Chicken Baked with Sage and Bacon

While recording some of our family favorites for my upcoming cookbook, I’m reminded of the most important ingredients found in all my dishes, love and passion.

I’ve been blessed to have grown up in a generation that experienced true family dinners. As a girl growing up in the south, it never occurred to me that everyone didn’t go to their grandmother’s home on Sunday to have dinner with the entire family, which always meant eating with a minimum of 15 people. Not that it was always a pie in the sky kind of experience…come on people it was real, June Cleaver wasn’t there. OK, so I’m going to date myself here, but it was a time without cell phones, game boys, or computers, so there was actually interaction with real people at the table with you!

Oh the smells that would greet you as you pulled into the driveway, a chicken that had been roasting for hours, okra or green tomatoes being fried, green beans that have been cooking in bacon. As soon as you walked in you were assigned a job and it was anybody’s guess as to what it would be for that day. Maybe it was going out to the garden to pick the fresh vegetables for the salad, peeling potatoes for the mashed potatoes, or maybe turning the crank on the machine for homemade ice cream.

As everyone gathered around the table (all 15 of us - and yes there were tables to accommodate this), the “games” began. Of course everyone talked at the same time, so you had a choice of topics. There were as many conversations as there were people but the one thing in common was their love and passion for the food served and the time spent together.

Family dinners are an art which seem to have been dropped along the wayside with the ever evolving hectic techno savvy world. Don’t get me wrong, I think that there are amazing advancements that help keep our world connected…But perhaps we should try one day a week, I prefer Sundays, where television, computers, game boys, cellular phones, PDA’s, are not allowed. Try it - it’s amazing what you will discover about yourself and your family. Here is one of our favorite recipes from those family dinners that has been handed down for three generations. Click here to see my Chicken Baked with Sage and Bacon.

Pork Stuffed Shrimp with Creamy Polenta and Wrapped Haricots Verts

When I read this week’s ingredients for round 2 of the Virtual Kitchen II contest, I was so excited. I had been anxiously waiting for their arrival all week. When I read ground pork and camembert I was in heaven, the third ingredient (haricots verts) created a little hesitation, but I decided to move forward with what I knew I wanted to do with the pork and cheese and let the beans just kind of happen.

Being from the south and married to an Italian, I have fun marrying the two traditional cuisines to create my own interpretation of “Southern Italian”, so imagine how excited I am to take that and add my own third dimension of French undertones. And this week I’ve used a VERY local ingredient, a marinade which is also available on-line, but created and made by a friend who is also a Tampa resident, Intensity Academy Chai Thai Teriyaki. For my other local flavor I chose Key West Pink shrimp, always fresh and scrumptious here on the west coast of Florida.

While taking the day off from the kitchen Sunday night, I hear someone jump out of their chair and in a very excited voice tell me I need to enter this. This what? Well, that response ended my day off in the kitchen….not such a bad thing for Deb I must admit.

Well, to back up a little, you all are pretty familiar with the fact that I have now rented space as a test kitchen for putting together my first cookbook. Well, I have finally moved all my equipment to the test kitchen, which as it turns out is not so good. When presented with the challenge of creating a dish in 24 hours or less, with 3 ingredients chosen by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and RedEye Chicago (Virtual Kitchen Stadium 2), my challenge was what the heck was I going to use to create what I was tasting in my mouth!

Well, after surviving the first week at the Culinary Institute of America, I was excited to be returning for the Advanced Boot Camp. This was going to be my challenge week. I have cooked my entire life, so the cooking part for me was, for lack of a better term, kind of a no brainer, just learned the “proper” way of describing what I have been doing forever. But, this week I was going to have to learn how to “fabricate” meat, poultry, fish, and……deal with LIVE LOBSTER!

First things first, what the heck was this “fabrication” process all about. I kept hearing this word, but what exactly did it mean used in this text. Well, for those of you wondering, it means basically they bring in a side of beef for example and you have to know how to make the various cuts such as a roast, rib steak, tenderloin, etc. My first day and I have the assignment of doing lamb tenderloin. So we watch very closely our instructor, Chef David Bruno, they always make it look so easy! But I’m here to tell you that when you are the one holding that sharp knife that can either produce the most gorgeous cut of meat or the most unrecognizable cut of meat based upon the holder’s ability, it isn’t so easy! But with the guidance and reassurance of Chef Bruno, I DID IT! I managed to cut and trim a gorgeous tenderloin…from an entire loin section of the lamb. Phew, day one….survived and made an amazing lamb tenderloin as well!