$349 vs $28 Shrimp Scampi: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

Yeah, I got places to be.

I gotta see what [bleep], oh, oh, sorry buddy.

Hi, I'm Frank, I'm a professional chef,

and these are my $349 shrimp scampi ingredients.

Hello, I'm Joe, I'm a home cook,

and these are my $28 shrimp scampi ingredients.

Can I at least keep the ramps?

Lemme have the ramps, please.

Nooo.

Wow, that is sparse.

I'll make it work.

Oh, this looks nicer than mine.

So I was planning on making a Langoustine Scampi Crostini

with Calabrian Chile Ramp Sauce and Preserved Lemon.

For my shrimp, I had wild Icelandic langoustines.

I've seen shrimp.

They don't have arms like that.

And it's spring right now,

so you know I had to have some ramps.

These are leeks, right?

and a lovely Greco from Campania.

This is some hot Calabrese peppers, my favorite,

and red little balls.

And even more ramps to make a salad with some parsley

and some homemade preserved Meyer lemon rinds,

all served on a beautiful ciabatta crostini.

It was gonna be bonkers, yes, bonkers.

Me and Chef Frank, two great chefs goin' head to head,

making equally delicious dishes, I'm sure.

Who will win this battle of the chefs?

Joe's ingredients are a little simpler,

things that you might find

in your pantry at the local grocery store.

But with a little love, a little technique,

and a little chef magic, we're gonna make it delicious.

If I had to guess, these ingredients cost about 22, $23.

28, ooh, we're gettin' fancy on the novice side.

If I had to guess, this whole thing would cost $197.

Why $300, I gotta know.

Here in my hand is Chef Frank's recipe book

with some basic instructions on how to make his dish.

Look at this, that's pretty good, he's in a little tuxedo.

I'm gonna eat you buddy.

So Joe, shrimp scampi is not a complicated dish.

Basically, it means white wine, butter, garlic and parsley,

and a little bit of lemon juice.

I've given you really good ingredients, don't get cocky.

This langoustines isn't gonna scampi itself,

let's crostini.

Joe, I gave you fresh Icelandic langoustines.

It's kind of a hard shell shrimp.

It's a little bit bigger.

It has claws.

Their eyeballs are lookin' into my soul,

definitely excited about these.

Scampi in Italian means langoustine.

If you say to an Italian, I want some scampi,

they're going to give you a langoustine,

not a finished dish.

So we're gonna start with Charles here.

[Frank] First thing you're gonna do is get a knife,

and you're gonna split him down the middle.

I feel like he's gonna start movin' when I do this.

Oh, all right [knife crunches through shell].

That was cool.

Don't look guys.

These tales of the meat,

this looks disgusting because we don't eat that.

So I'm gonna take all this stuff and discard it,

and now I'm gonna do the same thing to their whole family.

And I'm really sorry.

The langoustine itself is delicious,

just don't do much to it.

Open it up, season with a little sea salt,

and put 'em aside.

They're prepped and ready to go.

[Joe] The langoustines are prepped.

Joe was gonna make a basic stove top scampi

with butter Parmesan pasta.

You can hardly call it a scampi, but I did.

I call it that, 'cause who's gonna stop me?

What I'm gonna do is a little bit different.

I'm gonna make a Shrimp Scampi Pasta in Beurre Blanc

with Spicy Parsley Oil and Parmesan Crisp.

A lotta times, a dish just needs technique

to make it better, and that's what we're gonna do here.

First thing we're gonna start with is the shrimp.

I'm gonna use the shells

to make a really nice flavor base for our sauce.

Don't throw these tails away,

there's lots of flavor in there.

And then, I'm gonna cut the shrimp a little different.

A lotta times when you see a dish like this,

they'll either give you a whole shrimp,

or they cut it into small pieces like this,

and these kinda get lost in the sauce.

I'm gonna cut them in half through the back of the shrimp,

so that they kinda curl up

and give us a really nice presentation.

Unless you live in a coastal area

where they're fishing for shrimp,

chances are your shrimp has been frozen.

