I don’t know if we make this dish mainly because it’s tasty, or because it’s so much fun to set fire to a panful of shrimp. Probably both.

Shrimp fra diavolo (“Brother Devil”) is a traditional dish, the main idea being a spicy tomato sauce with shrimp, saucing long skinny pasta. The version we make comes from an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It adds an extra step or two to the typical recipe, but it’s well worth the effort. If you’ve never flambéed before, give it a try – it’s gratifyingly easy. Just make sure there’s nothing flammable right above your stove burners. You can skip the flambéing step, but the shrimp won’t have as deep and rich a flavor.

First you toss the raw, peeled shrimp with hot pepper flakes, as much as you think you can stand, plus some salt and olive oil.

The shrimp are seared in a very hot pan, then pulled off the heat. Add some brandy (a quarter cup for a pound of shrimp), put it back over the heat, and tip the pan to let the brandy fumes come in contact with the open flame (or use a match)…

Once the shrimp are engulfed in flames, just shake the pan and wait until the fire dies down – it won’t take long for the alcohol to burn off. Scrape the shrimp into a bowl.

After being flambéed, the shrimp take on a slightly caramelized coating, and the hot pepper flavor is really seared in.

Then all you need to do is put the pan back on medium-low heat, sauté minced garlic in a bit of fresh olive oil until golden, toss in a can of tomatoes and some white wine, simmer it down and add the shrimp back in along with some minced raw garlic and chopped parsley. Cook some pasta and toss everything together. A chilled white wine goes well with the spicy shrimp.

We were well and truly snowed in last weekend (still are, pretty much), and we did what most people do when stuck at home with a full refrigerator – we threw a dinner party and baked a cake. To be more accurate, my husband baked, and I took pictures and fussed around on the computer and made milk-braised pork and buttermilk mashed potatoes. The pork was good, but it was the tiramisu cake that really got the eye-rolling and moaning reactions from our dinner guests.

The cake is really just a showier presentation of tiramisu. It consisted of two layers of relatively plain sweet vanilla cake, soaked with espresso syrup, sandwiched around a layer of chopped dark chocolate and a swirl of sweetened mascarpone, then frosted with more mascarpone mixed with more of the espresso syrup. It was good. Really, really good. Sweet boozy coffee creamy goodness.

The original recipe is from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours, but you can get more pictures and the full set of instructions here. The only things we did differently were to bake the cake in two 8 inch cake pans instead of 9 inch, so the layers were a bit thicker, and to make a bit of extra syrup (although the cake turned out so moist, we didn’t need all of it).

And we still have two slices in the fridge. Happy Christmas Eve to us!