Turkey Bacon Wrapped Shrimp and a Stuffed Pepper

This is another old photo from the Philadelphia apartment. (You might recognize my roommate's lovely placemats.) The shrimp is another Rachael Ray inspiration. The pepper, however, was my own invention. It actually was a throw-in so that I have a vegetable in my meal. When I was little, my mom had to fight tooth and nail to get me to eat my vegetables. And even now, I sometimes I have to be creative with my vegetables to inspire myself to eat them. Here, I think I happen to just have an old pepper in the fridge. And I was planning on eating the shrimp with white rice because I eat rice with everything. So I thought to myself, what if I put the rice in the pepper and have a stuffed pepper? A little bit of butter, salt, pepper, and a dash of paprika and I had myself a fake version of stuffed pepper. This picture is probably at least two or three years old, but I still remember that pepper!


Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp
Rachael actually also used scallops in this recipe, but I didn't have any. And I actually used turkey bacon instead of pork bacon and frozen shrimp. In this picture, I used Trader Joe's brand turkey bacon, which did not come out as crispy as I would have liked.

12 jumbo raw peeled deveined shrimp,
1 lime, juiced and zested
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon grill seasoning or coarse salt and black pepper
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
12 slices center cut or applewood smoked bacon, cut in 1/2 Toothpicks
3 scallions, very thinly sliced on an angle

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Place shrimp in a shallow dish or bowl. Dress seafood with lime juice and zest, a generous drizzle of sesame oil, grill seasoning and hot pepper flakes. Wrap each shrimp with a half slice of bacon. Wrap each shrimp working from head to tail, pulling bacon snuggly around the shrimp. Fasten bacon in place as necessary with picks.

Arrange the shrimp on a slotted baking pan, such as a broiler pan, to allow draining while bacon crisps. Bake shrimp 10 to 14 minutes, until shrimp is pink and curled and bacon is crisp.
Arrange cooked seafood on platter and sprinkle with chopped scallions.