrimp
• 1/4 cup red bell pepper, finely diced
• 1/4 cup green bell pepper, finely diced
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• x servings of pasta of your choice
• 1 med tomato, diced
• 1 ripe avocado, peeled and pitted
• 8 oz part skim ricotta cheese
• 1/8 med onion finely chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• dash of crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Procedure

1. Cook the shrimp in a frying pan with the olive oil, garlic powder, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Set aside in a bowl and put it in the refrigerator.
2. Boil a pot of water and cook pasta according to the directions on the box.
3. In a large bowl, smash the avocado with a fork and mix in the lime juice. Add the ricotta cheese and then mix in the vegetables until well mixed. 
4. Take the shrimp out of the refrigerator and mix it in with the avocado and ricotta mixture.
5. If your large bowl with the avocado-shrimp-ricotta mixture is big enough to toss in the cooked pasta, do so. Otherwise, find a larger bowl and toss everything in it. Mix well.

Chicken, mushrooms, and green beans in cilantro pesto with a side of wannabe guacamole mashed potatoes

Soundtrack: 60s, 70s and 80s hits Pandora Station

I didn't intend for there to be a green theme, but it just so happened that I had left over cilantro and I had more avocado. I woke up pretty late this morning (or afternoon?) and I had this impulse to cook something. Maybe I dreamed about it or was thinking about it before I drifted off to sleep the night before, but I knew what I needed to cook: avocado mashed potatoes (wannabe guacamole mashed potatoes) and something with cilantro pesto. Mashed potatoes and guacamole are two of my favorite foods. Potatoes are my comfort food and if anything has avocado listed in the food description on a menu I will most likely order it. Why not combine the two? I shouldn't take all the credit for wannabe guacamole mashed potatoes because I recall finding a recipe online for something similar to what I made today (but mine is better, in my humble opinion.).

I don't usual plan out what I cook so it's usually an experiment. I was lucky that this time it didn't suck and that I remembered to write down  specifically all the ingredients that I used. I'm not entirely certain that what I made was actually a pesto, but I'm just going to call it that anyway. Also, I foresee in the future that I will unintentionally (perhaps now, intentionally) have several posts in the row involving the same ingredients because I need to use up the fresh fruits and vegetables before they go bad. I might as well write about it.

Some parting comments: I should have added a little more salt and pepper to the chicken entree and I should have had more than 1 clove of garlic in the pesto. Other than that, I feel like today's experiment was a success.

 Mashed avocado and finely chopped cilantro 

Mashed potatoes with one head of oven roasted garlic mashed in

Wannabe guacamole mashed potatoes

Cilantro Pesto: finely chopped cilantro, garlic clove, 3 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Main dish: chicken, mushroom, green beans with cilantro pesto
 

Lunch!

Wannabe guacamole mashed potatoes

Ingredients:

4 medium potatoes peeled and cut into 8ths

~1/3 cup cilantro finely chopped

1 head of garlic

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp of salt

1 avocado

1/2 tbsp lime juice

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp sour cream

Directions:

1. Cook the potatoes in a large pot of boiling water until you can easily poke a fork through the potato. Then drain and set aside.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, preheat the oven to 350 F and remove most of the skin off the head of garlic leaving only a 1 or 2 layers of skin. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Place the head of garlic in the center and then cover it in the 2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Bake garlic for 20 min or until you can easily poke a fork through a clove of garlic. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, add in the peeled and seeded avocado, lime juice, cumin, cilantro and sour cream. Mash and blend until well mixed and relatively smooth.
4. Using the same pot you boiled the potatoes in, mash the potatoes. Carefully remove the remaining skin on the oven roasted garlic and mash the garlic in a small bowl. Add the mashed garlic into the mashed potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix until all ingredients are well-blended.
5. Spoon the mashed potato mixture into the large bowl with the avocado/guacamole mixture. Blend all ingredients until relatively smooth.

Cilantro Pesto

Ingredients:

1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro

1 clove garlic mined

3 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Finely chop the cilantro and finely mince the garlic. Then combine all ingredients.

Chicken, mushroom, and green bean entree

Ingredients:

cilantro pesto (see above)

~ 1 cup sliced mushrooms

~1/2-1 lb chicken cut into pieces

1/2 small onion diced

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

~1/2 cup cooked green beans

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Pour in the tables spoon of oil into a large pan and cook the diced onion on medium heat until slightly golden.
2. Add the sliced and washed mushrooms to the pan. Cook mushrooms for about 5 minutes or until slightly brown. Stir occasionally.
3. Add the chicken into the pan and cook until the chicken is no longer pink.
4. Stir in the cooked green beans and the pesto. Add salt and pepper to taste.