A lotta times when you go to the supermarket,

if it says fresh shrimp, it's refresh,

which means they defrosted it for you.

I don't have any problem buying frozen shrimp

because it's a great product,

but don't be fooled into buying

refresh shrimp as fresh shrimp.

All right, my shrimp is prepped and ready to go.

Now I'm gonna make some preserved Meyer lemons.

I've never preserved anything.

I think that's what jelly is.

Joe's gonna be making his own preserved Meyer lemons.

A Meyer lemon is kind of like a cross

between a lemon and a tangerine.

Beautiful fragrance to it,

and the skin is gonna make this dish pop off.

I don't wanna get any of the white stuff.

I don't know what that stuff is called.

Smells really good.

I'm gonna throw these in here and blanch 'em up.

And then we're gonna pull these out.

We're gonna get some fresh water,

and we're gonna do it again.

Lemon rind in general can be very bitter,

so if you blanch it in fresh water a few times,

it takes the bitterness out.

All we're really gonna get is that bright kind of sweetness,

a little bit of acidity.

All right, and look at that, I'd eat these.

After that, he's gonna cook it in a solution,

solution, fancy, of salt and sugar and some herbs,

so that it has a really nice bright Meyer lemon flavor.

This is sea salt, so my shrimp scampis feel at home.

This is the salt from their home.

I got some cane sugar.

Toss my rinds back in there,

and I'm just gonna let it simmer

for three to four minutes.

While this is simmering,

I'm gonna put everything else in the jar.

These red little cooking balls are pink peppercorns,

so not even red.

This is thyme, I'm gonna throw this in.

And this is a bay leaf.

All right, it's been simmering long enough.

Pour all of this into the jar.

This is gonna be jelly,

I know because that's what goes in jars.

I don't know what I've just done here,

but it looks really pretty,

and I'm sure it'll compliment the dish.

So Joe gave me some dried chili flakes

and some dried parsley, and with these two,

I'm gonna make a flavored oil

and just let them steep, almost like a tea,

so we get some flavor out of them.

Making flavored oil is super simple.

Take some vegetable oils.

I'm gonna put a little chopped garlic in it,

and this is gonna go into the pot.

I'm gonna hit this with just a little bit of salt.

I'm adding the garlic to cold oil,

and I'm not just throwing the garlic in it

and it's turning brown right away.

I'm getting a little more of that garlic flavor into my oil.

I'm gonna add some chili flake,

and I want it to be fairly spicy, so I'm not gonna be shy.

I want the garlic to finish cooking off of the heat,

and at this point, I'm gonna add my parsley flakes.

Let it sit for at least 15 minutes,

so that everything kinda just like steeps into that oil.

And we're gonna put this on the finished dish

to give it a little heat

and just accent all those great flavors

we're getting out of the dish.

All right everybody, get ready,

'cause it's time for crostini.

This is ciabatta bread.

I'm gonna grill it, and when you grill ciabatta bread,

it turns into crostini,

like the caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

What I love about the ciabatta is

it's a very simple part of this dish,

but it's an integral part.

It's light and airy, it has lots of holes.

It's gonna be the vehicle that gets

that langoustine into our mouth

with that beautiful sauce.

So this is Olio Extra Vergine D'Oliva.

That's Italian, as I'm gonna pour some.

I don't wanna pour too much.

I feel like this is several hundred dollars worth

of olive oil.

I get to go Bob Ross right now.

Look, I didn't go to olive oil school.

I don't know if it's good, but it looks nice and oily.

I'm ready to grill my crostinis.

Should I still be calling 'em ciabattas?

When do they become crostinis?

Now, this is gonna give you some nice grill marks,

I think that's important.

As you probably expected,

I've got two bricks wrapped in tinfoil.

These are actual bricks.

I'm gonna put bricks on top of my bread.

Here we go.

I would love to weigh everything that I cook

down with brick, cereal, brick.

If I'm havin' yogurt, I'll put a brick in it,

whatever I'm doin', I'm just gonna throw a brick in there.

I'm starting to feel pretty good

about the color of my crostinis.

