Stuffed Piquillo Peppers with Shrimp

A couple weeks ago for my dad's birthday, I decided to make him dinner since first of all he is very hard to shop for and second it's what he loves best. I made steamed lobster, roasted sweet potatoes, scallops, and my personal favorite, stuffed shrimp piquillo peppers. This has probably become one of our new favorite appetizers. Dustin doesn't love shrimp but he likes these. The shrimp and the sauce mixture together is amaaaaazing! Piquillo peppers are not spicy either which I love because I don't do spicy or peppers very well.

Piquillo Peppers Stuffed With Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 8 ounces large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 plum tomato
• 1/2 small onion, finely chopped (1/4 cup)
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tablespoons medium-dry sherry, such as amontillado
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
• 6 jarred or canned piquillo peppers, drained

Directions

1. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. Season shrimp with salt and pepper. Add to pan, and saute until golden and cooked through, about 3 minutes. Finely chop shrimp, and transfer to a bowl.
2. Prepare an ice-water bath. Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add tomato, and cook until skin loosens, about 1 1/2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to ice-water bath until cool enough to handle, about 1 minute. Peel tomato, cut into quarters, and remove and discard seeds. Finely chop tomato.
3. Heat remaining tablespoon oil in pan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, 5 minutes.
4. Stir tomato into onion mixture, and cook for 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat; pour in sherry. Return to medium-high heat for 1 minute. Stir tomato mixture into shrimp, and season with salt and pepper. Let cool.
5. Stir in mayonnaise. Stuff each pepper with shrimp salad.

Unfortunately lobster is very expensive and so I could only afford 2 live lobsters that day. He had one to him self and we shared the second one. The lobster recipe wasn't anything special. Just steam em and butter em!

And wa-la! Dinner is served!