Ask anyone who knows me well and they will vouch for the fact that I’m no chef. With a father who is a mastermind in the kitchen, I’ve been spoiled my whole life by playing the guinea pig to his gourmet meal endeavors. And they’ve all been successful.

From cooking competitions to family parties, you’ll hear no complaining on my end about the dishes my sister and I have tried throughout our lives. So while Chef Ken… I mean Dad, has been the king of the kitchen in my life, it’s my turn to get cooking.

As a self-appointed “Rookie Chef,” I’ll share with you quick and easy recipes that I’ve have challenged myself to create.

Today, I will share with you a really great dinner I made from Food Network Magazine—Greek shrimp and couscous. For the complete recipe (that I encourage you to cook from), head over to the Food Network website for a detailed breakdown of the recipe.

Greek shrimp and couscous

Total time—30 minutes to prep and cook

Start by preheating the broiler (or the oven to 350 degrees if you don’t have one) and defrost the frozen shrimp before you begin.

Ingredients:
1 cup whole-wheat couscous (we used acini di pepe pasta instead)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (we used a 1 lb. bag of cooked frozen small shrimp instead)
Pinch of red pepper flakes
2 medium plum tomatoes, diced
1 small bulb fennel, halved, cored and sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 15-ounce can no-salt-added chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 scallions, sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (we used pre-chopped dill spice)
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 2 ounces)

We started off by chopping the tomatoes, fennel, garlic and scallions into diced pieces and tossing them into a heated skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil.

Sprinkling red pepper flakes and the dill onto the shrimp, we then added the (defrosted) shrimp to the skillet (with our cooking veggies) and also added the can of chickpeas.

In a separate pot, we cooked the acini di pepe pasta normally, drained it and kept it covered and warm on the side. This would later be used to accompany the shrimp/veggie mixture.

Next, adding the wine to the skillet, we let the veggies and shrimp simmer until the chick peas were softened—this was the part of the night where the entire kitchen smelled delicious.

Once the chickpeas had softened, we transferred everything in the skillet to a glass baking pan and sprinkled crumbled feta cheese on top. Since we didn’t have a broiler handy, we baked the dish for six minutes in the oven instead, to melt the cheese and crisp up the veggies.

After baking, this was our finished product.

To serve the dish, fluff up the warmed pasta with a fork (ours had cooled a little, so we added a splash fo water to the bowl and heated it in the microwave for one minute).

We added spoonfuls of pasta to a medium sized bowl and then added the Greek shrimp dish (that we had just baked) on top of the pasta. Add as much or as little as you would like.

Here was our final result.

Obviously, our rendition of the recipe was an abbreviated one. Be sure to follow the exact directions from Food Network Magazine to get a full list of ingredients and tips.

Greek shrimp with couscous: a very good dinner.