Now Frank told me that while they're warm,

I need to rub some garlic on them.

I've never heard of this process.

My ciabatta is crostinied.

This is garlic bread.

I know garlic bread, you shoulda said that.

Joe gave me Parmesan cheese.

So what I'm gonna do is make something crisp out of it,

and I'm gonna dedicate this to my friend Chef Saul.

He always does a cheese trick, so this is for you buddy.

First thing I'm gonna do is heat up my pan.

I'm gonna go medium heat for this.

You do not need to put anything in the pan.

There's enough fat in the cheese

to keep it from sticking.

I'm using a non-stick pan here as well.

Try and make a long strip.

If you make it too thick,

it becomes a little heavy and dense.

This way we have it, it's gonna be nice and light and crisp.

And I'm just gonna lay it on my tray.

Now that it's hot, it's gonna go a little faster,

but we'll do two of these babies just in case I break it.

And let it crisp up and cool.

You can see this one, it is nice and firm.

It's a really nice crisp,

and it kinda holds its own shape.

This is gonna be the garnish on top of my pasta.

This is a very special moment

because these, I have learned, are ramps.

Ramps are basically wild garlic.

They're only here in the spring,

and you have to forage for them.

I love garlic, but ramps kinda just like ramp it up a bit.

Frank went out into the woods, left civilization behind,

and look at what he found.

There's a lot of 'em.

I'm gonna have Joe separate the tops and the bottoms.

Bottoms or the bulb ends,

we're gonna slice like regular garlic,

and the tops, we're gonna use for salad later on.

My ramps are prepped, I'm ready to go.

Another component of my dish is a beurre blanc.

It's a flavored warm butter sauce, and it's delicious.

Beurre blancs start out by sweating your aromatics.

I have some garlic, and I have my saved shrimp shells.

I'm going to poach my shrimp in it,

and then, I'm gonna take the sauce

and dress my pasta or toss my pasta in it.

So it's gonna be the finished sauce

and the poaching sauce for my shrimp.

Medium heat, one little piece of butter, drop it in the pan.

We can add our garlic that's just crushed,

and we can add the shells.

I'm just lookin' for my garlic to be aromatic

and lightly, very lightly brown.

And I wanna smell my shrimp shells.

They're gonna change from that gray color

to a nice pink color.

Gonna add a pinch of salt, then we can add our wine.

We wanna get that wine flavor without all of the alcohol,

so we're gonna cook the alcohol out

and let this reduce down.

Dried parsley's gonna help flavor our sauce.

I don't mind a little flavor of alcohol,

but it's reducing the wine.

It's making this a little more acidic.

It's giving us a nice rounded flavor

rather than a sharp raw wine flavor.

I'm now about to prep my hot Calabrese peppers

or Calabrian chilies, they might be called.

Calabrese is Calabrian for Calabrian.

They're oily, there's a lotta oil in here.

Here, this is the stuff.

This is what we want.

This is for the sauce I'm gonna cook my langoustines in.

You know what, I'm not scared.

I've never been scared, and I'm not gonna start right now,

so I'm gonna eat some of this.

That's real spicy.

Our wine is reduced by about half,

and we can start whisking in the butter.

I'm gonna lower the heat and what I'm gonna do is

I'm gonna slowly whisk the butter in

to try and keep it so the butter stays emulsified.

Yes, it's a lotta butter, but butter is delicious,

and you should not be scared of that or even ashamed of it.

Little low heat, I'm moving it a lot.

Try not to splash all over yourself.

You're not havin' fun unless you get it everywhere.

The more butter you add, the thicker the sauce gets.

Now, I'm a little on the loose side, so it wouldn't be me,

if I didn't take this sauce to the next level.

Butter itself is basically emulsion

of butterfat and milk solids,

which is the liquid part of milk.

What we're gonna do is take those milk solids,

cook the butter enough,

so that they turn nice and golden brown and nutty.

So we're just gonna put this over a medium high heat,

whisking consistently and constantly.

I don't like to walk away from stuff like this.

I'm getting some brownness on the side of the pan,

so I'm gonna lower my heat just a little.

