I’ve got to be honest with you – I made this Friday night and completely forgot to take photos of the process! We might have been pretty hungry.
Regardless, this is one of our favorite meals. Sometimes we make it to serve over pasta or, on nights like Friday night, we just get a loaf of crusty bread and call it dinner!
I’m telling you, we’d be pretty content just eating this with a spoon and nothing else. The rich tomato sauce, salty feta, and hint of fennel is perfection.
Ingredients:
- 1 fennel bulb, diced
- olive oil
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes (with liquid)
- 2 teaspoons tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste (we like a lot)
- 1 1/4 pound large shrimp (peeled and deveined)
- 5 ounces crumbled feta
- 1 cup fresh bread crumbs (remove crust from about 4 slices of white bread + pulse in food processor)
- 3 tablespoons fresh minced parsley
- zest from 1 whole lemon
- juice from 1 whole lemon
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Heat approximately 2 tablespoons oil in a heavy, ovenproof pan over medium-low heat. Add fennel and saute until fennel is tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add the wine and bring to a boil, scraping up browned bits. This should reduce by half in about 2 minutes.
Add diced tomatoes with liquid, tomato paste, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. Simmer over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, peel and devein your shrimp. We remove the tails – the presentation is not quite as nice, but it means less work while eating!
Smooth out the sauce in the pan and arrange shrimp in a single layer over the top. Scatter feta over shrimp. In a separate bowl, mix the bread crumbs, parsley, and lemon zest with 2 tablespoons of oil. Sprinkle over shrimp.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes, until shrimp are cooked and breadcrumbs are golden brown. Squeeze lemon juice over dish. Serve over pasta or simply with a good, crusty bread (or both)!
Yum! Honestly, I’m lucky I was able to capture any photos before Brian dug in. About half an hour later, this is all that remained!
This time around we kept the tails on – I was feeling fancy. Though it did remind me why I usually remove them… it’s a bit of a pain digging out all the little tails!
Happy eating 🙂
Recipe adapted from the Barefoot Contessa
