How to Quickly Cook Shrimp on the Stovetop, Grill, or in the Oven

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Pasta

(Serves 6)

Recipe Notes: Halve the recipe if you’re cooking for one. That way, you can serve yourself a hefty portion and have plenty of leftovers.

Ingredients:

• salt
• 1 (1-pound) box pasta of your choice (linguine, rotini, spaghetti, etc)
• 1/4 cup oil, plus more to garnish (extra virgin olive oil or ghee)
• 1/4 cup allium vegetable, diced (garlic, onion, shallot, or leek)
• zest of 1 citrus fruit, divided (lemon or orange)
• 1-2 tablespoons acid (lemon juice or wine<)/li>
• 1 pound protein (peeled and deveined shrimp, white or garbanzo beans, smoked salmon, canned tuna, chicken breast cut into bite-sized strips)
• 1 1/2 cups veg (San Marzano canned tomatoes, broccoli florets, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini, or asparagus)
• fresh delicate herbs, chopped, to garnish (parsley, basil, chives)
• hard cheese, grated, to garnish (optional) (Parmesan or pecorino)

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt it liberally, as in 1 tablespoon of salt per 4 cups of water.

2. Once it has reached a rapid boil, add pasta all at once. Cook it 1 minute less than package instructions, or roughly 7 minutes.

3. Reserve 1/2-1 cup of pasta water, then quickly drain pasta.

4. Heat a large skillet pan (we’re using a 6-quart pan but you can use the same pot that you cooked the pasta), then pour in 1/4 cup oil. Here, we are using olive oil.

5. Add allium. Cook until translucent. We used ~3 cloves of garlic.

6. Add half of the zest, if using. Above, we sprinkled in Meyer lemon zest for its floral scent and flavor.

7. Before lemon zest caramelizes, add acid. We used the juice of half of a lemon.

8. Add the protein of your choice, sprinkle on a three-finger pinch of salt, and sauté until caramelized and cooked through. Most items will take 5 minutes or less, although chicken may require ~4 minutes per side. We sautéed the shrimp in a single layer on the pan for ~2 minutes on each side.

9. Add your choice of veg to the pan with another pinch of salt. We added freshly chopped spinach.

10. Stir in pasta and add cooking water, 1 small splash at a time, until noodles cook through.

11. Taste and salt as needed. Drizzle on a little more olive oil to keep the noodles slippery so they don’t stick together. Sprinkle remaining zest on top. Grate cheese on top (optional).

12. Use tongs to divide onto plates. Garnish with chopped chives, parsley, and/or basil.

As a Power of Women honoree, Mariska was recognized in regards to her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. She took the stage and used her platform to discuss rape and assault conviction reversals, shining a light on the recent overturned ruling in Harvey Weinstein's landmark NYC case. Here's what she said:

Today I want to talk about reversing convictions, and more specifically I want to talk to you about how impossible it is to reverse mine. It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter. It is impossible to reverse my conviction that what happens to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors with a more a compassionate, holistically, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of what healing means.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that after a trauma, survivors can reclaim lives of hope, of possibility, of audacious risk, beautiful intimacy, and glorious, glorious abundant joy. And I stand before you as evidence of that statement.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors as experts on what justice means. It is extraordinary how little their voices are consulted, let alone incorporated, in the process of deciding how to repair harm. Justice is not a one-size-fits-all journey.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that patriarchal impunity has to end. Patriarchal impunity is when a male-dominated system exempts perpetrators from punishment. Studies show that only 20% of all rape cases in the U.S. are reported to the police, and that between 5 and 0% of all rapes result in a guilty plea or a conviction. So why do 80% of victims not report? Because they're met with a system that grants impunity to perpetrators; a system that blames victims; a system that accepts only those victims who are experienced as "real" rape; a system that completely misunderstands the neurobiology of trauma, which causes behavior in women that doesn't fit the picture of how a "real victim" would act.

Is that change needed that victims should just pull themselves together? Just buck up and report anyway? No. No, it's the system that receives them that needs to change

It is impossible to reverse my conviction — and the conviction of my extraordinary team, The Joyful Heart — that the backlog of untested rape kits can be brought to zero; that the testing of all new kits must be mandated; that we need a statewide kit tracking system; and that survivors have the right to access the status of their kits.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that grammar — yes, grammar — that we use when we speak about rape must change. In the sentence, "A woman is raped," there's a crime and there's a victim, but there's no perpetrator. Where's the perpetrator? Where is he? Statistically, as we know, most likely he's walking free. He's so free that he doesn't even appear in the language about the crime that he committed. Is that not extraordinary? It's extraordinary that in the very grammar, the perpetrator goes free. Reintroducing perpetrators in the language of rape will make some very unwieldy grammar, but that's the nature of change. It's unwieldy, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

Hargitay continued on in her prolific speech to describe that rape shouldn't be considered a "crime of passion" because it's "not simply the next step in the trajectory of his passion" when a man takes a consensual hookup too far and assaults a woman against her will. She stated that it's "an exercise of power," doubling down that the language we use is important.

The speech went on to address that rape is both about power and control, as a "construct" that was "built, and assembled, and reinforced over time." She noted that there are people with these positions of power — and she specifically called out those in the entertainment industry — that could make a difference and aligned themselves to victims and survivors.

After this and some other remarks, Hargitay specifically called out the Weinstein conviction reversal. She said:

I do want to say something about the Harvey Weinstein conviction, specifically about the reason that it was overturned: too many women's voices. Too many women's voices were allowed to speak. Hallelujah! Amen! I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that. The Daily podcast episode talked about how it was so risky for the prosecution to have that many women testify. Risky to let women speak? You're damn right it is!

Too many women speaking brings change. Too many women speaking shakes the establishment. Too many women means we get listened to more, and people might actually hear what we have to say. Look what happened when women started saying just two words, right? Me too — just as an example — a tidal wave of change. Me too.

And then of course, there was the response: the Me Too Movement. The backlash. The examination of whether the changes that have come are lasting, or are even positive. Of course there's a backlash! What did they expect? For women to speak repeatedly, loudly, together, with a purpose — for there to be no backlash? The backlash is evidence of how powerful those voices were, how powerful those voices ARE.

Watch Mariska Hargitay's Full Speech Here

Turns out that your TV heroes really can be your IRL heroes after all. Long live Olivia Benson! Long live Mariska Hargitay!