It appears that everyone is ready to embrace the spring season. Recipe creator, food journalist, and author Lidey Heuck is certainly on board. Today, Heuck graces the TODAY kitchen to demonstrate a couple of simple spring dinner dishes from her cookbook, “Cooking in Real Life: Delicious & Doable Recipes for Every Day“. She introduces us to a tantalizingly creamy pasta alla vodka with plum shrimp and fresh, garlicky green beans with fried capers.

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Saucy Shrimp alla Vodka by Lidey Heuck

In times when I crave something warm, comforting yet not as heavy as a full bowl of pasta, this recipe perfectly hits the spot. Vodka sauce, surprisingly easy to craft at home, primarily requires pantry staples (who doesn’t consider vodka a pantry staple?). Interestingly, the Italians don’t typically pair seafood and cheese. However, pasta alla vodka is undeniably an Italian-American invention, easing our rule-breaking guilt. The refined, sea-kissed taste of the shrimp proves to be a delicious addition to the velvety vodka sauce—albeit untraditional. This dish is an excellent choice when you’re yearning for the comfort of pasta but prefer something a bit lighter and simpler to prepare—a quintessential spring recipe.

Garlicky Green Beans with Crispy Capers by Lidey Heuck

These garlicky, lemony green beans pack a ton of flavor for a dish with so few ingredients. Fried capers add a nice salty crunch (you’ll want to sprinkle them on everything!) and a touch of vinegar gives the beans an addictive quality. That’s more than I can say about most green beans. I think of these as an everyday side dish, but they’d also be a fresh alternative to Thanksgiving green bean casserole.

If you like those savory spring recipes, you should also try these:

Spring Vegetable Baked Rice by Daniel Humm

Cheesy Orzo with Asparagus and Black Truffle Butter by Amanda Freitag

This article was originally published on TODAY.com