Yummy Yummy in my Tummy pt.2

So besides having a last minute party today at my sister in laws house my husband and I are going to be entertaining my parents tomorrow. We figured we could either take them out to a really expensive steak house and then argue with my parents over who pays the bills or we could have them over here to have steaks that we had our butcher cut to order (yes daddy, you get a 1 3/4 inch thick steak! EWWW).

So tomorrow we are grilling steaks on the BBQ grill, making some baked potatoes, Tzatziki, an eggplant spread, some homemade rosemary bread and this delicious sage stuffed pancetta wrapped shirmp.

We made this for Christmas and people went bonkers over it.

Want some ingredients? You should know this is made to serve 4. Adjust your ingredients accordingly.

12 jumbo shrimp, peeled, de-veined and partially butterflied, tails left on
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
10 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil divided (You'll need more later for drizzling)
24 sage leaves
12 slices pancetta, unraveled

For the salad:
1 bag croutons **
2 carton multi-colored cherry tomatoes, halved
2 shallot, minced
2 roasted red pepper, chopped
1 cup basil, chopped
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar

What do we do now that we have the ingredients?

Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, add 2 tablespoons of your olive oil

Open up the butterflied shrimp and season them with salt, freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil Place two sage leaves into the slice along the back where the shrimp has been de-veined and butterflied, then wrap each shrimp from head to tail with a slice of pancetta.

Transfer the pancetta-wrapped shrimp to the hot skillet and cook until browned and cooked through, about 2-3 minutes per side.

While the shrimp are cooking, make the panzanella salad: Combine the croutons, tomatoes, shallots, red pepper sand basil in a large bowl. Toss the ingredients together with the red wine vinegar, 3 tablespoons of olive oil , salt and freshly ground black pepper.


Divide the salad between the plates and top each with three shrimp.


Want some tips?

I hate using crutons out of the box! C'mon we can all make our own stale bread but why does it have to be stale? I make a lot of fresh bread at home by myself. When I need to make crutons I just take a hunk out of my loaf of bread and cut it into cubes and drizzle it with olive oil and then season it the way I want to (salt, pepper, oregano, and some rosemary) then I put it on a cookie sheet and bake it until its dry! Tada! Insta-cruton! If you don't make your own bread you can always buy fresh bread and then make your own crutons! (Also if the bread goes stale before we get a chance to eat it I cut it into cubes and put it into the magic bullet and I have my very own bread crumbs!)

You should also considering using Extra Virgin Olive Oil because it does have a better flavor then just regular olive oil but don't fret, if you don't have EVOO then just use whatever type of olive oil you have! I sometimes like to mix it up and use something special like avacodo oil! Yummy!

Montalcino Chicken with Figs and Buttered Gnocchi

So, for the first blog I even went as far as to take a picture of the final meal. Now, let me be honest. This didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to turn out and part of the reason is that I got so frustrated trying to open the actual bottle of wine (we have so many gadgets in our kitchen and we dont have a normal wine opener). So by the time I got to the step of pouring the wine I kind of poured two thirds of the bottle instead of one third and that just screwed up the entire dish. (Its good if you are a huge wine drinker, but I'm not and the colour the dish ended up kind of reminded me of grilled octopus).

So I obviously did a few different things from the actual recipe. It calls for dried figs, I perferred to use fresh figs. It said to use nutmeg on the gnocchi but I perferred cinnamon. It said to use frozen gnocchi but I perferred to us fresh. (I got lucky my friends mother had just sent me over a huge bag of fresh gnocchi today that she made!)

So here is my verison of this very yummy meal!

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 pound thick cut pancetta (cut into sticks) (you can subsitute this with bacon if you don't have pancetta on hand but make sure to cook it until its very very crispy)

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken cut into big chunks

small bowl of flour (for dredging)

1 large onion

4 garlic cloves

8 fresh figs, washed, peeled, quartered

1/3 bottle of dry red wine (this is very important, only 1/3 bottle)

1 cup chicken stock

1/4 cup fresh parsely, coarsely chopped

1 lemon zest

1 tablesppon fresh thyme

12 to 16 oz of gnocchi (fresh or frozen: if fresh cooking time is 4 minutes, if frozen its 8)

1/2 cup butter

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg (or cinnamon)

3 table spoons chopped chives

Heat a deep skillet over medium-high heat with the olive oil and pancetta (or bacon). Brown the meat for a few minutes, shouldn't take longer than 4 minutes, remove it using a slotted spoon and put aside.

While the pancetta is cooking, salt and pepper the chicken chunks and dredge them through flour. Once you take the pancetta out of the frying pan, added the dredged chicken in there and cook for a few minutes (about 5 minutes or just enough for them to brown slightly). Now keep the chicken in the pan but push them towards the edge and now add the figs, garlic, and onion in there and cook for about 2 minutes (not too long because garlic can burn quickly and that smells horrible and tastes very bitter). Now add the 1/3 bottle of wine. Cook it down for a while (until about only 1/3 cup of liquid remains). Now add the cup fo chicken stock, lemon zest and parsley, thyme. Reduce heat to where food is simmering and go make the gnocchi.

Boil the pot of water with a bit of salt. Once water is boiling add the gnocchi. You know the gnocchi is cooked when it rises to the top of the water. Drain and set aside.

In a medium size skillet melt down the butter and brown it. Add the drained gnocchi to this. Raise the temperature to medium high and lightly brown the gnocchi, season it with salt, pepper, nutmeg (or cinnamon). Turn to coat the other side and then add the chives, toss and remove from him.

Plating: Put the chicken with fig sauce in a shallow dish and then pile the gnocchi on top of it. Garnish with the pancetta or bacon. I went ahead and also garnished with fresh figs, lemon, and a bit of tomato. We already zested the lemon so instead of trashing it, I sliced it up a bit to add a bit of colour to the plate.