Pancetta and Saga Blue Stuffed Chicken Breast

So, today I had the idea of making chicken cordon bleu… but I wanted to make it a bit less traditional. So from start to finish this recipe is my own, and prepared my own special way. There may be other ways to do it, so experiment. See what you can find out on your own.

Start by trimming and cleaning your chicken breasts. Next, you’ll want to pound out your chicken breast to about a 1/2” thick.

I put the breast on a long piece of wax paper, and then fold the paper over the chicken to beat it flat. A lot of people use plastic wrap, or just beat it without anything on top of it… but, the chicken can stick to the surface it’s on, and the tenderizer itself, so I’d recommend using something to keep that from happening.

As you’re pounding out the chicken, cook up the Pancetta in a frying pan right quick. No need for any oil or anything in the pan, the Pancetta lubricates itself from sticking.

While the Pancetta is getting a little brown, cut the wax and edges off of your Saga Blue Cheese.

This is what it looks like straight from the package. For folks not familiar with Saga Blue, it’s basically Brie Blue Cheese… so, it’s creamy like Brie, but has that lovely spicy bite of Blue Cheese. Chop the rind off, and clean up the edges a bit.

So now, your Pancetta is cooked, your chicken is flat, and your cheese is ready. It’s time to put it together. Lay the chicken out flat, put down some salt and pepper, put the Pancetta in the middle of the breast, add a nice 1/2” x 1/2” “tube” of cheese down the center of the pancetta, and then roll up the chicken with the pancetta and cheese at the center.

I used bamboo skewers to keep everything together for the rest of prep time. After you’ve got all of your chicken rolled up, it’s time to cover it all in breadcrumbs.

For breadcrumbs, I used some nice Panko Breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan, romano, and some Italian spices. Whip an egg in a bowl, drag the chicken through the egg, then through the breadcrumbs. Don’t be surprised if you can only get one side of the rolled chicken done. No big deal. We can take care of that in a second.

You can see above that I could only cover the bottom of the chicken. So, I grabbed my pastry brush and painted the top of the chicken with some egg, then covered with breadcrumbs.

So… That’s it for prep. Now, cover the whole thing with foil, and cook at 275 degrees for about 45 minutes. Then remove the foil and increase the temperature to 325 for about 20-25 minutes.

This is the final product. The chicken should be cooked all of the way through, and don’t be surprised if the cheese has cooked out for the most part. Don’t worry though, the cheese just cooked into the chicken. You’ll still taste it.

If I left anything out… let me know, but I think I covered everything. I’d HIGHLY recommend making this one. It’s probably one of my favorites in recent memory…

Crab filling, Day 2 : Stuffed Manicotti

So, this will be a short update… mainly pictures, because this is really just using the leftover crab filling. But, for steps, we have:

1. Boil manicotti for about 9 minutes in water w/ 1 tsp salt.
2. Preheat oven to 350
3. Drain pasta.
4. Stuff pasta with filling.
5. Lay down a layer of sauce in a 9x13 pan.
6. Put stuffed manicotti on top of sauce layer and top with a bit more sauce and mozzarella cheese.
7. Cover 9x13 in foil
8. Cook @ 350 for 30 minutes

So. Now, for the pictures:

So… there it is. Simple. Now, if you’re not making with left-over filling, the filling is easy to whip up. 15oz of ricotta, 1/2 a cup of shredded parmesan reggiano, 2 eggs, and a 1/2 cup of mozzarella. Of course, you can add spinach, of meat, or really whatever you want…  Just adjust until the consistency of the filling is correct. The same thing goes for stuffed shells. It’s all your basic lasagna filling mix.

We’ll be back in about a week. Until then, eat well and take pictures.

Crab stuffed Ravioli

Tonight, I decided to finally make some ravioli. We got a ravioli cutter a week or so ago… and I’ve been meaning to use it.

Step 1: Make the filling. I used 12oz of crab meat, 15oz of ricotta cheese, 8oz of mozzarella, 2 eggs, salt and pepper, and a bit of parsley.

Mix all of that up until everything is evenly blended and distributed. It’ll look like so:

After the filling is made, put it in the fridge and let it stiffen up a little bit. Meanwhile, it’s time to make the pasta.

