Blue Cabbage Pasta / The Temptations of Cheese Powder

half a medium-sized head of red cabbage, washed and cut into thin strips
half an onion, cut into rounds
oil for cooking
salt to taste
1-1/2 C. flour
2 eggs
a rolling pin (seriously, you need one to make this)
1/2 C. fresh grated parmesan cheese

Ahead of time, combine the flour with a little salt, if you like (I used about 1/2 tsp).  Lightly beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then combine them with the flour.  Add in a little water for consistency-- around 1/4 C.  The dough will look pretty loose.  Wash your hands (do I need to say this?) and then stick them down in the bowl and squirsh the dough until it starts to come together, about three-four squirshes.  Yes, that's a word.  It's onomonopoeic, and it means what you think it means: "squishing with extra squish."  Once the dough is a single lump, turn it out onto a (clean) counter and knead it until it's smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.  Set it aside to let it rest while you do other things.  (Your dough should be able to rest about 30 minutes.)  Get your pasta pot ready but don't turn the heat on: add in about 4 cups of water, 1/2 tsp. salt, and a splash of oil.  Heat some more oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  When it's hot enough, add in the onions and cook them until they're soft.  Then add in the cabbage and cook it until it's soft, stirring it as necessary.  (This takes a bit longer-- about 15 minutes.)  Salt to taste.  When it's ready, roll out your dough into 1/8th inch (3 mm) thickness.  Cut it into strips about 1/2 inch (1 cm) wide , then cut the strips about 3 inches (7 cm) long.  Set them aside on a plate.  For style points, twist each strip into a tight spiral.  Bring the cooking water to a boil.  Dump the fresh pasta into the water.  Remove it when it floats to the top.  Put the cooked cabbage into a large serving bowl.  Pour about 1/2 C. of the pasta water over top.  Put your hot pasta into the bowl.  Toss everything together to coat, including your parmesan cheese. 

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This is a labor-intensive but delectable dish that combines a healthy vegetable with the indulgence of homemade pasta.  I called it "Blue Cabbage Pasta" because red cabbage, when you cook it, ends up looking a beautiful purple-blue.  It makes a large serving bowlful (about 8-10 servings as a main dish), so cut the recipe in half if you're not so into leftovers.  By the way, I'm writing this while eating caramel and artificial cheese-flavored popcorn, and I just had to stop myself from wiping my hands on the carpet.  So please do not ever think I'm Martha Stewart.  I'm pretty sure Martha Stewart is never even tempted to wipe her hands on the carpet.  In my defense, that cheese powder is so sticky that you almost instictively want to get it off your hands, and no, I didn't actually wipe my hands on the carpet.  I just almost did.

Turkey Keilbasa Hot Pot / Recipe for a Not-Busy Week

This week has been a busy week, I'm not gonna lie.  However, this is a perfect opportunity to share with you one of my favorite busy-week-but-don't-want-fast-food recipes. 

Turkey Keilbasa Hot Pot
1/2- 1 whole turkey keilbasa (I use, I think, Johnson Hill-- whichever one is the MSG-free one, but some good quality hot dogs would be good in here too)
8 oz. dry pasta
1 large can baked beans, your choice of flavor
2-3 TB. jam (I like apricot or peach)
2-3 TB. ketchup
1-2 tsp. curry powder

Cook the pasta.  Drain and set aside.  Slice the keilbasa or hotdogs.  Open the can of beans.  Dump the keilbasa in the bottom of a saucepan over medium heat.  Let it sizzle around awhile until it starts looking and smelling cooked, about 2-3 minutes.  (Now remember, both hot dogs and keilbasa are actually fully cooked in the package, but they taste a lot better if your get them nice and crispy in the pan, and honestly, it can't hurt to cook any meat a little further.)  Pour the can of beans on top.  Stir the keilbasa all into the beans, and then stir it while it heats up to bubbling hot.  (Not molten lava hot, just tasty hot.)  Stir in the seasonings.  Stir in the cooked pasta.  Cook a little longer until everything is yummy hot again (you know, because the pasta probably cooled things down a little.)  Serve in bowls.  The end.  Yum.  Start to finish this takes about 15 minutes!  If you were feeling less lazy earlier in the week, eat it alongside that nice green salad you have sitting in the fridge. 
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Recipe for a Not-Busy Week

Do not have someone die at work.
Do not get up before the cock crows.
Do not go to bed after the cock crows.
Do not attempt to make contact with the outside world.
Do not do the dishes.  (Natch.)
Do not do the laundry.  (Double-natch.)
Do not fill your car with gas at any time before 10 minutes after you were supposed to hit the interstate for work.

