Involtini di Pollo alla Salvia

I decided to move away from Jamie Oliver for once, and went back to ‘The Silver Spoon’, which is still one of my favourite recipe books. Inspired by ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ (long story) I settled on Involtini di Pollo alla Salvia, which is ‘Chicken Roulades with Sage’, but it sounds a lot more impressive in Italian.

It’s actually a pretty simple recipe. A quick web search actually found someone who is as much of a geek as me, and blogs their recipe attempts as well – so thanks to Sara for giving a good description of the process.

I decided that just having sage in the middle might be a bit ‘ordinary’, so I decided to ad some mozzarella as well. So here we go.

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Pretty simple stuff – some nice chicken, parma ham, sage and mozzarella for the involtini. Tomatoes and garlic for the sauce.

Put the chicken breast between some clingfilm, and basically bash it about with a rolling pin to make it nice and thin. I actually made the first one a bit too thin, so it started to fall apart a little bit, but the second was a lot better.

The chicken breast basically doubles in size. It’s quite delicate to handle, but not too bad if you’re careful.

Cut the chicken in half into a couple strips, and put sage on top.

This was the bit I added, by including mozzarella in the middle of the chicken.

Basically, I’ve just rolled up the chicken, then wrapped it in the parma ham, and put cocktail sticks through to keep it all in place.

I made the sauce simply by putting the tinned tomatoes in a pan with the garlic, some salt and pepper, sugar and white wine.

Put the involtini on to cook on a fairly medium heat. They’re quite hard to turn with the cocktail sticks in, but you can move the sticks from one side to the other to make it easier.

Halfway through the cooking.

The involtini Are now browned all over, so I put some white wine in to add moisture, and covered them on a low heat for 20 minutes while I cooked the pasta.

The involtini are completely cooked, and just resting.

Serve, just pasta with a tomato sauce, and some golden baby tomatoes and basil.

I really liked this, especially as it was so simple to make. Lisa thought the sage was quite strong, but I didn’t get that at all. You could clearly do all sorts of different things in the middle of the chicken – maybe something spicy with chilli or peppers. I’ll definitely try a variation on this again.

Chicken with prosciutto

I’m trying to take part in Jamie Oliver’s ‘Pass It On’ movement, as seen on his new TV series – the Ministry of Food. I’m hoping to pass on the recipes to people at work, so I thought I’d better check that I could cook them myself 😉

So, first of all, I decided to try one of the main recipes that featured on the TV programme.

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Gather all the ingredients. Nothing massively exciting here, just some nice chicken, prosciutto and some good parmigiano.

The first, really exciting step, is to peel and chop the potatoes, then put them on to boil while the rest of the work goes on.

Then open up the chicken and lightly score it, to allow the flavours to penetrate the meat.

Sprinkle some thyme on the chicken. I actually think I used a little too much here.

Grate a bit of lemon zest on top

Grate a bit of the cheese and …

…sprinkle it over the chicken.

Cover the whole of the chicken with the ham, to protect it, and to give a good seal.

Put the chicken between two layers of clingfilm (I actually used two layers on top and two layers on the bottom)

Then, using the base of a pan, give the chicken a good bashing until it’s all evenly thin. This doesn’t take a great deal of time, although it is a bit of a faff, but it does make a difference. The whole point is to make the chicken the same thickness all the way over so it cooks at the same rate.

Heat a good non-stick pan with a bit of oil. (clearly it’s vital that I show a picture of this)

Slap the chicken in – ham side down.

Once the chicken is cooked about halfway through, and the ham is starting to go crisp…

…turn it over, nice and quick and smooth

At the end, once it was cooked right through, I turned it over again and just gave the ham a bit longer to make it really crispy.

Turn it out onto a board and slice across the middle.

Serve – in this case dressed with some lemon juice and with some mash and soya beans.

This was very nice. The thyme was a bit strong which makes me think I used a bit much. Lisa also did’t like the lemon juice squeezed on at the end, so I’ll skip that next time. This was very easy to make though, and I can see why Jamie used it as an example.

Roasted chicken breast

This is from ‘Cook with Jamie’. I’ve come across the recipe a few times but never quite got round to using it. Then Lisa asked if I could do something with butternut squash because she really likes it, and this gave me the opportunity to try it out…

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Including the oh-so-phallic squash.

Attack everything with a knife, and spend ages getting nice thin slices of squash – only to remember way too late that you have a mandolin especially for this sort of job. Idiot.

Basically, you put the chicken in the tray with the chilli, herbs and oil, and arrange the squash around it, adding some cream over the squash. It looks very pretty 🙂

Get the onion and celery started for the risotto.

