Shrimp with Creamy Orange-Chipotle Sauce

Shrimp with Creamy Orange-Chipotle Sauce is another easy and quick recipe from Cooking Light’s latest cookbook, Fresh Food Fast, 5 ingredients, 15 minute recipes. I love shrimp and always try to use wild shrimp. The cookbook says that the half-and-half and grated orange rind will create a citrusy cream sauce that tames the spiciness of the chipotle chili. While I agree to an extent, it was still a bit spicy for our taste, so I decreased the amount of cumin called for on the shrimp. Cooking Light uses very little salt, but I used salt on my raw shrimp along with the cumin.

I’m also not a big fan of cooking sprays, so I used a tiny bit of canola in the pan in lieu of the spray. My recipe is for two servings instead of four, but I used the entire sauce recipe because I tossed the sauce with the spaghetti and the shrimp, rather than just with the shrimp (as the original recipe suggested). They used regular half-and-half, which surprised (and pleased) me, since it was Cooking Light. I'm not fond of non-fat half-and-half because it contains corn syrup and an artificial color. I got a little carried away with the cilantro garnish, but here’s my adapted version.

Shrimp with Creamy Orange-Chipotle Sauce

Adapted from Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast, 5 ingredients, 15 minute recipes

¾ pound peeled and deveined large shrimp, preferably wild

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

Kosher salt

Canola oil

½ cup half-and-half

1 large chipotle chili, canned in adobo sauce

1 teaspoon grated orange rind

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro, plus more if you want to use it as garnish

Hot cooked thin spaghetti or linguine

Toss shrimp with ground cumin and salt. Add about 2 teaspoons of canola oil in a medium-sized nonstick skillet, turn heat to medium-high, and sauté the shrimp 4 minutes or until shrimp are done, stirring frequently. Transfer shrimp to a serving plate and keep warm. In the meantime place the half-and-half, chili and orange rind in a blender and process until smooth.

To make the sauce, reduce heat to medium in the skillet, add half-and-half mixture to pan and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add shrimp to sauce, then remove mixture from heat and toss with the hot cooked spaghetti. Serves 2.