Repeat at least five times in a row for best results.
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I write this as an homage to 50's and 60's era "recipes for a busy week" that invariably appear in church/community cookbooks of the period.  They typically go along the lines of "Catch one rabbit.  Skin and clean the rabbit.  Chop into 1/4-inch pieces.  Stew for approximately 5 hours..." etc. etc. etc. and are basically a smart-ass housewife commentary on how feeding a family homecooking is, in itself, a full-time job.

Sweet Pumpkin Kugel

2/3 C. canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just plain pumpkin!!)
1/4 C. granulated sugar
2 eggs
8 oz. egg noodles
8 oz. sour cream
1/4 C. (1/2 of a standard stick) of butter

Boil and drain the egg noodles according to package directions.  (I left mine a little al dente figuring their time in the oven would further cook them and prevent any soggy noodles.)  Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl.  Beat in butter, the sour cream (to cool it down), then the pumpkin, and finally the eggs.  Combine the pumpkin-sour cream mixture with the cooked noodles.  Pour all into a buttered 6x6 deep casserole.  (Why do I have one of these?  My Great-grandmother on my mom's side was getting ready to move to assisted living a couple of years ago, and, having lived by herself all those years, had plenty of small cooking dishes that she didn't need anymore.  So she passed some of them on to me.)  Bake it, covered, at 350 for about an hour.  Serves approximately 4-6.
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And there you have it!  It's slightly sweet, has a vegetable in it, and is rich and satisfying.  I would upload a picture but honestly I tore into it straight out of the oven.

Parmesan Patties in Onion Cream Sauce

1 lb hot cooked pasta

Patties
1 lb ground turkey
1 C. parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs

Mix all together.  (If you want, you can cook all of them with this dish, but what I did was save about 2/3rds of the mixture in the freezer as premade meatballs.  So you may want to double the sauce recipe (or more) if you want to serve all the patties at once.)  Heat 3TB (1/2 a stick of butter) in a large skillet.  Fry the patties on both sides over medium to medium-low heat (so they don't brown too fast and do get cooked all the way through).  Set aside.  DO NOT DISCARD THE BUTTER IN THE PAN.

Sauce
1 large onion, chopped into slivers (ie, stop chopping them one step before you get cubes)
1/2 C. cream
salt and pepper to taste
the rest of the stick of butter

Scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan.  Melt the butter in it.  Saute the onions in the pan until they are soft.  Reduce the heat to low.  Add in the cream and stir to mix well.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Pour the sauce over the turkey patties to comingle the flavors --or-- Serve each plate individually with pasta, patties, then a generous helping of sauce.
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This is my own take on a recipe from The Northend Italian Cookbook, "Saporite de Manzo".  I felt it deserved a rename because my version differs in some of the ingredients and quantities and also does NOT have any balsamic vinegar, and therefore probably tastes a lot different.

I really wanted to add some white wine to the sauce-- I had even bought some muscato at the liquor store-- but the cheap corkscrew I bought literally broke off in the bottle.  It was a hot mess.  I had to dig most of the cork out crumb by crumb with: a steak knife, my bare hands, and a long knitting needle.  The rest came out stuck to the bottom of the corkscrew or ended up in my wine.  Ugh.  So, needless to say, my wine-adding plans were scuttled when the corkscrew broke off in my wine bottle, since making a sauce is a time-sensitive operation that doesn't really allow for 30 minutes of cork-mining and I therefore had to set that project aside and finish making my dinner.  If you want to add wine, what you would do is: after you've removed the cooked patties from the cooking pan, add in the wine (about 1/4 C.) and let it bubble and moil about while you scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.  Then, once all that's done with, add in the additional butter and continue with the recipe as written.  However, the oniony sauce as it is was pretty good, especially mixed with the flavor of the parmesan cheese in the patties.

When I made my pasta, I actually cooked a half pound of pasta and a half pound of frozen peas together.  I think it was yummy, but you could go with plain pasta, too.

