Chef Divya is changing the way foodies experience tips, tricks and then best ways to stay fit, trim and fabulous while enjoying the experience of food!  This is a podcast you definitely DON'T want to miss!

From Behind The Burner:

Chef Divya Gugnani, as beautiful as she is business savvy and as passionate about food as she is about bringing all things culinary to you!

Site: behindtheburner.com

What Behind the Burner does: Behind the Burner is a culinary media brand focused on food, wine, mixology, and nutrition. The brand works with more than 425 culinary experts to create content in a variety of media—videos, articles, blogs, photos, restaurant commentary, and television show segments. The content delivers tips, tricks, and techniques to sophisticated, hip, and hungry food and drink enthusiasts. Gugnani’s content provides tips and sound bites geared toward the under-40 target market in 3 to 5 minute clips, then distributed to more than 50 media outlets, including NBC New York Nonstop, MySpace, BravoTV.com, and Howcast. Behind the Burner also does frequent segments on television and Gugnani is a regular guest on MSNBC Your Business and NBC Weekend Today as well as a contributor to The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast.

How she’s changing the game: Behind the Burner integrates culinary brands into the content for a flat fee. In most online advertising, clients pay a price per guaranteed impressions or per unique viewers. By getting paid directly from the product, instead of basing her revenue model on charging for content distribution, she flips conventional video and television models upside down. In addition to creating an innovative business model, Gugnani’s content targets a previously untapped—and affluent—market. While the vast majority of food media caters to a specific audience—women in their mid-40s trying to get dinner on the table—Behind the Burner is a departure from anything the Food Network, Martha Stewart, or Rachael Ray does. This content targets foodies that are young, hip, and love to eat, but also care about nutrition and wine. Recent highlights: Gugnani is on a brand-building mission. This year, she scored a book deal for, Food Slut: My Little Black Book of Tips from Behind the Burner, a “guide to staying slim, fit and fabulous for women who live to eat,” and it will be available in July 2010 on Amazon and in stores by January 2011. Always a business woman, in addition to an advance, Gugnani secured a 50 percent profit share with HarperCollins—an uncommon arrangement for a first-time author.

The recipe we'll be discussing:

Gnocchi with Tiger Shrimp and Walnut Butter by Divya Gugnani

Makes 4 servings

INGREDIENTS:

Gnocchi:

2 russet potatoes
3 yolks of eggs
1/2 cup water
salt to taste
ground white pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups flour
12 tiger shrimp steamed for 4 minutes
1 teaspoon olive oil

Walnut butter:
1/3 cup butter
1 cup walnuts, toasted and finely chopped
zest of lemon, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup grated Peccorino cheese
2 teaspoons fresh Italian parsley, chopped

PREPARATION:

For the gnocchi:

1. Peel, cut (3/4-inch chunks ) and boil potatoes till tender. Drain and and rice.

2. Mix potatoes on a wood block dusted with a little flour. Add the egg yolks, water and salt and pepper to taste and knead lightly by hand. Add all but 3 tablespoons of the flour a little at a time, kneading gently just until incorporated. The dough should be soft.
On a work surfa

3. Form into a long log. Cut into smaller portions and using a rig cutter. Roll out into 1/2-inch-long pieces. Dust them well with flour. Pinch closed into little boat shaped pieces.

4. Repeat until dough is exhausted.

5. Peel and devien tiger shrimp. Rub with oil and grill on a hot grill for 4 minutes. Pull the meat from the shells and set aside.


6. Cook gnocchi in boiling water for 4 to 5 minutes. Drain.

For the sauce:

Soften butter in a large hot skillet. Add in walnuts and lemon strips and cook 5 minutes. Stir in the tiger shrimp and gnocchi and cook 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add lemon juice. Remove from heat and stir the peccorino.

Divide among 4 plates. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve.

FAB Recipe that our recipe tester, TC, is going to tell us all about.  Please comment what you thought if you try it!