As it starts to get a little golden,

I'm gonna add my garlic and chili flake,

a little bit of salt, and I'm gonna whisk.

You can see,

look at how nice and golden brown my garlic is.

I'm gonna shut it off.

We have enough residual heat in there, a bit of lemon juice.

This is gonna kind of deglaze

and get us those nice brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

Take my beurre blanc sauce that I made earlier,

slowly whisk that into this.

Smells nutty [spoon scrapes against pan],

and that is my Brown Butter Beurre Blanc.

Nothing compliments scampi like some rampy,

so we're gonna make a ramp salad.

All right, let's try some ramp.

Of all the floppy greens, this is up there.

That has a really nice flavor to it.

Basically, we're taking the ramp tops,

some really nice fresh Italian parsley,

a really, really good quality extra virgin olive oil,

some of that Meyer lemon juice,

and some of those preserved lemons.

So the preserve, it's not jelly, almost like pickled.

This is a julienne cut, or as I call it, lemon slivers.

Oh, here's,

all of this is goin' in the salad, this is really good.

Set it aside, and we wanna dress it

right before it goes onto your dish.

So all the prep is done,

and now this is where everything happens at once.

Let's make Chef Frank proud of me

and see if he loves me.

Get a nice large pan, put it on medium high heat.

You're gonna hit that pan

with some of that nice extra virgin olive oil.

I'm gonna season my langoustines with Italian sea salt.

And then you're gonna take those langoustines

and sear them, cut side down.

And I'm so sorry, buddy.

You don't want to overcook these.

We just wanna get a little bit of color on the flesh side,

turn them over and cook them

on the shell side for about a minute,

set 'em aside and let them rest.

We went all the way to Iceland.

We don't wanna make them rubbery.

I think probably the 5th or 6th time

I get burned with hot oil

is when I know it's time to pull 'em off.

Look at this.

This is beautiful, tender, delicious, juicy meat.

Now, it's time to cook my pasta, and for the most part,

this dish comes together really quick.

And while my pasta cooks,

I'm gonna poach my shrimp in our brown butter beurre blanc.

Pasta I'm using today is nice, thin angel hair.

I do like angel hair, so thank you, Joe, I appreciate it.

You're amazin', Joe, let's start a business together.

Water's boiling.

I'm gonna add some salt.

I'm on low heat with my beurre blanc.

My shrimp go in to poach.

It preserves the flavor of the shrimp,

and any flavor that we lose from the shrimp

is gonna go into the sauce.

I'm gonna do about a half a pound.

I don't think I need that much.

Stir it, so it doesn't stick to the bottom

or stick to each other.

The shrimp is poaching over low heat.

I have a nice big saute pan.

I'm gonna take a little bit of this sauce

and put it in the bottom of the pan.

There's no heat on this right now.

The heat of the sauce is gonna be just enough.

I'm not gonna drain it over the sink.

I'm not gonna use a spider.

I'm just gonna take it out and let it drain like this.

Good, we'll leave a little of that salty water in there,

and I think we're ready to put this all together.

Look at that.

We're definitely ready to plate.

My langoustines are cooked.

I'm going to make a sauce in the pan.

I'm gonna put just some oil.

Add our sliced ramp whites.

Add the Calabrian chilies.

The Calabrian chilies are gonna add some heat to this dish.

Not a lotta heat, like burn your mouth off,

just enough to let you know they're there.

We're gonna deglaze that

with a beautiful Greco from Campagna.

So I'm gonna eyeball this.

That's a cup in, ah, there we go, yeah,

cup and a half.

Lemon's goin' in.

This is another Meyer lemon.

Now, this would be better to do with a brick.

To finish our sauce,

I got you some really nice Italian butter.

We're gonna add that cold butter

into the warm reduction we have,

swirl it around 'til it makes a really nice creamy sauce.

The purpose of using this Monte Beurre method

is that our sauce is creamy and silky, not broken.

Monte Beurre is when we take cold butter

and add it to a warm base to make a silky sauce.