Butteriest Butter / Great-grandmom Pulls her Tricks

You know that butter you get in a seafood restaurant to dip your crab legs or lobster in?  That butter that is somehow the epitome of butter, and of the concept of butteriness?  Well, today I discovered how to make it.  No, it's not just melted butter.  And no, it's definitely not vegetarian.  But it's great on anything!

1 stick of butter
1 clove of garlic, minced
3 anchovy filets, drained and patted dry (I didn't pat mine, but I guess you could)

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.  Once it's all melted and also stopped foaming for the most part (only a few seconds after it finishes melting), toss in the minced garlic and let it sizzle for a few seconds.  Then, remove the butter from the heat and throw in the anchovy filets.  Mash them up as much as you can, prefereably with a wooden spoon.
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That's it.  I served it over cooked cauliflower today and I couldn't get enough of it.  Not that I dislike cauliflower to begin with.  I am an adult and buy my own groceries, so I don't have to eat cauliflower if I didn't like it.  Which I do, and I did.  But that was some of the most badass cauliflower I've ever eaten.  This sauce was also poured over hot cooked spaghetti or linguine by Great-grandmom Canduci, and while I can't recall ever having it, my mom liked it so much that, despite not even liking anchovies, she still remembers that pasta and how delicious it was.  The secret is that you can't taste the anchovies, at least not in the traditional sense.  They are definitely the "secret ingredient", but the end product is not fishy or even oily.  Just buttery.  So deliciously buttery!

Grand-grandmom Canduci was a card.  I got reminded of some good stories about her when I was putting up the broccoli rabe post, and decided I would share them.

Gardening: see "How to Get a Free Trip to the Grocery Store"

Great-grandmom was a wiley and resourceful old fox and, according to her children, a wiley and resourceful young fox too.  Great-grandmom's method of getting stuff done around the house that she needed to delegate or just didn't want to do herself was to rope the unsuspecting bystander (read: family member) in with a statement something along the lines of "Hey, can you come help me with this?"  Who's to turn down a sweet old Italian lady?  HAH!  Inevitably you would look up from pulling weeds or whatever it was you were "helping her" with and she would be gone!  She even did this to me with the crab grass in her front walk, and she died when I was about 8 years old so I know I must have been a fairly small child at the time.  Wiley indeed!  To pull her tricks even with a little child!  I remember the deep sense of irritation I felt. 

This is also the method Great-grandmom used when, in her later years, she needed a ride to the grocery store.  "Can you give me ride?  Is on the way!" she would ask innocently.  "Of course!" was the only allowable answer-- remember, this is the woman who smacked her own adult sons with the wooden spoon she was cooking with for failing to compliment her cooking.  (FYI: the answer is always "Oh, it is so delicious," to an Italian woman.  Otherwise: smacking.)  So, the driver in question would load up Great-grandmom and drive over the the Acme ("Ack-em-mah") and she would then turn to them and say, innocently, "Oh, can you help me carry groceries?  Is only a few things.  Short trip."  So, the driver would get out of the car (remember, at this point she or he has been promised that it will be "short trip" that is "on the way", meaning the driver still has other business to attend to) and become more and more incredulous as Great-grandmom worked her way through the entire grocery and at least one full cartload.  It's obvious that her victims (read: family members) were truly fooled only a few times.  But what are you going to say to Great-grandmom?  No?  No.  In fact, you beat her at her own game, if you could, by claiming to have a strict appointment that you were running late for, or almost out of gas.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Red Sauce with Crabs

12 small crabs*
olive oil for sauteing
6-8 cloves of garlic
a splash of red wine
Tomato sauce made with: 3 big and 2 little tomatoes, a little sugar, fresh basil to taste, and 2 bay leaves

