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♪♪
Hello, I'm Chef Rob Stinson
here with another episode of Fit to Eat.
Today we are going to be making
my Mediterranean shrimp salad
with a honey balsamic dressing.
We'll also trade off the carbs you'd normally get
with croutons by using grilled eggplant.
And I tell you what, I've got a great one here.
It sounds incredible.
I'm going to start prepping the ingredients
while we take a quick break.
When we get back, we'll get started.
♪♪
♪♪
Mediterranean diets have been around
for a while now specializing in the dietary patterns
of Italy, Greece, Spain and Morocco.
The Mediterranean diet is a great choice
for heart healthy eating.
I'm going to show you my take
on a Mediterranean shrimp salad.
Now, the neat part about this is using great local
ingredients like our wild-caught shrimp,
artichoke hearts.
And while we are talking about artichoke hearts
that are going into this salad,
let's mention their health benefits.
Artichoke hearts are naturally
fat-free and low in calories.
How often are you searching the market
for some fat-free processed food?
Artichoke hearts also contain about one/fourth
the amount of fiber an adult needs.
They are great for you and we are
going to use them in this recipe.
Let's get started on this.
We have a sauté pan here.
Typically when you sauté, you use quite a bit of oil.
We are only going to put a half teaspoon of oil.
And you notice it drizzles out.
That diffuser makes all the difference in the world
because that half teaspoon we are putting
all over the entire pan.
It coats it that way.
Onions, we are going to place them first.
Those are julienne strips.
This dish has a good amount of garlic which,
if you have been watching the show,
I love it.
A nice tablespoon of minced garlic all fresh.
And I don't buy the garlic that comes
in the water or in the oil at the store.
Use fresh garlic.
Take your time.
Mince it up ahead.
You can do it in a food processor.
It's not that hard.
We are going to add to that our shrimp.
These are some beautiful wild-caught shrimp.
They've been peeled and deveined
so they are easy to work with.
What is nice about that, when you're eating the salad,
you really don't want to have to worry about
trying to pick off all of the tails.
It makes it a much easier it dish to eat.
We will put some cracked black pepper all over.
It looks like I am putting a lot on there,
but this doesn't really come out all that heavy
and it's a nice seasoning.
Now we put in our artichoke hearts.
As you can see, it's going to end up being
a very visually appealing dish with the shrimp,
the artichoke, the onion.
We are going to put in some sun-dried tomatoes.
You know, sun-dried tomatoes are also
low in calories naturally with virtually no fat.
Sun-dried tomatoes are a good source
of vitamin C and iron.
Sun-dried tomatoes contain the chemical lycopene
which gives them their red color.
According to the Mayo Clinic,
higher intakes of lycopene are associated
with lower instances of cancer and heart disease.
I tell you what, we all need to be concerned about that.
While this is working through, I'm going to go ahead
and put our sun-dried tomatoes in.
This dish is really close to my heart
because of the chef that I worked with
when we made this the first time.
I was in Italy and it was his daughter's wedding.
It was a celebration.
And in Italy, to have all of these different ingredients
in one dish would make it a celebration.
Very different from our country where everyone
throws the kitchen sink and everything else in.
And I love the blend of this.
We're taking a little water-- and it could be wine,
I'm just using water today-- to deglaze that pan.
And all that means is try to get everything off the bottom
of the pan so the flavors stay with those shrimp.
Looks so good already.
Then we're going to add in some kalamata olives.
They are pitted.
So these are olives that have no seeds.
You definitely don't want to put a pitted olives in a salad.
And then we are going to add in some capers.
Those are little flowery buds.
They are normally kept in brine.
You see the ones I just added are dry.
The reason being is the brine is salty.
We are not trying to add a lot of salt into any
of the dishes that we do here on Fit to Eat.
If you really take note, you can dramatically
drop the amount of sodium that you consume
if you follow our recipes here on Fit to Eat.
That's a great thing.
