Chicken and Prosciutto Roll-Ups

p. 87

I officially hate pounding meat. This is the second week in a row that I found myself throwing a temper tantrum in the kitchen because things weren't going my way. But alas, I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

I picked this recipe because I thought it would be a good use for my new-found meat pounding skills (and by the way, is anyone else giggling every time I use the phrase "meat pounding?") and it would be a good way to practice my slimy raw meat roll-up skills.

The recipe calls for chicken breasts, prosciutto, fontina cheese and a jar of roasted red peppers. There's also a "sauce," but we'll get to that later. We were able to find all of the ingredients except the fontina cheese at Publix. And silly us, we didn't bother to look up substitutions because we didn't know we needed to! So we got a block of fontinella cheese instead. At least it had all the right letters!

Side note: according to Wikipedia (sorry, no Food Lover's Companion at home), fontina is a soft cheese, and gouda and gruyere are reasonable substitutions. Fontinella doesn't exist. Fontinella has a texture somewhere between parmiggiano and cheddar. And it tastes like a parmi-swiss combination.

The recipe starts with the creation of the "sauce." I used the quotes because I can't see how white wine and thyme (yep...full ingredient list) qualify as a sauce. You put the thyme in the wine and set aside for future basting. Oops...no thyme in the house! So I substituted sage.

And then we get to the meat pounding part. I carefully lay out my bottom layer of plastic wrap, place my (eww! gross! slimy! raw!) chicken breast in the center, and lay another piece of plastic wrap. And then I pound for a minute. And then I have to slide the chicken back into the middle because it's slippery. And then I pound. And then I slide. And this goes on for almost 10 minutes per breast.

The book likes to tell me to pound meat into rectangles. I would LOVE to pound meat into rectangles. But my chicken bits ended up looking more like jagged hearts with the occasional torn lobe. They were ugly. I was frustrated. And poor Scott wanted to leave home and come back when the food was done. I don't blame him! Of course, since my hands were covered with chicken bacteria, and since Scott was wisely avoiding this process, there is no photographic evidence of just how bad my flat chicken looked!

I used the vegetable peeler to make long wide strips of cheese for the stuffing. I put Scott in charge of touching the prosciutto, since he wasn't all chickeney. I sliced one roasted red pepper into strips. And then we assembled.

Chicken breast down, prosciutto down, cheese down. I made two without the red peppers for Scott. Mine got one tiny row of red pepper across the bottom. And then you roll 'em up. We used toothpicks this time to secure the roll-ups.

say it with me now, "eww...raw chicken..."

The recipe calls for these to be cooked out on the grill. Sadly, our grill no longer exists, so Scott cooked them on the grill pan. (yep - I totally justified this - since we weren't following the prescribed cooking method, then it was ok for Scott to step in and cook) The "sauce" was to be applied 5-10 minutes before the end of the grilling, so I had Scott brush it on. Oh the smell! I don't know why, but the combination of white wine and cooking chicken (or maybe the cheese...) made the whole dish smell kind of pukey.

The recipe recommends that you serve the chicken over spinach fettuccine. No mention of butter/olive oil/sauce. So we made a quick semi-pomodoro with a can of tomatoes and the left-over zucchini from Scott's pesto chicken. Oh - and we used regular fettuccine because Publix didn't have the green kind... not even in the cold case.

The cheese was a total miss for me. It was ok when piping hot, but as it cooled, it developed that swiss-cheese twang that I really don't like. I couldn't tell you whether the wine added anything, but I think maybe it helped the chicken achieve its golden brown crust. The best part? Scott realizing that the pieces with the red pepper were better than the pieces without the red pepper!