The BF got a new book last week called "Cooking For Geeks." It's a book all about different scientific and random facts that make cooking what it is. There's one chapter that breaks down how our taste buds work and other chapters on tricks to make things in the kitchen easier.

Besides being a kind of interesting book, it's also peppered with a bunch of different recipes and that's where we got our inspiration for this week's challenge.

Lemon Shrimp with Quinoa

The BF and I did all the prep work first. Chopping the onion and garlic. Juicing the lemon. Snapping the asparagus.







Then it was time to start cooking.

The onion went in the pan first to soften.



It was followed by the quinoa and water.



After simmering the quinoa for 10-15 minutes, we threw the asparagus on top, took the whole pan off heat for about 15 minutes and let the asparagus steam while the quinoa absorbed the rest of the water.



This mixture served as the base for the dish. Once it was finished we placed it in a warm oven so it wouldn't cool off while we worked on the shrimp and the sauce.

To save time, we bought pre-cooked shrimp, but you could definitely buy raw and cook them yourself.

After pulling off all their little tails, we set out making the sauce.

We mixed garlic with melted butter and added white wine.



We tossed the shrimp in the pan this point to warm them up.



After sprinkling them with parsley and lemon juice and zest, they were done.



We scooped some of the quinoa mix on to a plate and topped with the shrimp.



Then it was time to dig in.

We were a little disappointed in how over-powering the lemon flavor was. We decided if we ever make this recipe again we will nix the lemon zest and use a fraction of the lemon juice. The garlic, wine butter sauce probably would have been great if it hadn't been for the lemon.

The leftovers were so potently lemon flavored that we could barely choke them down and we ended up wasting a lot of food, which neither of us were happy about.