This is a dish that I have made dozens of times
at dinner parties and people always
love one thing about it, and I think it stands out.
It's a warm salad, and it is intentionally a warm salad.
At the wedding in Italy when I saw it made
for the first time and learned how to make it,
they actually had a line of people coming up.
They had lettuce on one side
and they had pasta on the other.
It was the most unique thing I had ever seen
because they asked everyone if they would like it as a
warm salad or would you like it as a pasta dish?
So incredibly versatile.
You can take the same Mediterranean topping
and put it in a whole-grain wrap and it would be incredible.
Or use it as a topping over a piece
of grilled chicken or fish.
So lots of different uses.
We've got shrimp in it today,
but you could do this with chicken.
And you could find a variety of other items
to put in there.
I even cooked it with duck breast that I had taken
the skin off of to keep nice and low-fat,
and it was wonderful.
We are going to finish sautéing this.
The one neat thing about that as well is
look at that vivid color.
We are going to make to go with this
a very light balsamic honey dressing.
Typically, most salads are served with what?
With a lot of bread or croutons,
something that's ultimately pretty fattening.
Our twist today is while it is cooking up,
we are going to come back and show you
some eggplant crostini.
These are some beautiful grilled eggplant
instead of fried bread or some other bread
along with our honey balsamic dressing.
So stick around and we are going to have a great time
with this beautiful warm Mediterranean salad.
(Rooster crowing)
(Banjo playing)
Ever since I was a little girl,
I've been involved in farming.
My dad and mom has always had a farm,
a vegetable farm.
I've got about 15 acres here then I got an acre,
and acre and a half in two or three different places.
Two of the places in Simpson County.
Grayson: Brenda's Produce is one of the oldest
Farmer's Markets in Mississippi
just off West Street in Jackson.
That's where you will find Brenda seven days a week
selling the freshest produce in town.
Brenda: We're here at the farmer's market
from April till the first of November.
During the growing season,
90% of everything I sell is my daddy's.
I have watermelons, I have cucumbers,
I have okra, I have squash, I have bell peppers,
I have hot peppers, just about any kind of vegetable.
The reason we have such a good demand for what I grow
is if it ain't fit for me to eat,
it ain't fit for you to eat.
And I don't carry it.
Brenda: When I hear of a 37-year-old person
dying of a heart attack
or a 27-year-old having a massive stroke,
I contribute a lot of that to their eating habits.
I think it's very important for people to know where
their produce comes from, what has been used on it.
I've had people to ask me, "Has your daddy
sprayed anything on this corn?
I pulled it back, and there is a worm at the top of it."
I said, "No because he said anything he sprays
on this corn to kill that little worm right there
that it's going to hurt you too.
We have to have money to live like everybody else,
but it's really not so much the money as it is
the smiles on people's faces when I say yes,
this is Daddy's tomatoes.
It doesn't cost a penny to be nice to people
and that's how we run our business.
♪♪
Welcome back.
We got started talking about using eggplant
instead of bread in this incredible Mediterranean salad.
Eggplant is also a heart-healthy vegetable full of fiber.
Plus it is a bulky vegetable which means it
fills you up and is slow to digest,
which is great because it is low in calories, too.
Many great things about eggplant.
Most people, when they cook eggplant,
the very first thing they do is they skin it
and they take the beautiful skin off the outside edge.
Why?
It typically is a little bit bitter and people are
apprehensive to use it because they think that
bitterness will overpower the flavor of the eggplant.
I will do a pan seared eggplant that is lightly
breaded with skin on, will bake it to where it's
almost like you are eating fried eggplant sticks
with skin on, and this dish as grilled crostini.
We're actually going to keep the skin on.
That's where all the nutrients are.
Don't be scared to leave the skin on.
I'm going to tell you in the combination of what we
are doing today, the eggplant will have
the honey balsamic dressing right there
and that adds a natural sweetness.
Don't be scared to leave that skin on.
