Chicken Saltimbocca
This delicious recipe uses that brilliant function, Hot Air+Steaming or Combination Steam as some of you may know it. In a nutshell, this function in your Combi-Steam oven combines both convection or fan forced style cooking with some beautifully controlled steam, to give you the perfect mix of browning, crispiness and moisture. It is particularly good for cooking foods that usually dry out very easily and become a little tough or rubbery when baked in the oven. A chicken breast or chicken fillet is one such food! Usually baking a chicken breast is fraught with danger (think alarm bells and sirens ringing). In a regular fan forced oven, unless you get your timing and temperature EXACTLY right you will end up with dry, tough, rubbery and tasteless chicken breast. There will be no juiciness or flavour. However, in your Combi-Steam, you have a little insurance policy that almost protects you from bad cooking! The addition of the steam, when cooking a chicken breast, will keep the moisture, juiciness and help you bake it to perfection. It's almost impossible to dry something out! No alarm bells needed!
So here is a yummy dish. Another one dish wonder (have you noticed I'm quite fond of them?), which is great served up on a busy weeknight when time has gotten away from you. It's also good enough to serve to friends or family as a casual dinner, so feel free to use it for quick entertaining too. The delight in this one, is the mixture between the sweetness of the tomatoes and the saltiness of the proscuitto. It's all made from scratch too, so we're talking honest, whole food cooking with nutritious ingredients. It's all good people!
Of course, you could make this one ahead and place in the fridge covered in some cling film to cook later.
Serves 4 but can be doubled and cooked in two dishes simultaneously or halved and cooked in a smaller dish
Ingredients:
4 skinless chicken breasts (free range if you can)
4 slices proscuitto or pancetta (torn roughly into large
1 jar passata tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
2 tbs dried oregano
a few sprigs of rosemary
1 tsp sugar
s&p
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup pitted black or green olives
optional - 8 button mushrooms (halved) and 1 medium zucchini (sliced)
Method:
Place your hand flat on top of one of the chicken breasts and use a sharp knife to slice horizontally through the centre to create two thinner fillet pieces. Repeat with the rest of the chicken. Cover each chicken piece with cling film and use a rolling pin or the bottom of a jar to gently tap any thicker parts of the chicken and make them approx even thickness.*
In a large baking dish combine the passata, garlic, oregano, sugar, vinegar, cherry tomatoes and olives. Season well with s&p.
Wrap the proscuitto around the chicken pieces and lay on top of the tomato sauce spacing them out so they overlap as little as possible. Add the rosemary. (If using cheese add it on top here)
Place the mushroom & zucchini pieces (if using) around the top of the dish partially submerging in the sauce if you like but leaving mainly exposed so they brown.
Sprinkle over a little s&p.
Select the Hot Air+Steaming function (or Combination Steam). Set the temperature to 210°C. Allow to pre-heat.
Place the baking dish (or dishes) into the pre-heated oven on a rack.
Cook for 30 minutes or until bubbling and chicken is cooked through. Remove and allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Tips:
*instead of slicing the chicken through the centre you can cover the whole fillets with cling film and flatten out using a rolling pin or jar first to make them thin and even and then simply slice in half to create the two pieces.
*you can easily serve this with sides like baked potato or sweet potato wedges by adding them to the oven in a separate baking dish in Step 7. A nice green salad is also good with this one. I also love it with some garlic bread if you really want to live it up!
*you can add some grated cheese or baby bocconcini balls on top of the chicken too if you like - I find the little people at the table like this!
This is a great dish which is really simple to prepare. Hope you enjoy it on your dinner table sometime soon.
Happy Combi-Steaming!
Yours in the kitchen,
The CSQ. x