Clean the crabs and saute them with the garlic in a little olive oil.  Add in the rest of the ingredients and cook until done.**
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*This reminds me of the time Grandmom and I decided to eat crabs since I was up there and Grandmom therefore had justification for buying them.  We both love seafood.  Grandpop does not.  Or rather, he didn't before their marriage, went through a 20-year period where he did like it after being tricked into eating it, much the same way he learned to appreciate rabbit, and then in recent years has returned to his original seafood-hating state.  So we went to the grocery store to purchase some crabs, which in New Jersey is not a difficult thing to do.  But lo and behold!  That day, there were no large, luscious Alaskan crab legs or Snow crab legs for us to take home and boil up with a hint of Old Bay and dunk in hot melted butter.  No.  The only crabs to be gotten in the midst of the summer were little blue crabs.  So we bought them, and took them home, and made this sauce with them, which we ate on top of linguine.  The funny part is that you have to understand that when this recipe says "clean the crabs" it doesn't mean "take all the meat out of the shells"-- it just means "run them bad boys under some water so you don't eat sand and crab poop."  So the crabs should be, and were, in shell.  Hard shells.  And they were little crabs.  So, we started out with a serving platter piled high, I mean high, with tiny cooked crabs, and we, seafood lovers that we are, and stubborn people that we are, commenced to eating them.  When we conceded that we were done, two and a half hours later, we had made it about 3/4ths of the way down, sucking every tiny claw to its very core along the way.  Grandpop had left the table after finishing his non-seafood alternative about a half-hour into the crab festival muttering something about how we were eating too much.  But, as anybody who has ever tried to eat a tiny crab can tell you, there ain't a lot of meat in them tiny crabs.  I think we got more calories from the linguine.  But it was a delicious and messy experience and, honestly, that's what eating crabs should be.

**"Until done."  Possibly the two most obscure words in the English language.  It assumes so much of the recipe reader, like that they know what done is, what it looks like, and about how long it takes to get there.  In this case, you should have a nice saucy tomato sauce (not cooked salsa), and your crabs should be safe to consume without fear of horrible digestive consequences.  So at least 30 minutes on medium-low (think "simmer").  Maybe an hour.  An added benefit to making this sauce is that you have deliciously crabby red sauce left long after you finish off your tiny crabs, which you can soak into good Italian bread (the sauce, not the tiny crabs) or coat more luxurious pasta with.  A good pasta sauce should go a long way.

Eggy Pasta / Dating is Like Awkward Science

2 eggs
1-1/2 C. flour
water, if needed for consistency
salt, if desired

Mix together the flour and about 1/4 tsp. of salt, if you want it in there.  Make a well in the flour and break the eggs into the well.  Blend the eggs and flour together using your fingers.  Squish, squish.  The Italian Knead, remember?  If the dough is too dry (ie it won't hang together) work in a little water via kneading the regular way.  The dough, at this point, should be a fairly stiff, unworkable ball.  Let it rest covered in a damp tea towel or plastic wrap about 20 minutes.  Now you should be able to roll it out.  Roll it out to about 1/8th inch thickness (about 0.3 cm)*.  Now you can cut it into whatever shapes you want.  If you have a pastry cutter, it'll work like a dream, but a clean, sharp knife will work just as well.  I don't try to get too fancy with my homemade pasta shapes, but if you want to, be my guest.  From the appearance of store-bought pasta, I gather that it is not rocket science.  Just regular science with a certain amount of peculiarity that requires learning by experience**.  Anyway, once your pasta is shaped, all you have to do is boil it, usually for about 2-3 minutes.

*Heh.  I just did the math for the sake of accuracy and determined that it is exactly 0.3 cm.  Yeah, I'm that good.

**IE trial and error, the awkward 20-somethings of the scientific family and the source of: radiation therapy, antibiotics, and tupperware.  So if you happen to be in that indeterminate period in life, the next time someone corners you at a family gathering and starts to give you the third degree about that nice girl/boy you took to the prom almost a decade ago, remind them that you're still in the process of discovering penicillin so give it a rest. 

Leftover Spaghetti

This is a narrative-style recipe that warrents inclusion because...what do you do with leftover spaghetti so that it's not gluey, flavorless, and soggy with watery tomato sauce?

Answer: Fry it in a pan.  I don't mean "fry" as in "deep fry".  Just reheating it really.  Spaghetti is one of those things that just tastes better if you avoid the microwave.  The sauce will thicken up a little bit, the noodles regain a significant amount of bite, and the whole thing is just a tad crispy so it's not exactly the same thing you had for dinner the night before.

