There are few meals that are as much a pleasure to cook and reflect upon, as they are to eat. Typically, either a recipe is too demanding to recreate without causing extreme frustration, or too effortless to recreate without yielding anything other than your average weekday meal.

    The most palatable of these easy-to-make, run-of-the-mill meals are usually your standard comfort food items--a far cry from the spa-style foods you listed on last night's Bikini Countdown Diet-Plan Promise. You may feel comfortable gobbling up that pork chop pie, but while you place those still-warm casserole dishes in the fridge, to eat tomorrow (and the next day) at lunch, you see the deep walls of your self-imposed rut extend even higher, and those carefree, nearly nude days on the beach drifting into the realm of impossibility.

    When, on the rare occasion, I stumble upon a recipe that would delight both the busy chef and the beach babe, I feel it my duty to share it with the world. Recently, on the night of the Oscars, my friend Meghan and I were in need of a meal that might help us feel a little less like country-fed trolls, and more like gourmet pampered starlets; or, at least, their assistants. Since I had a huge plastic container of fresh baby spinach from Sam's Club, we decided to make a spinach salad with a fun twist. We wanted something fresh and aromatic that would leave us completely satisfied. This is what we came up with:

Sunkissed Spinach Salad with Tanned Shrimp

Yeild: 2 large or 3 medium servings

Citrus Vinaigrette

Ingredients

1 blood orange or tangelo, juiced
1 T. apple cider vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil (about 2 parts juice to 1 part olive oil)

Directions

Combine ingredients in a container with a tight-fitting lid. Shake before use.

Tanned Shrimp

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1 1/2 T. chili powder
1 T. salt
1 t. freshly ground black pepper
1 pound large, de-veined shrimp, peeled but with the tail on
Extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Mix the flour, chili powder, salt and pepper in a bowl. Season shrimp with salt and pepper. Preheat a large sauté pan (with a fitting lid, to use when making the Crispy Basil Topping) on high. Dredge the shrimp in the flour mixture. Coat pan with ¼ inch of olive oil and put in one layer of the shrimp. You want them to caramelize, so don't toss or move them. Add a little more oil if the flour absorbs what's in the pan. While the shrimp is frying (about 3 minutes), prep ingredients for Crispy Basil Topping (recipe below). After the 3 minutes, turn the shrimp over. Let them caramelize and then remove them onto a drying rack or paper towel-lined plate. Save the oil for the Crispy Basil Topping.

Crispy Basil Topping

Ingredients

4 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 fresh jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 bunch fresh, washed and dried basil leaves
1 T. orange zest, julienned

Directions

Add garlic and jalapeno to the leftover olive oil in the hot sauté pan, just after frying the shrimp. Let the garlic get light brown, and then add the basil and cover. The high moisture content in the basil will cause the oil to pop. Let the basil get crispy, less than a minute, and then add the orange zest. Season with salt and pepper.

Citrus, Spinach Salad

Ingredients

1 blood orange, peeled and sectioned, pith removed
2 tangelos, peeled and sectioned, pith removed
Salt and pepper
3 cups pre-washed spinach, stems removed

Directions

Peel and cut the citrus fruit into sections. Season liberally with salt and black pepper. Drizzle a little of the Citrus Vinaigrette on the citrus fruit to marinate and arrange the spinach onto large dinner plates. Drizzle the Citrus Vinaigrette over the spinach, and then mound the Tanned Shrimp, Crispy Basil Topping and, finally, the citrus fruit on top of the spinach.

Enjoy with toasted, crusty bread or breadsticks!

    This article provided courtesy of our sister site: Beaufort County Now