In collaboration with Grana Padano and Prosciutto di San Daniele.
Preparing Christmas dinner can often be quite a stressful experience. So many dishes, so few hobs and so little oven space. Here’s a quick and easy side dish recipe that can be prepared in advance as it needs to be served at room temperature.
It’s a rather unusual recipe, but trust me, it really does work. Once you start eating these you won’t be able to stop!
Baby carrots (try and buy some locally grown ones and avoid the supermarket ones if you can – you want carrots that actually taste like carrots!), are roasted with a little good quality olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt until they are gorgeously caramelised. They’re then sprinkled with some Grana Padano cheese and roasted again for a further five to ten minutes, so that the cheese melts and becomes crispy on the outside of the carrots.
Then, you set the tray aside so that the carrots can cool down and come to room temperature and you can get on with the rest of the Christmas dinner prep. Just before serving you wrap each of the carrots in a piece of delicious Prosciutto di San Daniele, arrange on a serving tray and you’re good to go!
Grana Padano is a medium fat hard Italian cheese with a rich, but not overpowering, flavour.
Around 1000 years ago, in the Po Valley in Italy, the Cistercian monks built Chiaravalle Abbey and began cultivating crops and rearing livestock. Food preservation techniques were not as advanced then as they are now, and fresh milk quickly went off. In a bid to help preserve surplus milk the monks developed the cheesemaking process that resulted in Grana Padano cheese. This technique preserved the nutritional properties of the milk, and the flavour only improved with maturation.
Prosciutto di San Daniele is produced only in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, in the hilly area around the town of San Daniele in the north-east of Italy.  It is made solely of the carefully selected meat of pigs born and bred in Italy and sea salt, dried by the winds blowing down from the Carnic Alps and the breezes coming in from the Adriatic Sea. It is a natural food product with no additives or preservatives of any kind.
Both Grana Padano and Prosciutto di San Daniele have Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, meaning that when you buy these products you can guarantee they were produced to the highest standards in their respective regions. Be sure to look out for the PDO mark when making your purchases.
For my Christmas side dish I’ve combined these two ingredients so that the beautiful fresh flavour of the baby carrots is enhanced with the fragrant, yet delicate flavour of the cheese. The crispy bits of melted cheese add a gorgeous texture which pairs incredibly well with the flavour of the melt-in-the-mouth Prosciutto di San Daniele. Trust me, it really is a food combination that works.
It’s a really, really easy recipe to make too. Watch our video below to see (or just to listen to the rather awesome Christmas music my rather talented husband has written to accompany!).
What’s your favourite way to pair Grana Padano and Prosciutto di San Daniele? Do you have a Christmas side dish you make that uses both ingredients? Let me know in the comments!
In the meantime, for more information and recipe inspiration for both products (they both have fascinating histories!), visit the Grana Padano and the Prosciutto di San Daniele websites.
Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas, and all the best for 2O17!
Roasted Baby Carrots with Grana Padano and Prosciutto di San Daniele
Ingredients
- 250 grams baby carrots peeled
- 2 tbsp good quality olive oil
- 1 tsp Shetland sea salt
- 20 grams Grana Padano cheese or more, as needed
- 8 slices Prosciutto di San Daniele or more, as needed
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Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200 C.
- Arrange peeled and washed carrots on a single layer on the baking tray, drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with the sea salt .
- Bake in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes.
- Remove the tray from the oven, sprinkle over the Grana Padano cheese and bake for a further 5-10 minutes, until the cheese is golden and bubbly and the carrots are lovely and caramelised.
- Remove from the oven and leave to reach room temperature.
- Just before serving, cut each slice of Prosciutto di San Daniele in half lengthwise and wrap loosely around each carrot. Depending on the size of your carrots you could use a quarter of a slice per carrot.
- Arrange on a serving platter and serve immediately at room temperature.
This is a commissioned recipe for Grana Padano and Prosciutto di San Daniele, although, as always, all thoughts and opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for supporting the brands who make it possible for me to do what I love: mess up my kitchen and share recipe stories.
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Homemade Mini Rustic Oatcakes for a Cheeseboard
These little beauties deserve to be served at other times of the year too! Fully agree carrots should taste like carrots and sadly supermarket ones don’t tend to taste much like carrots anymore
I agree! I never really knew the difference with the carrots until I started getting my organic veg box.
I roasted baby carrots for my family’s holiday celebration and it was so good!
I have just began to love roasted carrots, now this is another way of preparing them!
What elegant, wonderful little bites these are!
Grana Padano cheese is so good. This recipe sounds fantastic, and your photos are beautiful!
YUMMMMM! Perfect party food for all the holiday entertaining still ahead.
Such a unique little appetizer. I bet that they are a big hit at holidays gatherings. I mean. . .the cuteness of the teeny tiny carrots alone is sure to delight. . .but then you topped it with that crispy cheese (mmmmm!) and cuddled the whole thing up with that salty prosciutto. So, so good.
