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There’s a shrimp dish at our favorite tapas restaurant that is pretty simple — shrimp in a garlic and chili infused olive oil. I used some of our last-of-the-season corn and tomatoes from our CSA to build on that garlic-and-shrimp combo for a really fast, fresh and flavorful weeknight family dinner. Shrimp is one of the things I always keep on hand in the freezer for throwing together a meal in a hurry — it can defrost in the time it takes to boil water for pasta to go with it.

{FoodieTots Tip: look for wild caught Bay or Gulf/Key West shrimp, which have a higher Seafood Watch sustainability rating than the farmed imports.}

To make the sauce, I employed a trick learned from the chef of that tapas restaurant, José Andrés (you may have caught his Made in Spain series on PBS): grating fresh tomatoes to extract the juice and pulp and leave behind the skin. This way your finished dish doesn’t have those bits of tomato skin mucking up the texture. Older kids can help with that step, too.

Watch the six-second video here, or scroll down for the recipe. (Apologies for the awkward end to the video, I seem to have recorded my carrying it outside for it’s finished photo….)

Shrimp with Corn and Tomato from Colleen | GlassBottle on Vimeo.

Recipe: Shrimp with Corn and Tomato
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 pound peeled and deveined uncooked shrimp, defrosted
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 ear corn, kernels removed (or 1 cup frozen corn kernels, defrosted)
• 2 large tomatoes, halved and grated over a bowl to catch pulp and juice
• pinch of Merken, a Chilean red pepper, or other red pepper flakes
• pinch of sea salt

Instructions:

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until just beginning to brown around edges.

2. Add shrimp and cook, turning once or twice, until pink, about 4-6 minutes.

3. Add corn and tomato pulp and cook 2 minutes.

4. Remove from heat and season with red pepper and salt.

Serve with crusty bread to sop up the sauce, or over rice or pasta if desired.

What’s your favorite shrimp recipe?

As much as I love summer, I just adore the farmers market in September. Tomatoes, corn and summer squash share table space with autumn squash, beans and early apples for a few fleeting weeks of seasonal overlap. Of course, when temperatures are still in the 80s or even 90s here in DC, it’s nice to still have so many fresh ingredients for fast meals now that the kids are back in school.

To celebrate back-to-school season, we’re sharing a series of 6-second, 6-ingredient recipes for fast weeknight meals. That’s right Rachael Ray, I’ve seen your 30-minute meals and I think I can do it 29 minutes, 54 seconds faster. Okay, maybe not quite. But I can use my favorite Vine video app to show how to make a quick family meal — even if I can’t guarantee it can be done in 6 seconds. I hope you’ll still find it useful.

And, this one is meatless, too, as we join the new Meatless Monday blog hop hosted by Recipe Renovator. So go check that out for even more ideas — even if you have your meatless meals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday …. going meatless occasionally can be another good way to shave time off your dinner prep.

Braised Summer Squash from Colleen | GlassBottle on Vimeo.

Recipe: Braised Summer Squash with Chèvre
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
• 3-4 summer squash, sliced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste concentrate
• 1/4 cup white wine
• several fresh basil leaves, torn
• 2 ounces fresh goat cheese
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Heat butter or olive oil in sauté pan over medium high heat.
2. Add squash and cook, turning occasionally, until soft and just beginning to brown.
3. Add tomato paste concentrate and stir. Add white wine and cook another minute or two.
4. Remove from heat and sprinkle with torn basil, salt and pepper to taste. Crumble goat cheese over top and serve.

It’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and this year I had a new helper to make the traditional celebratory round challah. We watched a great video to learn the braiding technique (watch here) and the foodie tot begged to help. It looks like a tangled mess when you finish, but then you flip it over and …. voila! A beautiful round braid. Or, a squid, as the tot called it. What can I say, we keep semi-kosher around here. 😉

In the past I’ve just made a regular braid and twisted it into a circle, but the resulting loaves always came out a little lopsided. Here’s this year’s beauty fresh out of the oven:

I use the challah recipe from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice, with double the sugar to make it extra sweet for Rosh Hashanah. Looking for more Jewish holiday recipes? There’s a great group board on Pinterest. L’shana tova to those celebrating!

The foodie boy is back to school today (2nd grade!), though the tot still has another week before her preschool begins. Before dinner last night I had the kids fill out a back-to-school survey. Over dinner, we turned it into a game — each had to guess what they thought the other had said. The three-year-old got a little over-excited and blurted out a few of her answers early, but overall it was fun and good for a lot of laughs.

This morning, I successfully got up early enough to make the annual first-day breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and bacon. How did you celebrate the start of the school year?

This post is sponsored by Sony Pictures. Have your kids seen Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? This is a favorite book in our house, and the foodie tots laughed out loud watching the film together. The sequel opens in theaters September 27. The second film features a flock of new Foodimals, and we were asked by Sony Pictures to bring one to life at home. The boy chose Watermelophant, and we had a lot of fun creating it out of a small watermelon, asparagus, rhubarb and artichoke leaves.

Click on over to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ Facebook site to learn how to make your own Foodimals at home and meet the other characters from the film.

GIVEAWAY: Sony Pictures is providing a Sony e-reader and copy of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to one lucky reader. Leave a comment below naming your favorite Foodimal from the Facebook page to be entered to win. (Continental US residents only.) A winner will be selected at random after 5:59pm Eastern time, Monday, September 9, 2013. Please be sure to use a valid e-mail when commenting (will not be displayed) so I can contact you if you win.

Disclosure: I was paid by Sony Pictures as a Chance of Meatballs 2 Foodimals Featured Contributor. They are also providing the giveaway prize. All opinions, as always, are my own.