Proscuitto Wrapped Asparagus with Roasted Red Peppers

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Ok, so I confess. I watch too much tv.

Ok, I confess again that's bullshit. I dvr exactly 3 shows. They are all cooking related. What are they, you ask? I'm glad you did. Top chef, Top Chef Masters, Food Networks Next Top Star. Why not chopped? Boring. Why not Iron chef? Three reasons.

Reason One for Fuck Iron Chef: Its rigged. The Iron chef always wins when I can tell they clearly have the lesser dish

Reason Two for Iron Chef Blows: God damnit Mark Dacascos. This guy was an awesome star of incredible b-movies. He's an actual martial artist for chrissakes. Once called, "The original five fingers of death", his entire shtick is relegated to making chopping motions in front of douchey chefs.

Reason Three for It Used To Be Japanese Now ist Dumerican: Bobby Flay. This dude makes me want to flay myself Priory of Scion style. Seriously. Bobby, if you read this. You're a douche. I can say that because I never want to be a professional chef.

Ok, back on track. ( I have to ramble in each of these)

After an episode of Top Chef, I decided I wanted to try my hand at an Amuse Bouche.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amuse-bouche

I'll summarize that wiki... A tiny package, with a lot of flavor, meant to eat in one bite. After reading some food magazines, I got some inspiration and came up with an idea...

Proscuitto wrapped around roasted red pepper meat and asparagus.

Without further ado, here's the recipe.

(This recipe will make 4 bites)

Ingredients:

4 stalks of Asparagus

Sliced Proscuitto (Depending on thickness, this could be anywhere from 4 slices to 8 if its very thin)

1/4 of a Red pepper

Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper or Lemon Pepper ( I used lemon pepper)

1/2 tbsp butter

Step 1: Set your oven on broil. Slice just one flat section of red pepper off of the side. You want this piece to be as flat as can be. If you need to, make two slices.

Step 2: On a pan, put some aluminum foil, drizzle a bit of olive oil on the pan. Place your red pepper flat in the center of the pan. Place on the top rack of your oven, and let them cook until they look burnt as shit. If you're like me and you leave the oven door open while you broil, you'll get an incredible sweet flavor as they roast. (Crazy that something spicy actually has a sweet flavor huh?)

When done, they should look like this:

Now, if you don't want to let yours cook to THAT extent, its perfectly fine, but you see the charred skin?

You definitely need that in places.

Step 3: With the pepper now cooked, remove the pan from the oven. Pull the edges of the tin foil up around the pepper forming a loose tent. Set aside and let cool for about 5 minutes. The pepper is going to continue to cook in the foil, and by letting it rest, you'll be able to peel the skin off easier.

Step 4: Skin the peppers. All you do is grab the skin and peel. Imagine that time when you were 8 years old and fell asleep outside in florida and you spent the next three weeks peeling off dead skin.

Step 5: Chop the "meat" of the red pepper up into very small chunks (Think diced tomatoes) and set aside.

Step 6: In a 6-8" pan, heat up some about 1/8th inch oil. Add the 1/2 tbsp butter. Once the oil is shimmering and the butter melted, drop the 4 asparagus stalks into the oil. Cook very quickly. Once they become very green but still have plenty of crispness, remove. (We need this crispness for the texture of the dish)

Step 7: Drain most of the oil from the pan. Don't wipe it, or worry if its not all gone. We want some of it there.

Step 8: Here's the tricky part, especially depending on the thickness of your proscuitto. Take the proscuitto, lay it flat, and place a stalk of asparagus smack in the middle. Surround the asparagus with a reasonable amount of red peppers.

Silly Question: Whats reasonable?
Answer: If you have very thin proscuitto its not going to be able to hold all that red pepper mixture in there and will explode like a water balloon. So if your proscuitto is thicker it can hold more, or you can double up the slices of proscuito.

Step 9: Wrap the proscuitto up as well as you can, and gently place in the pan which previously contained the Asparagus. Try to leave it alone as much as possible, and be ready to remove it when the proscuitto begins to sweat.

Step 10: Top with either pepper or lemon pepper, remove from the pan and serve immediately.

If you have extra asparagus (thats cooked) or extra red pepper, feel free to garnish on the plate as I did below.

Enjoy!

Note: I mentioned that this would make a nice amuse-bouche, but because i'm a complete glutton, i made the entire stalk. If you wanted bite size, you could chop the asparagus in quarters and use a piece of stalk and a piece of the head of the asparagus in the amuse-bouche.

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