Okay, so we're gonna make a really neat dish. It's a.....
Grilled shrimp on rosemary skewers with rosemary white beans and sautéed Swiss chard.
So, there's three components that we want to work with. The first one is cooking the beans.
And there's a couple things I want to talk about. First of all.....
I have two different white beans that we could use. One is a cannellini bean....
which is really nice, creamy good texture.
And, as the other one.... is a large Butter Bean.
So the only difference really is size and texture.
But, in terms of the cooking method....
Both of them.... what I want to do is..... soak overnight in cold water,
before I start cooking the next day.
It's not necessary to soak overnight. We can do the quick soak method,
which is adding the dried beans to a pot with water, and bring it to a boil,
and turning off the heat and letting it sit for an hour.
That would be the quick soak method, and it would be ready to go into cooking the beans.
So the first step in cooking the beans, after we've soaked them, is to cover them with hot water....
And if we take a look at this pot.... I have a rosemary sprig,
bay, a little bit of black pepper, and some red pepper flakes....
And I bring it to a simmer, and I simmer for about an hour to an hour and a half, until the beans are tender.
I don't want to add any salt until the very *end* of the cooking beans.
Because adding the salt will toughen the skins and prevent the beans from getting nice and creamy.
They'll kind of be an undercooked bean if we add salt too early.
So, another important concept by cooking these beans, is keeping it covered with hot water the whole time.
So, if the beans absorb some of the moisture, we want to add hot water to the pot while it's cooking.
If you add cold water, it stops the cooking process, and you have a kind of a crunchy bean.
So, when we're done, they're nice and nice good texture. We add the salt,
we take it off the heat, and this is kind of where I'm at right now: about to add the salt....
Want to make sure that they're always partially submerged in moisture, so that they don't dry out,
and so that that they actually cook evenly. So, we're at the point, we'll add the salt.
Turn it off the heat, and this can be done three or four days ahead of time.
Make sure you cool in the liquid, and store in the liquid.
So when we're ready to serve this..... Basically, I'm going to take the beans out with a slotted spoon
and that will be our component.
Okay, let's take a look at the rest of the ingredients on this dish.
So, we're gonna do a sautéed Swiss chard.
And I like to use garlic, shallots, olive oil, Swiss Chard....
And finish it in the very end with little bit of white wine.
Swiss Chard takes a little bit longer to cook than spinach,
so it's sometimes known as braised Swiss Chard.
I have Green Swiss Chard. You can use Rainbow, or Red.....
They were all in the family of kind of a "braising green."
So, we're gonna work on prepping those ingredients. And then I have the shrimp.
What I want to do with the shrimp is.... these are already marinating in a mixture of thyme, olive oil, and rosemary....
And the concept is.... I want to leave the tail on for presentation. You may take the tail off,
and you could put it on wooden skewers, but I like to put it on rosemary skewers. So....
I'm just going out to the garden, picking rosemary.....
And taking the bottom few inches off of it.
I'm going to take my knife, and actually kind of cut it, so that I have a spear.
So, then I'll be able to skewer my shrimp.
And that's the third component.
So, the things that we do at the last second are: cooking the shrimp....and braising the chard.
So, we're gonna actually, uh..... We've got our garlic and our shallot, right? We're gonna cook the chard.
So as the chard is cooking, it takes about ten minutes,
I'll skewer the shrimp, and grill the shrimp. So, all three components should come together about the same time.
So, the first step is....
About three tablespoons of olive oil.
And I'm gonna go in with my shallots and garlic at the same time.
And I'm gonna cook it until the garlic just starts to get a little bit of color.
[Sizzling sounds]
And I'm doing it on kind of medium/medium low heat.... So I don't burn the garlic.
Once I get my light color..... And then I'll add my Swiss Chard.
Let's take a look at the shrimp.
So, I've started with one skewer, here.
And I'm gonna grill two of the shrimp,
and I'm basically gonna look at the size of the plate that I'm going to present on.
So, that's my guideline on how big I'm going to make my skewers.
So, when doing the shrimp, I want to kind of go in.....
And I want to keep them tight together. So that when I cook them, they cook evenly.
......All the while keeping an eye on my garlic.
[Sound of metal spoon hitting pan]
Alright, I'm gonna season..... My grill is warm..... I'm gonna season my shrimp. Here, at the last second,
I'll grill for about three minutes on one side, turn them for a mark, and flip them to the back side.
I want to keep these a little under, because when they come off the heat, they're
gonna continue cooking. And we've all had shrimp that have been kind of hard and rubbery. I want
these to kind of still be moist in the center. So, I'm gonna actually be able to see the side of it,
to make sure that I'm still a little under, when I'm taking them off the heat.
Alright, our beans are ready to serve....
They've sat here with a little bit of the salt in to infuse the flavor, and I'll take this off the heat, and focus on our Swiss Chard.
So, we can see that our shallots are a little translucent, our garlic is just starting to get some color.
This is my sign to.....
.....add my Swiss chard.....
I'm seasoning with a small amount of salt.
And not just for flavor. Salt draws out moisture, so whenever I'm sautéing mushrooms
or spinach or a Swiss Chard, I add the salt in the beginning, and it draws out the moisture.
So, these will cook down for about three or four minutes,
and the shrimp should be done in about three or four minutes....
And we'll bring this dish together next....
Okay.... So, coming back, our chard is cooked down a little bit.
I've got some nice marks on one side of my shrimp....
[Sizzling Sounds]
Let me turn my shrimp.
.....So about another three minutes on this one side.
And this is cooking down. There's a point that you know your chard is done, by the texture of it.
So, this piece still is kind of a under-cooked, and then this piece is done....
So it's kind of like spinach. When it's wilted it just takes a little bit longer.
All right, and then I'll be presenting this dish with my rosemary cannellini beans.
And I consider this dish more of an appetizer. It can be an entrée, but the flavor components, it's....
So the shrimp are pretty rich, the beans have a nice hardiness to them, and the Swiss Chard...
So I kind of serve this as an appetizer. It can be turned into an entrée.
I'm taking a look at my chard, I'm gonna look at the pan, and I have these..... uh.....
Dark areas, where the garlic is starting to caramelize, which is good,
and now is the time to finish with my white wine. It kind of deglazes the pan.....
Which cooks up all the great flavor.
My shrimp is looking great.
We'll cook off that alcohol.
So all three components are ready to go.
So our Chard is down first, perfectly cooked and seasoned.
Our cannellini beans....
And then we'll finish with that grilled shrimp.
So, here we have it.
Rosemary Grilled Shrimp on Cannellini Beans with braised Swiss Chard.
Enjoy!