All the ingredients are gonna come together here,

and that butter's just gonna kinda be

like the glue that holds 'em all together.

Sauce is lookin' good, smells good.

It's got a nice consistency.

It's got one chunk of butter, which I will obliterate.

All right, that's a nice lookin' sauce.

I'm gonna add some langoustines in.

Low heat, warm everything together.

Let's get all those flavors into the pot,

and then we can start plating.

They just look like they're all swimmin' that way.

All right, these are lookin' good, let's plate.

So it is time to plate.

I couldn't have made this more complicated,

but in the end, I know it's gonna be beautiful.

We're gonna roll our pasta around this beautiful meat fork,

and we're gonna make a really cool line

right down the middle of our pasta.

This is probably enough for a couple of people,

it's not a small amount.

So I have my shrimp here.

I'm gonna put a few of these over the top.

You see they got a little bit of curl to them,

right, a little drizzle of the sauce.

I have a lemon and a microplane,

so one, two, three, four, that's it.

Don't go too crazy with this.

It's just gonna give us a little burst of lemon flavor.

And now I have my flavored oil.

I'm not gonna go on the pasta.

I want it to be an accent color,

and I want you to mix this in yourself.

And then I have my Parmesan crisp, right,

let's get that Parmesan crisp on.

And that is my Shrimp Scampi Pasta in Beurre Blanc

with Spicy Parsley Oil and Parmesan Crisp.

My salad dressing is really simple.

It's just oil, lemon juice, salt.

Here we go, these are my crostinis, formerly ciabatta.

[Frank] Take our langoustine flesh side up.

We wanna see that really nice, beautiful langoustine tail.

Then we're gonna take that sauce, drizzle it all around.

Yeah, I should have grabbed one that didn't have an arm.

Plop some right there.

Here it is, my finished product.

My Rampy Scampi Langoustini Crostini, a la Chef Frank.

Chef Frank. Hey Joe, how you doin'?

Good seeing you again. I'm doin' pretty good.

You too? Good.

Good, good, how'd everything go?

It was scary chopping those shrimp in half.

They were scary.

Their eyes were buggin' out when I was chopping 'em.

I gave 'em all names, I don't know why I did that,

but when I got to the end, it was pretty.

[Frank] Oh man. Wow.

[Frank] That is beautiful.

This is beautiful.

I mean, what's this on on top there?

That's a Parmesan crisp.

How'd you make the noodles all?

Oh, it's fancy. Twirled up like that?

I would've like done,

like a wrapping up a iPhone cable thing this out,

that's what I thought you did.

But this turned out absolutely beautiful, I love it.

I'm excited to try this. Can we try yours first?

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome,

let's give it a shot.

All right, I want you to also teach me how you eat this.

It's kinda like a lobster tail.

Grab the tail meat out with the fork.

We'll take a piece of this crostini.

So how'd you get those great grill marks?

I used a brick. [Frank laughs]

[Frank] So this is not food that is gonna be super neat.

I'll get a little piece

of langoustine. Oh boy.

Oh, okay, you were right about it not bein' neat.

But for the most part,

I just wanna make like a crostini with that tail on there.

Get a little bit of everything.

Oh, let's do it. All right, cheers.

Cheers.

Crunchy bread, soft langoustine.

I don't feel like the ramp overpowers anything.

I think that like it's got a good garlic flavor.

Man, that's delicious.

Ramp is awesome too.

I've never heard of it.

This is delicious.

It's a great recipe, but I just can't believe I made this.

I can't wait to try yours.

Oh, I hope that you like it.

All right, you ready?

[Joe] Yeah, I'm ready.

[Frank] I'm gonna crack the cheese.

Come on. Feel like a brick

would've done a great job at smashing up that cheese.

[Frank laughs] I'm just sayin'.

Cut that. [Frank laughs]

That's so good.

If you say like, I'm having shrimp scampi, it hits it.

It's like simple and fancy at the same time.

That's really good.

Cheers, man, great job.

Cheers to you too.

So I got somethin' for you.

It's a special gift, I got this for you.

All I need is like 6,000 more, and I can build a house.