fettucini with shrimp

I have told you this a million times, or possibly four times, but I sense that you never believe me. How can you? For I am so far away, and these are only words. Therefore I have made for you a video. Originally, the video was called

"Stop Overcooking Your Shrimp, You Dumb Shits" 

But my agent and my publicist, or maybe that was the voice of my conscience, told me that title is too rude and I conceded the point. So we changed it and now the video is called:

"Cooking Shrimp"

I laughed, I cried, I left the theater a different person, a bigger person than before. I now face life with the certain knowledge that this is how long it takes to cook shrimp, as long as this video runs. 

Bacon will go on top of the shrimp and pasta so two thick strips were cut and fried and set aside.

Have you noticed how it's hard to make bacon without eating some? That's a good reason to make extra. 

The dough starts out with one egg. Half the shell is used to measure water so choose a good half of the broken shell that won't leak. Or else just forget about the shell and add however much water you wish. Pasta dough doesn't require an egg anyway. I only put them in there because I want to.

The yellow dots underneath the bubbles are lecithin particles. Eventually they melt with a lot of beating. I put them in there to see what would happen. As far as I can see, nothing happened. The red and orange specks are dry chile flakes that I picked apart from little packages of various dry chiles. I use those flakes for everything. I am going through them faster than I imagined I would, and when they run out I will do it all over again except the next time the mixture will be different because there is no possible way I can match it exactly. 

A pasta dough purist would not put lecithin nor chile flakes nor salt nor pepper into their dough, but I do not know why, and I am no purist. Plus there is nobody here to boss me around and I wouldn't listen to them anyway even if they did. 

The dough relaxed for twenty minutes while I had myself a Pepsi. The shrimp was soaking in the iced brine the whole time. 

Now the fun part starts where the various elements begin to come together

The sauce is one tablespoon of the bacon fat with about maybe one, possibly two ounces of Marsala. Then cream is added along with salt/pepper, and a few herbs. 

The pasta is added to the sauce in the pan, then the shrimp to heat through.

A little bit of nutmeg grated over the whole thing because it goes great with cream. 

There is no cheese in this dish, and I do kind of miss it a little bit. 

Once again, I heard a chef, a judge this time for the Chopped show on FoodNetwork say to his fellow judges and for the cameras, "One absolute RULE that EVERYONE agrees is NEVER EVER add cheese to shellfish. It gives it a 'funky' flavor." And I thought to myself in that moment and in the privacy of my living room where all was quiet and peaceful, "Oh, FUCK OFF, you mouse!"  Man, that makes me mad. Then he repeated it to the competing chef when they chopped him, and this chef who had not yet been chopped, upon listening patiently but unrepentantly to the dictum delivered him then said, "Well, I make the things that I like," and then I thought of his response, "How tactful." You see, I'd seriously be tempted to say, if not actually say it, "You know, Judge, I am not beholden to the rules that you live by, nor should I be. And I do not accept that this rule of yours that you hold to be universal among all cooks is so. I would suggest that you have a few words with award-winning chef Frank Bonanno who brought down the house of this very network when he took first place in another competition with his lobster and cheese macaroni, but I'm afraid that having accepted this rule and having lived by it your whole narrow existence and already staked your reputation upon it here that nothing contrary to it can expand that pathetic tiny pea you're using for a brain rattling around  in the otherwise empty space between your ears. You little prick."  A certainty to win an invitation back, don't you agree? 

Oh, wow. I just now realized I forgot to include semolina flour in the pasta dough. I thought something was different. Oh well. It didn't hurt it.