Food Network Friday: Shrimp Scampi with Linguini

This Food Network Friday recipe is brought to you by Tyler Florence. I can't even poke fun at him or his shows because I really do enjoy them. He is one of the more credible stars on Food Network for me at least. I will say that this recipe is simple and yet I found it hard to veganize. It was the shrimp that were causing me the trouble. I never ate seafood except a few fish sticks when I was too little to know I was eating fish so I had no idea what I was trying to replace. Ryan used to be a shrimp eater so I asked him for some insight but he didn't really have much since he thought they didn't really taste like much. I bounced all around trying to figure a way to either mimic the dish or completely spin it on its head and ended on mimic. I decided on mushrooms to replace the shrimp and went for a pound just like he had for the shrimp. I went with plain old white button mushrooms but you really could go more adventurous and make it a mix of gourmet mushrooms too. We skipped the wine as well but did a sub of veggie broth with a little white wine vinegar added (thanks Tami for that sub) and put it all on a bed of whole wheat spaghetti. The only change to the cooking instructions I made was that I sauteed the mushrooms first in batches to get them browned then put them all back in the pan with the shallots and garlic just figuring the garlic and shallots would burn if I left them in there while trying to get the mushrooms to brown first.

The verdict...Ryan enjoyed this one (the man loves him some pasta) but for me it was less of a winner. I think I over did the lemon juice for my tastes and there was no taking it back unfortunately. Even mom enjoyed this one so maybe I'm just being picky!

Here's a picture of the finished product and you can see I served it up with some peas. They ended up getting tossed in with it after the picture was taken and they added a nice flavour and helped with the over lemoning for me too.

Don't forget to check out what everyone else did with this one (I know I'm curious) over at Tami's blog and think about cooking along with us for the next Food Network Friday!