I'm going to show you.
Eggplant is extremely easy to work with.
You're always going to find a small amount
of color variation inside an eggplant.
Don't let that scare you either.
Obviously, if it is so soft to the touch
that it is very mushy, you know that
is not an eggplant you want to use.
But the variation of color inside
actually means it's riper.
We want about a half inch slice so I would
take my knife, cut straight down that half inch.
That is the perfect amount of thickness where it still
will have a little meatiness and at the same time
you will get flavor seared on both side.
It will add a wonderful quality.
In Italy, they love eggplant.
It's cooked in so many different recipes.
But we are going to move this
over to the side right now.
I've got three slices that we are going to use.
The way we are going to do these,
I've got a pan that is warm on the side
and we are going to spray that with our pan coating.
Again, zero fat.
The pan is hot.
A lot of people would say it's not safe
by the flames, and they are right.
Let's move it away from the flame.
Get a nice coating on the pan.
Turn that heat down just a little bit.
And then we are going to come back
to the eggplant slices and we are going to
baste them on one side with the honey.
So obviously that bitterness in the skin will be
overshadowed by our beautiful local honey.
And in just a minute, we are going to talk about honey
and some of the surprising benefits it does have.
Let's coat each piece one side.
It really keeps our seasoning
on the side of the eggplant.
That's a good thing because we're using
some beautiful fresh herbs.
Let's pull that pan off the heat.
I can see it is extremely hot
which is good because we want it to sear.
And here we've got some fresh chopped oregano.
Fresh oregano is so much milder in flavor
than the dry component.
And fresh basil also minced and chopped fine.
Not dry.
This is fresh basil and fresh oregano
that I got at our local farmers market.
And a little bit of cracked black pepper.
You might think that is a lot of black pepper.
It's going to make a wonderful crust
and a lot of it will cook off in the pan.
So now we've got this one side
that looks beautifully coated.
Let's take those and just to be safe
since that pan was a little bit hotter than I expected,
I'm going to spray just a little bit more
of our pan coating.
And now put those eggplant crostinis down in the pan.
I can hear them.
I know they are sizzling perfectly.
The one thing we want to do is watch
that the honey doesn't over caramelize.
So I move it off the heat.
If I see that it is browning that quickly,
it is a wonderful trick to use at home as well.
So let's move all of this out of the way.
Do a little bit of housecleaning because
we still need to finish our salad dressing.
I'm going to bring all of the ingredients
for that salad dressing up top.
A little whisk.
We've got our lemon, apple juice.
You're going to love what we're doing with that.
Garlic, balsamic vinegar, and again our honey.
In the bowl, we are going to cut our lemon in half.
Let's go ahead and get a little sanitizer on my hands.
Squeeze that lemon into the bowl.
Add our garlic.
That's about a teaspoon of garlic.
A little touch of cracked black pepper again.
Apple juice is actually going to become the oil.
So the salad dressing has no oil.
Balsamic vinegar.
A lot of people misunderstand balsamic vinegar.
It's made from Treviano grapes.
It's a real art that they make it the way they do in Italy.
It has wonderful flavor.
Then we are going to thicken this with
just a little bit of our organic honey.
Tell you what, I love all of the healthy benefits
of using fresh, local honey.
And their are a lot of health benefits.
Just a few of the benefits of honey are
it's good for a cough.
One study, scientists found that giving honey
to children with a persistent cough
works better than cough syrup.
It's not recommended for real young children,
but honey can also be used
as a sugar substitute in baking.
People with diabetes still need to use it with caution.
Then there is a belief that it can be used to help
children in their adolescents with allergies
where a small spoon every day of local honey
gets in and builds up immunity
towards some of the local pollen.
These look perfect.
We are going to go ahead and turn these over.
Our eggplant crostini are doing great.
Let's go back and finish.
The honey will become more pliable
as it is mixed in with the salad dressing.
You can see it almost looks like caramel.