Convinced?  Get out a medium to large skillet, put a very little oil in it, and turn the burner on to medium-low heat.  Let it heat up a little bit, then put in your leftover spaghetti, sauce** and all.  Cook in the skillet, addling* it occasionally to keep it from sticking, until it is nice and piping hot.  Serve immediately.
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*Addling is traditionally done to scrambled eggs, but I feel that the word best describes what Grandmom does when she reheats leftover spaghetti.  What is addling?  Basically, you get your cooking implement (a spoon or spatula) and kind of poke at the contents of your pan.  It's not as aggressive as scraping the bottom of the pan to deglaze it, and it's not as rapid as sauteing.  To the untrained eye, it looks like playing with the contents of the pan.  Poke it around some.  There, now you're addling.

**If you made your spaghetti the Italian way to start with, you tossed the cooked noodles in about 1/2 C. of the tomato sauce to lubricate them.  Because Italians do not dump their pasta in a collander and run cold water over it "to keep it from sticking."  In addition, Italian-style cooked pasta is always boiled with about 1 TB of olive oil and some salt.  So sticking to each other is not really a big concern!

This recipe embodies every good Italian woman's number one lesson, learned at the breast and not abandoned until the grave: "Finish, finish!  Must not waste!"  Throw out week old spaghetti?  Not on your life!  We must EAT it!  Every bite!  Over and over and over again until it's gone.  "Finish!  Must not waste!"  This chant is used as an encouragement, cajoling, or guilt-inducer.  It's the Italian version of starving people in China.

Peas Sicilian-Style / Showing Love By Breaking the Vacuum Cleaner

2 C. peas
1/2 sweet white onion
oil for sauteing
thyme or oregano to taste
salt to taste

Boil the peas in a minimum of water according to package directions or until tender (about 10 minutes).  In the meantime, slice the onion half lengthwise in very thin slices (so that you end up with strips, not cubes).  Heat the oil in a skillet.  Saute the onion until just tender.  Add in the peas.  Toss to coat.  Let cook a little longer to blend the flavors.  Season to taste.

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Grandmom told me this is another "feed the family" recipe.  You know, from back in the day when food was a family's biggest living expense, not rent or gas.  Great-grandmom Canduci, she told me, would use a single can of peas and make pasta and toss the cooked and seasoned peas in there to feed the whole family (eight people!) supper.

Grandmom imparted this recipe to me after I got done making the experimental chicken recipe from the magazine (too sweet) and, unbeknownst to her, breaking her vacuum cleaner in an attempt to fix it.  So, to clear up any confusion, non-commecial vacuum cleaners were not designed for the consumer to open the engine housing.  Even if it's to clean out critical amounts of dust that could cause the engine to ignite.  So don't even try getting a hand-crank drill after the cheap metal screws, because honestly, what are you going to do once you get done reaming them out?  Duct tape the housing back together and pretend like nothing happened?  (Tempting, but flammable, which defeats the original purpose of preventing your grandparents from cremating themselves.  Yes, a new vacuum purchase was the eventual end of this experiment.)

Pasta with Asparagus

1/2 lb pasta, cooked (makes about 4 servings)
1 bunch fresh asparagus, cut into 3-4 inch-long sections
1 C. chicken broth*
grated parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
oil for sauteing

Cook the pasta.  Set aside.  Heat the oil in the bottom of a deep saucepan.  Saute the garlic until it starts to become aromatic.  Put in the asparagus and saute a little longer.  Add in the chicken stock and reduce the heat until the stock is just simmering.  Cover and let cook until the asparagus is tender, about 10-15 minutes.  Put the cooked pasta in the pan with the asparagus and toss to coat.  Remove all (including broth) to a serving dish.  Top with grated parmesan cheese and toss to coat.  Once it is served onto plates, you can add more parmesan on top if you prefer to. 

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This recipe is so simple, and is about as authentic as you can get.  Grandmom told me that when she was growing up, most nights of the week her mother would fix pasta with a vegetable...because they were poor!  But it is also extremely healthy, and tasty, as attested by the fact that she still fixes that kind of dish today even though she is definitely not poor anymore.

*As for the chicken broth, if you are vegetarian you have a number of options, which include purchasing and using your own favorite brand of vegetable-based stock.  I personally used to have a pretty good recipe at one time, but even though I lost it I can tell you that making a broth exclusively out of bouquet garni, salt and pepper, celery, onions, and carrots tastes pretty much identical to a chicken stock made with the same.  I have heard that miso makes a good savory broth as well.  I haven't tried it, but I do like miso soup, or sometimes even as a hot beverage!!