This makes the magic happen:

The pasta dough is the simplest thing to make in the world. 2 cups of flour, 3 eggs, and a bit of salt.

You can start mixing in a bowl… or, my dad traditionally doesn’t measure anything… just take a pile of flour on the counter, cracks a few eggs into the center of the pile, and mixes until it becomes dough. Really, that’s the basic idea… when you start mixing things up, the flour will stick to the flour that it needs… it’s damn near impossible to get too much flour in the mix, because the egg will only support so much… if you get a pile of dry looking crumbles, you can add a bit of water, or if you’re awesome like me, you just add another egg and keep mixing… if it’s too wet, add more flour. It’s not rocket science. Oh… and mix with your hands. It’s a little messy… but you won’t melt.

Once it starts to form up, pull it out of the mixing bowl and place it on a floured counter. You’re going to use a lot of flour… some in the mix, and some on the counter. Well, a lot on the counter. You don’t want the dough to stick to anything while you’re mixing it. Once the dough is holding itself together, you can knead it for a while longer, then let it rest for about 2-3 minutes.

Here’s my dough, ready to start going through the machine.

You don’t have to use a rolling pin at any point. Just break up the dough into baseball sized pieces, pound it as flat as you can with your hand, and then starting at the widest setting on your rollers, start rolling it through the machine. You can fold it back and forth lengthways and width-ways a few times to let the machine do a little bit of final mixing for you. Now, for ravioli, you don’t want to go quite as thin as you would making spaghetti or vermicelli. I leave the roller set about 2 clicks out from where I do vermicelli, which is 1 click out from spaghetti. (Vermicelli, I do at the thinnest setting). Once you have it rolled out, place it on the floured counter.

Now, it’s time for the actual making of the ravioli. Take the pasta sheet, fold it in half and push at the top and bottom to make a visible indication of the “center” of the dough. Once you have the center, take a damp paper towel and wipe the top of the pasta from end to end. A little moisture on the surface (and lack of flour) makes the dough stick to itself when you press it, then cut it.

Lump the filling on the dough in proper sized spacing. If you need to, use your ravioli cutter to figure out your spacing. Then, fold the dough over at the center point and cover the filling. Starting at the fold in the dough, work your way forward and then around the edges of the filling, then around the front of one / back of the next. The goal here is to work out the air bubbles that would be trapped in the ravioli. Trapped Air + Boiling Water = pot full of ravioli filling and empty ravioli.

So, After you have the air pushed out, and the soon to be edges pressed against each other, you’re ready to cut your ravioli. If you don’t have a ravioli cutter, you can just as easily use a juice glass, as long as you flour the rim of the cup so the dough won’t stick. Then you just keep repeating. The leftover dough from each cut can be balled back up and run through the machine again. Add more dough to it, and it’s your next batch, ready to go. However, don’t let it sit too long, or it’ll get too stiff, and you won’t be able to work with it. It’ll crumble and fall apart. To keep the dough in good shape when you’re not working with it, put it in a glass bowl, and put a damp towel over the top of it.

So, you’ve made a bunch of ravioli at this point, and like me, you probably have a lot of filling left… unless you’re making ravioli for 2 dozen people. So, you can use the extra filling for stuffed shells, stuffed manicotti, or a mini lasagna.  Once your ravioli is stuffed, you can either cook it immediately, or put it in the fridge for a little bit if you absolutely have to. But, I’d recommend you cook it immediately.

Boil water. Add a bit of salt to the water and a little Extra Virgin Olive Oil (to keep the Ravioli from sticking together) and boil for about 5-7 minutes, depending on how big you ravioli are, and how thick your pasta is.

We paired our crab stuffed goodness with a Garlic Alfredo Sauce, and a bottle of Gewurztraminer wine. Tasty, tasty stuff. You can add spinach, or any number of odd things to the filling, but with any leafy veggies, make sure the leaves are dry. Otherwise, the filling will become watery, and we don’t want that.

 

There will be about a week break in the cooking blog. Virginia is going on “Alternative Spring Break” and I’m going on “Real” spring break. So, we’ll catch you when we get back.