Lazy lady's guide to sauteed shrimp and polenta

As you may recall, dear readers of this blog, I love meals that LOOK complicated, but are actually super easy.  Today, I'm sharing another one of those types of recipes with you.  Impress your friends with a meal that takes about one episode of Word Girl the same amount of time for your genius three year old to solve the New York Times Sunday crossword.

You are welcome.

Lazy shrimp and polenta
1 tube of store bought polenta
1/4 cup (half stick) of butter
3 tblsp of olive oil
1 splash cooking wine
1 pound of shrimp (preferably wild - not farmed)
1 cup of milk
1 generous tsp of dried parsley
1/8 tsp dried red pepper flakes
4 cloves of garlic
2 green onions, or 1 shallot, finely diced
Sprinkle of smoked paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Put your empty cast iron skillet over medium heat.

2) Meanwhile, in a pot, break up the tube of polenta, and lightly mash with a potato masher.  Slowly add in milk and stir to combine.  Place on a back burner over low heat.

3) In your (now) hot skillet, add the butter, and melt.

Add your olive oil.  Stir.

Then add your garlic and onions/shallots, and a splash of cooking wine.

The most flavorful cooking wine comes in plastic bottles.  True story!

4) (this would be a good time to stir your polenta).  Add your shrimp, parsley, smoked paprika, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.

Stir, and cook for another few minutes.

5) Meanwhile, stir and season your polenta.  You could technically continue to stir it until smooth, but I used my immersion blender to blend this to a perfect smoothness.   This is after all, a lazy lady's meal.

6) Put a serving of polenta on your plate, and then top with shrimp, taking extra care to get some of the yummy sauce to pour over the whole thing.

Pretty plating be damned - I have real issues with my food touching.  Just seeing the butter migrating over to the tomatoes is giving me the boob sweats.

I had all of the ingredients except the polenta ($2.99 organic) and shrimp ($7.99, previously frozen).  This made four adult meals (two dinners, and two lunches), so $2.75 per serving.  Not bad for a "fancy" 30 minute meal.