Oh man do I love trying something new. When it comes to cooking, I really do love the stuff that takes a lot of prep work, or has a lot of steps to get to the perfect finished product. New flavors, different combinations of things you've had before all mixed up in one bowl. It's exciting! Like a journey for your taste buds. This week, it was Mario's turn to impress us. From his book "Mario Batali Italian Grill" our dinner was Swordfish Involtini Sicilian Style. The recipe called for cutting a 2 lb skinless swordfish steak into 6 thin slices and rolling it around the stuffing. We had to improvise. I bought 6 beautiful swordfish steaks and had the butcher butterfly them. Then I mixed together a cup of breadcrumbs, a handful of fresh chopped parsley, the zest of 2 oranges, salt and pepper to taste and enough olive oil just to moisten everthing, then mixed it with a fork.
Open the steaks like a book, across two, six inch pieces of kitchen twine. Divide the mixture between all 6 steaks, close "the book" and tie until just snug. Refrigerate about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the tomato salad. Chop about a pound of seeded and chopped ripe tomatoes. Combine with a handful of pitted Calamatra Olives, a couple tbsp of drained and rinsed capers, golden raisins (the recipe called for currants but I could not get any), toasted pine nuts and some red pepper flakes and olive oil. Stir gently. Set aside but don't refrigerate. Oh, if you've never done it, toasting pine nuts is done easliy in a small skillet on the stove top. Shake the pan or stir often. They brown quickly so don't walk away!
For an appetizer, we also marinated 2 pounds of grill ready, butterflied shrimp in some Wild Turkey Bourbon BBQ Sauce. Nice and sweet. I bought it at the distillery last July and kind of forgot about it in the pantry. I'll bet buying some more for sure!
When the shrimp was almost done, we brushed a little olive oil on the swordfish steaks, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper and placed them on the hot grill, about 5 minutes per side.
(Browning some rolls)
When the fish is nice and flaky, take off the grill, serve on top of the tomato salad. We also had gorgeous and oh so yummy pasta salad. Nice shells, with blanched string beans, black olives, bacon, tomatoes, cucumbers and shredded cheese with a nice chipotle ranch dressing. I could not get enough of that!!
Mary and Phill tried a nice Ranger India Pale Ale, my husband had Coors Light and I had raspberry vodka and iced tea.
Now isn't this a beautiful plate?
I cheated on dessert, bought some Sugar Cane Key Lime mini muffins. Mmmmmmmm.....
What do you think of that? Good huh? Should'a tasted it!
Well that's all for today. Not sure what we're making next, but I'll be sure to let you know!
Caio for now,
L&M