Broccoli Rabe with Clams and Spaghetti / Overcooking Your Pasta is Bad for Society

1 TB olive oil
1-1/2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 bunch broccoli rabe (about 1/2 lb) trimmed and cut into 5 -inch pieces
6 oz. canned clams, juices reserved
1/8 C. unsalted butter (about 1-2 TB)
1/4 C. dry white wine
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 lb uncooked spaghetti
1/8 C. grated parmesan cheese

Boil the pasta and drain.  In a separate pan, saute the garlic and broccoli rabe for 5 minutes.  Stir in the clams and butter until the butter is melted.  Add in the wine, red pepper, and black pepper and simmer for 2 minutes.  In a serving bowl or the pot you cooked the pasta in, toss the hot cooked pasta with the clams and broccoli rabe and all the yummy pan juices.
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I think the way this recipe is written that it's intended for the pasta to get done at the same time as the broccoli rabe and clams.  If you can pull this off, it probably tastes best this way.  However, DO NOT OVER COOK THE PASTA.  While pasta advertisements have been extolling the virtue of al dente pasta so heavily over the years that one might get the impression that the real way to eat pasta is half-crunchy, it IS true that pasta should be...firm.  IE, when you bite into it, you should actually feel a certain amount of resistance between your teeth.  ("Don't eat me, don't eat me!" it's crying out.  Hahaha I just traumatized The Future of America.)  I mention this because it is the opposite goal of PTA fundraisers across America to convince us that the best way to eat pasta is a gooey mushy pile of partially digested glue.  UCK.  Obviously you can tell how I feel about this.  So, cook your pasta until it's done, but don't leave it boiling or sitting in the water if your veggies are taking a little longer or you were slow on the chopping part or something.  Rewarmed firm pasta tastes better than steaming hot glue, and that is not an opinion, that is a statement of fact.

Broccoli rabe is also known as rapini.  Whatever you call it, in my book it's delicious.  The stems are edible!  Don't cut them off and throw them away-- when you cook them they get tender like asparagus.

By the way, some of these recipes were composed or gathered during my Grandmom's dieting days.  So, be advised that it may not be humanly possible to saute everything you need to saute in a single tablespoon of olive oil or 1/8 cup unsalted butter. Just add some more, I won't tell.  In addition, my experience of Italian family suppers is that you put as much parmesan as you like, which is frequently a lot, grated by you at the table off the chunk that lives in the refrigerator for just such a purpose. 

Fish Sauce for Spaghetti

2 cans of tuna
2 small cans tomato paste--or--1 can tomato puree
chopped onion and garlic to taste (most would probably like 1 onion and 1 clove garlic)

Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft.  Add in tomato paste or puree.  Stir in canned tuna.  Let simmer a few minutes, until heated through and the flavors have had a chance to blend.  Serve over hot pasta.

Red Clam Sauce

1 large onion
3 TB olive oil
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. basil, crumbled
1/2 tsp. salt
2 TB. chopped fresh parsley
2 8oz. cans tomato sauce
2 7-1/2oz cans minced clams

Saute onion in oil till tender.  Stir in oregano, basil, salt, parsley, and tomato sauce.  Drain clams, reserving juice.  Add the juice to the tomato sauce mixture and simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove from the heat.  Stir in the clams.  Heat thoroughly.  Serve with linguine.  Makes about 1 quart.

Shrimp Primavera

2 garlic cloves, minced
olive oil for sauteing
1/2 lb uncooked shrimp, shelled
1/2 lb. asparagus, cut into 1-1/2 inch-long pieces
12 oz. linguine
1 small yellow squash, sliced
1/2 C. clam juice
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt
1 C. cherry tomatoes, cut into halves
2 tsp. grated lemon peel
1/2 C. sliced green onions
black pepper to taste

In a deep skillet, saute garlic in olive oil until garlic is just tender.  Add in the shrimp and asparagus, saute for 3 minutes or until shrimp begins to turn pink.  Stir in the squash, clam juice, and salt.  Cover and simmer 3 more minutes or until shrimp is full cooked and vegetables are tender-crisp.  Stir in the tomatoes, lemon peel, green onions, and pepper to taste, and heat through.  Serve over linguine.