Lunchbreak: Traditional Tuscan NYE Dish-Cotechino & Lentils

Would you say that this is one of the most popular dishes? Well, do you do it during the year, even when it's not New Year's Eve? So this is a New Year's Eve. We do it actually at our house sometimes. My father in law, who is one of the owners of the restaurant, he loves to have it throughout the year. So we save a few. We freeze a few so we can have it throughout the year. And our cousins over at Northwest Meat Company supply the cotechino to us and they keep a couple to the side for him, actually. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. All right. So we're going to let these come up with the heat here and we're going to get a nice little sear on them. All right. And in the meantime, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to put a clove of garlic in there and I like to just go like this. I like to just smash it just like that. And that's going to add a little more flavor with a little more olive oil because it is the holidays. So why not just have a little bit of stuff going on? Exactly. Exactly. There we go. I'm getting a little heat on there. And so why are you doing that? Tell folks more about the restaurant. And I mean, you all have been established for 80 years or so. 80 years. Actually, 83. And after the new year, OK, the building that we are housed in was made with wood from the Chicago fire. Oh, wow. So that building is going to be 150 this year. OK, which is incredible history. And so we're very thankful and we're looking forward to getting to 85 and throwing a big party. My wife likes to plan parties and she loves to celebrate. And so we're very excited about that as well. All right. So we've got about a minute left as we're wrapping up here. I know New Year's Eve is obviously on Sunday. Folks can come and check out. Absolutely. You have a few reservations left. We do. Absolutely. And you'll be able to go online to our Web site, Jeanneandgeorgetty.com to find those reservations and you'll be able to view our menu specials and anything like that on there as well. So what I'm going to do is because of the magic of television, I'm going to pull this out and put it on some lentils here. I just put it like this very nicely. And then what I do is I take a little bit of parsley and I put it right over the top. Very nice. Absolutely. And a little bit of olive oil. We have a minute and it's good to go. All right. So this is my lunch right here. Would you like it to be your lunch? Yes. You're more than welcome to. OK. Yeah. Let me taste. Absolutely. Just slice it like that. My very first Cotechino and lentils. Cotechino, you had it the first time. I got excited. I got excited. It's all good. It's all right. You're halfway there to speaking Italian. If you had a little Spanish and Spang Italian. It's very good. Very good. I like it. Absolutely. Thank you very much. When folks come to the restaurant on New Year's Eve, they can have this dish. And they can have this. Many others. Absolutely. We can pair it with a nice prosecco, a dry prosecco, which will be fantastic. We've got some other specials like seafood tower, caviar and some pasta, which we make in house. OK. And that's all going to be on a special menu in addition to our regular menu on New Year's. OK. And you all are in River North. River North of 500 North Franklin for 82 years. Awesome. Awesome. Well, congratulations. Thank you very much. Happy early New Year. And thank you for, you know, giving us this wonderful recipe. Prosperity and what was the prosperity and luck and luck. Absolutely. Lots of luck for 24. All right. Well, you can visit 500 North Franklin Street and check out the New Year's Eve menu with Jean and Giorgetti. It's Jean and Giorgetti dot com. We'll definitely post this recipe on our website, WGNTV dot com slash midday.