Oh my, I’d like to sit at your table. This recipe sounds lovely. Italian food is just the best!. Yum!
Cool! These carrots would make an interesting and different appetizer for a party! Love it! Happy Holidays!
I may have to do my carrots like this on Christmas Day! They look absolutely divine 🙂
Louise x
Wow! What a cool idea! Yum!!
It’s a lovely recipe and I can imagine eating it during Christmas! What I love about it is that it’s not at all difficult to make, which means I can add this to my recipe list this Christmas!
Wow how cute, I’ve never seen anything like this before! Such an awesome idea, and bonus points for saving time and stress on Christmas day. Definitely can’t wait to try these cute little carrots!
Oh my gosh these sound delicious! I love anything that involves prosciutto!
Wow this would make a great side dish or heck even an appetizer!
Yum! These look super good! Gonna make some this week!
Oh this is a great post – I love all the extra bits of info about where the ingredients come from. And it is such a simple, delicious recipe too!
Omg these look so delicious and perfect for the holidays!
http://www.diaryofatorontogirl.com
I love roasted carrots! that looks so yummy
That Italian cheese is one of the finest I’ve eaten and tasted, though I had it with a different name before I think. Your post reminded me about the wonders of carrots though! We should all eat more of them.
Oh my yummi-liciousness Elizabeth. Please stop, they don’t have insurance for drooling on a laptop.
Pinning this, those looks so good omg I can’t wait to make them!
xoxo
Tyler
http://www.feeltheesunlight.com/
What a creative recipe! These looks perfect for Christmas time.
This looks like the perfect holiday side dish! And great photos!!
I love these roasted carrots wrapped in the PROSCIUTTO! Much better then the same old, same old.
Thanks for sharing this recipe Elizabeth! I’m very impressed with it and never in my wildest imagination will I have thought about making a carrot come alive like that.
Wow these look amazing. Perfect for the holiday table. Love the video too.
These carrots sound wonderful! The video makes them seem very easy to make too! Loved the music!
Wow I would have never have thought to wrap carrots! They sound delicious!
This is great! I needed a side dish for Christmas dinner. Can’t wait to make his!
This looks so good! It’s one of the recipes that comes in handy during dinner parties especially during this season! It’s easy to do and so yummy!
This looks so yummy. I want to eat the screen, that good looking is.
That looks delicious! Something awesome to add to our holiday feasts!
3 of my favorite things wrapped up in an awesome appetizer! Yes! Count me in 🙂 Seems easy to make as well which is a plus. Thanks for sharing!! I will give it a try
Oh my gosh, these look so delicious! I’m so making these one day!
that looks so yummy! I love prosciutto! I love to wrap dates in it! I will have to try this for Christmas!
This is a very delicious looking recipe. Going to try it.
This is the perfect recipe for us, I could even get my husband to do it for one of his jobs on Christmas day. It will be nice to add something new to the menu
Caramelised carrots are one of the best things at Christmas dinner! A close second to roast potatoes 😉 Never thought of serving them with meat before!
I would never have thought of doing anything, but I bet these are delicious. The carrots looked amazing even with just the cheese on there! x
*anything like this
Typically the 2 Italian products I like most. I’ve never thought about combining them with carrots though. It must taste good.
Mika
Oh these sound lovely, got to love roasted carrots x
Oh wow what a great idea – these sound delicious! And perfect for the dinner party I’m hosting this weekend! x
These look so tasty and I am all in favour of disguising veggies so the mister eats them ha x
These look tasty. I would have never though of making these until I seen you post 🙂 I roasted some carrots yesterday and they tasted amazing, I bet these do too. I need to try them out.
This looks so unusual but has all ingredients I am very fond of. Will have to try it as it looks very easy to make x
Never thought of carrots and prosciutto! You are so creative, love reading your recipes 🙂
This is such an interesting idea! Sort of reminds me of pigs in blankets, but definitely a healthier option!
This is really different and looks delicious! Normal carrots can get really boring!
Oh wow, what a lovely idea of cooking carrots another way and making such a delicious meal. I want to recreate this
I’ve never heard of this before but it sounds amazing and could be a great alternative to pigs in blankets if you wanted to try something different. Jo x
Looks like an alternative to pigs in blankets! Great appetiser and perhaps a way to encourage those who hate vegetables 🙂 x
oh how I love PROSCIUTTO. I’ve had them wrapped around asparagus before but never carrots, that’s a new one, I am going to have to try for sure.
Wow! This looks so incredible! I have never thought of this combination but I love it! YUMMY!
These look really easy to make and are great to have at christmas
They look fascinating! I have never seen this done before and am thinking they would make great party nibbles too.
What a fabulous idea… I fancy serving these up as party canapes! I bet the flavours are amazing together and would be perfect washed down with some fizz.
Wow, that’s such an awesome idea for appetizer! I have never thought about roasting baby carrots and wrapping them in prosciutto 🙂 So simple yet looks so good!
These sound amazing, we usually have honey glazed carrots for christmas as my Daughter loves them, but will have to try these as well x