Prosciutto wrapped Asparagus

The other day we were pondering what kind of appetizer we could bring to a potluck dinner. Life is busy and we did not have much time to prepare the dish, but we still wanted to have something "special". We first thought to recreate these bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos that my boyfriend prepared for our Caribbean BBQ during summer. However, not everyone likes it spicy and I tried to think of other veggies we could wrap in bacon.

I remembered this one time during high school were my friends and I were invited to my friend K.'s place - a very nice place with winter garden, a back yard and a half blind dog. She always had exquisite taste and was very creative. That time she had prepared a few delicious looking appetizers that I had never tasted before. One was melon wrapped in prosciutto ham. At that time I did not fancy prosciutto much, I was a very picky eater and I guess I was to young to appreciate it. However, now it just sounded perfect. And because my boyfriend and I were craving asparagus that night, we decided to prepare asparagus wrapped in prosciutto.

Prosciutto, also called Parma ham, is much thinner than bacon, but has still tones of flavor as it is a dry cured ham. It tastes delicious uncooked and you can wrap the prosciutto around the already cooked asparagus and just eat it like this, but I decided I want to have crispy prosciutto. That's also the way I like my bacon - very, very crispy.

So, here is the recipe to a very FAST and SPECIAL appetizer:

Ingredients

• 1 bundle of green asparagus (about 20)
• 10 slices prosciutto (half the amount of asparagus)
• 3 tablespoons cream cheese (herb & chives) - optional
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Break off the bottom part of the asparagus, it is hard and not very tasty. Place the asparagus in a single line on an oven tray, sprinkle with olive oil and salt and pepper them. Toss around till all spears are coated. Cut each thin slice of prosciutto in half, lengthwise. Now you should have as many prosciutto slices as asparagus spears.

Optional:

Who wants it a little decadent, can smear a tiny little bit of cream cheese on each prosciutto slice. It will be a little juicer then.

Now, wrap one slice of prosciutto around one asparagus spear. Start at the top, a little under the scaled tip and circle downwards, so that there are almost no overlays. Put the asparagus back in the oven tray, make sure that the spears are separated and don't touch each other. If they touch, the prosciutto will steam and not get as crispy. You have now two choices of baking them:

1. Broil them for 5 min: Place them on an oven rack about 5 inches below the broiler, turn the asparagus after 3 minutes of broiling.
2. Bake them for 15 min: Pre-heat the oven to about 400 degrees, let the asparagus bake for about 7 minutes, then turn them around.

They can be served fresh out of the oven, or even cold the next day.