Add the rice and start the long stirring process. Interestingly, most common advice is to stir constantly. When I did my Italian cookery course, the instructor told us not to stir any more than necessary. I tend to come in the middle somewhere. I just can’t be bothered with constant stirring 🙂

Adding stock and getting rather large.

Add in asparagus and tomato. This is just to make the risotto a bit more interesting, and is a combination of a couple of Jamie’s risotto recipes. This is one of the reasons I like risotto, you get the basic recipe right, and you can add pretty much anything to it.

See – there is a spoon – it’s right there! My ever-present tasting spoon – a requirement whatever you’re cooking really, but a real must when making risotto to check when it’s done.

The finished risotto which is now clearly way too much for two people, and the rest went into a tupperware in the fridge for lunch the next day.

Serve. A nice clean-looking plate. I could have made more of an effort with the squash probably.

Chicken stuffed with mozzarella

An Aldo Zilli recipe that I have made a couple of times. As he describes it, it is based on the old favourite of Chicken Kiev, and I can see what he means, but it is far nicer, and quite satisfying to present.

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More ingredient gathering – clearly this is quite a simple recipe.

Start off by flattening the chicken breast, then put the mozzarella in the middle with some thyme.

Then wrap the mozzarella in the breast to make a nice parcel.

If you’re me, it is at this point in the recipe that you realise that you forgot to wrap the mozzarella in the ham before putting it in the chicken, so you have to unwrap them and do it all over again. Idiot.

Lay out the ingredients for the coating. It is at this point that your wife comes into the kitchen and asks why you are using ‘every plate in the house’ for this recipe.

Coated with the flour, egg and breadcrumbs – ready to cook.

Do the initial cooking in a pan to make them nice and golden.

Bake in the oven to make sure they are cooked right through and melt the cheese.

In this instance I served the chicken with a simple pasta and tomato sauce. I do think it looks quite impressive when you cut open the chicken to expose the ham and cheese. It gives a lovely contrast in flavours as well.

Coq Au Vin

I have to confess that I thought I knew where this recipe came from, but on checking, I find that I was completely wrong. I had thought that this was an Anthony Bourdain recipe from his ‘Les Halles Cookbook’, but I checked, and it isn’t – his recipe is far more intricate (and probably a lot nicer)

This is now about 2 minutes later, and I’ve remembered where the recipe came from. It’s from the imaginatively named ‘The Cook’s Book’ which I got for 3 quid from a company that comes to our office to flog cheap books. It’s actually very good, and has input from some top chefs (Marcus Wareing and Ken Hom for instance).

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Ingredients : The Gathering

Do the usual nasty things to all the ingredients.

Fry off the chicken. Please note the lovely shiny hob.

Add the bacon and onions, adding to and absorbing all the juice from the chicken.

Basically, add all the rest of the stuff – flour tomatoes, red wine etc. This then gets simmered for about an hour. (note even more shiny hob in evidence)

Serve with some nice mash.

Zanzibar Chicken

I was looking around for something different to do with chicken, and I came across this recipe for Zanzibar Chicken by Paul Merrett from one of his appearances on Saturday Kitchen.

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As this was a recipe form the internet, I saved paper, didn’t print it off and just took the laptop into the kitchen.

Gather all the ingredients – fairly simple stuff – including my own chicken stock.

The usual slicing and dicing to prep. I got the opportunity to use my pestle and mortor which was quite nice as I don’t use it that often – it’s quite small.

Brown off the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the pan, and sweat the vegetables in the oil and juices from the chicken.

Add in the spices, coconut milk etc. to make the sacuce, and simmer to thicken.

Serve with rice. This doesn’t look like much, but it smells great.

Chicken in Puff Pastry

Another Jamie Oliver recipe here, from ‘Happy Days’. I’ve no idea why I haven’t tried this one before, because it looks nice (and tastes nice) and is pretty easy.

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This was very nice, and pretty quick and easy to prepare. The only comment I would make is that I either messed up the amounts, or did something wrong with the sauce, because it was waaay too strong. Next time I would do it with about a quarter the amount of mustard.

Chicken in Pancetta

A slight variation on a Jamie Oliver recipe. Chicken wrapped in pancetta with leeks and cherry tomatoes, served with Dauphnoise potatoes. It was very nice indeed.

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Gather the ingredients

Do fancy stuff and get it ready to go in the oven

Once cooked – remove from the oven

Done!

Ratatouille with Chicken

This is pretty much a classic recipe, but done in quite a rustic way.

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