That dressing is going to be so light
and virtually fat-free which is what is so nice
without using any oil.
As we go through the recipes with Fit to Eat,
most of the time our goal is to bring down your fat level,
your salt level, try and be preservative free.
It's so easy to go into stores and buy products.
But if you spend a little bit of time every week
going to your local farmers market and you buy
the products they grow, they are pesticide-free,
preservative-free, they are almost always less
expensive and it makes it such a great thing
because you are supporting your local economy.
I cannot impress that on people enough.
Far too often, we end up sending money overseas
that we should be keeping here.
That's a simple no-brainer.
Let's look at this right here.
We are going to take those crostinis off the heat
and we are going to put our shrimp,
after we deglaze it just a little bit more,
back on the heat to bring those back up to temperature.
There is a trick when you know that your eggplant
has cooked long enough and that is
that the skin will start to break away from
the edge in addition to the nice browning.
But look how beautiful those look.
The idea of this is we are using something
instead of bread as a filler.
Just like we said earlier, eggplant is exactly that.
And what great flavor it has.
So now we are back to our shrimp.
We talked about sun-dried tomatoes,
but I would like to add one other thing.
A lot of people out there are vegetarian today.
This entire recipe, if you notice,
is a vegetarian recipe.
No chicken stock, no other type of meat,
no bacon or pork in the salad.
The one thing the sun-dried tomatoes do give
is a certain meatiness by their texture.
It's almost a sweet meaty quality
the sun-dried tomatoes add.
And that, to me, gives it a whole different flavor
than using a normal tomato.
So sun-dried tomatoes.
Find them.
Keep them in your closet.
They last indefinitely if you put them
in a resealable freezer bag.
You can keep them in your freezer
and pull them out in small amounts
and they will last you for literally forever.
Let's look at our crostini and turn them.
That side is brown.
Oh yes.
That is what we're looking for right there.
I want to come back to the shrimp in the pan.
One of the things when I was in Italy and cooking,
we were on an island called Panza which is off the coast
of Naples or Napoli as they say in Italy.
One of the most magnificent,
beautiful areas that I've ever seen or been to.
And the flavor of the food was so simple because
it was just the ingredients of the food itself.
You didn't have a lot of additives
and they don't use a lot of cream in that area.
So that Mediterranean diet is naturally healthier just
by design of what grows in the area.
I think it makes it really fun and flavorful.
And the idea of this is just to let everything
blend together which it is doing.
Our crostini look as if they are just about ready.
What we are going to do when all of this is said
and done, is start building up what's going to make
a pretty presentation because I think you eat
with your eyes is much as with your taste buds.
So when you come back, we're going
to put it all together.
We will go through all of the nutritional benefits
and some of the nutritional facts for this dish.
And remember, check us out on Facebook at MPBFittoEat.
There you will find all the links for our recipes
and the nutritional analysis.
Come on back.
Welcome back.
Let's talk about the nutritional facts:
416 calories.
55 grams of carbohydrates.
23 grams of protein.
12 grams of fat.
5.5 grams of fiber.
Wow!
So you can see how healthy it is.
All right, now what we are going to do,
our spring mix which is a blend of about
12 different greens along with some romaine
because romaine is a little bit firmer.
We are going to take half hour dressing,
toss it real quickly, and then plate that on the bottom.
This is going to be the base for the warm shrimp salad.
Now we are going to take our shrimp
and that beautiful shrimp Mediterranean topping
goes right over the lettuce
and it will naturally start to wilt it.
Incredible.
Then, if that weren't enough for a feast,
let's go with the eggplant crostini.
And let me tell you, it's important to realize
that you need a healthy lifestyle
and that it is not a temporary diet.
But what you put into your body has a larger impact
on your health than anything else you do.
Minor changes to your diet can pay huge dividends.
And remember that watching Fit to Eat
is going to add to those benefits every week.
So enjoy!
Come back and see us again soon.