Rockin' Shrimp Surprise--Revived!

The other day my MIL Joanne called and left me this message: "Hi, Elsa. I'm at the grocery store and I want to make your rockin' shrimp dish but I don't have the recipe with me and I can't remember what all goes in it. Will you call me and tell me?"

When I got the message this is what I thought: "What in the world is she talking about? Rockin' shrimp recipe? I don't have any of my own recipes. Sure, I've made a few things with the word "surprise" at the end but not anything that someone would want to make. And I don't think I would ever call anything "rockin'." Oh, I bet she's got me mixed up with Hungry Girl. She always puts "rockin'" in front of her recipes. I will have to explain to her that I'm Cookinggal, not Hungry Girl. I have no recipes worth sharing."

So I called and told her this but she insisted that it was me and that I did indeed have a rockin' shrimp recipe that I once wrote about on this blog. So I looked it up and you know what? She was right. I DO have a rockin' shrimp recipe. It's called Elsa's Rockin' Shrimp Surprise and I wrote about it in my first Cookinggal blog way back in 2005.

Now there wasn't an actual recipe on the blog but I used context clues to recreate it yesterday:

And now that I'm more experienced in the kitchen I made it even more rockin'. I added crushed red pepper, garlic and olive oil. When I made it back in 2005 we didn't have the Frank rating system in place yet so I don't have anything to compare it to BUT I must admit I was quite pleased when Frank gave it a nine!

Here's the basic recipe (don't ask me for exacts; this is not baking):

1 box of whole wheat rotini pasta

About a half a bag of frozen cooked shrimp, tail off, thawed

About 3/4 of a jar of Ragu sauce (I used chunky vegetable)

A lot of Ricotta (not the whole tub but at least 3/4 of an 8 oz tub)

Shredded Monterrey Jack cheese

Olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper

Directions: Cook pasta; add shrimp, Ragu and ricotta. Stir. Keep adding R&R until it seems balanced. Add spices and olive oil. Stir some more. Pour into baking dish. Sprinkle MJ cheese on top. Bake for 30 min. at 350.

I think it would also be good with mushrooms but since Frank doesn't like them I would have had to sacrifice my high rating.