Family style Italian-o

Ok people...this one is going to have A LOT of pictures!! I'm not really sure what happened to me Friday but I apparently felt the need to make enough food for way more than 2 people.  It seemed necessary to recreate Carmine's, a family style Italian restaurant in Denver.  It started with wanting to buy prosciutto but not wanting to recreate an antipasti plate.  Instead, I remembered that I had watermelon at home so I figured I could make prosciutto wrapped watermelon balls.

What I ended up doing was taking 2 half balls and rolling them together in one piece of prosciutto.  I got about 6 slices of prosciutto and the picture below shows how many wraps I ended up with.  I tried to cut each strip of meat into 3 so there wasn't an overwhelming amount of prosciutto to watermelon.  

The meal then turned into Italian due to the prosciutto.  For a while, I wanted to make spaghetti b/c we already have pasta and sauce at the house so I would only have to buy meat and that would have been a cheap dinner....but it was just too simple for my first official Friday of cooking in the new house.  Instead, I went with Chicken Picatta AND pasta =/  Remember, I am only cooking for 2...something I clearly had a problem remembering that night.  Ingredients are the following:

Chicken

Gluten Free Flour

Capers

Lemon Juice

Chicken Stock

Olive Oil

Butter

So, I bought 2 whole chicken breasts that were already split, dredged them in gluten-free flour, and then "fried" in a mix of olive oil and butter for about 3 minutes each side.  

Once those were done, I added the lemon juice, capers, and chicken stock.  This was allowed to cook for a couple of minutes, scraping the browned flour off the bottom of the pan.  The chicken was then returned to the pan with the juices for about 5 minutes each side.

The pasta definitely took the most time and was surprisingly more "complex" than I had planned for it to be.  It seems common that when doing family style Italian, there is always a meat and pasta dish.  This is why I felt the need to prepare both!  For the pasta, I was going to keep it vegetarian but for some reason pancetta sounded really good.  The pasta contained the following ingredients:

Angel Hair

Pasta Sauce

Grape Tomatoes

Zucchini

Yellow Squash

Onion

Garlic

Pancetta

To begin, I sautéed the garlic and onions together.  Once the onions were close to transparent, I added the squash, zucchini, and pancetta.  I allowed this to cook for a while, basically until the squash started to brown and the pancetta began to cook thoroughly.  At this point, I added the pasta sauce.  The pasta was cooking while making the sauce and took 9 minutes for al dente.  Once the sauce was heated through, I added the pasta into the sauce and mixed.  I realized at this point that I had forgotten the tomatoes so I threw those in also and mixed again.  I tossed the pasta frequently as I was making the chicken since I didn't start the chicken until after the pasta was done since I knew it wouldn't take long to make and the pasta could sit on the burner and be fine.  Usually, the tomatoes would have been added before the pasta.  

I also picked up a small loaf of italian bread from Whole Foods.  I cut it in half and put it in the oven at 300 degrees to toast.  I put some butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder on top to make garlic bread.  

This was our final dinner, topped with some parmesan cheese and freshly grated pepper...

This meal turned out very well.  I think the pasta, which was sweeter than expected, with the tartness of the picatta was a perfect mix.  There was enough sauce from both the pasta and the chicken to make a great dipping liquid for garlic bread.  We will probably be eating pasta for the next few days.  Luckily, I have a great boyfriend who is willing to eat leftovers for lunch :)