The recipe Spaghettini with Shrimp appears in the cookbook “Tasting Italy.”

Seafood has always been central to Venetian cuisine. The earliest Venetians were skilled fisherman and their diet relied heavily on the bounty found in the city’s lagoon ecosystem.

And while the Veneto may not be as famous for pasta dishes as some other regions, spaghettini con le schie is a Venetian celebration of the uniquely delicious small shrimp found in their waters.

While shrimp of this size found stateside are often unappealing (lacking in flavor and quality), we loved the sweet, briny flavors and ease of this dish and decided to develop a simple shrimp pasta that would taste just as good in our kitchens.

We began by halving large shrimp, which have reliably good flavor. We then reinforced the shrimp presence by first cooking the shrimp shells in oil and wine. Shrimp shells are rich in glutamates, which add meaty depth, as well as volatile fatty acids, which generate fresh, delicate flavors when cooked.

The result was a deeply flavored shrimp sauce. Some garlic, butter, lemon zest, and fresh parsley were all we needed to finish this flavorful weeknight dish.