Chicken rollatini with ricotta and spinach

It's 65 days more till Christmas!  A little bit more than two months to the silly season!  Shopping malls are already filled with trimmings and marketing ploy to make us stay at the malls longer and shop till we drop. 

Well that ain't working with me.  You see, I hate shopping.  I hate shopping malls. I hate shopping malls during the Christmas rush especially. 

Usually, if there's really a need to go in there, I'd dash in and out in less than hour.  

Not that I don't shop for clothes and shoes.  I do.  It's just that when I'm out shopping, I pretty much know what I want and get it.  Straight up.  

But with food.  Food shopping?  I'm more patient and take time.  Savouring the smells of seasonal fruits and fresh veggies, browsing at the seafood on offer and cuts of meat for the day.  I usually shop at the markets and my favourite Asian butcher and fish monger locally.  And that's my happy place.   

So usually Christmas gifts to family and friends are always food related - cookbooks, kitchen and dining gadgets and home made goods.  

Now talking about Christmas always brings me dinner table thoughts.  You know, menu for the Christmas eve dinner, Christmas breakfast, Christmas lunch, Christmas dinner and every single meal all the way to New Year's day.  It's always exciting to try new dishes in preparation for that special day.  Often times, anticipating the traditional dish becomes the highlight of the meal.

Now this chicken dish can be made any day of the week, a weekend lunch or dinner or try it this holiday season.  The colours do match the holidays too.  This recipe is adapted from  Skinny Taste with the ingredients slightly changed.

Chicken rollatini coated in bread crumbs

Baking in the oven for 25 minutes

Ingredients

500g chicken breast fillets, thinly sliced

125g ricotta cheese

250g baby spinach, washed and roughly chopped


2 cups breadcrumbs

2-3 whole eggs, slightly beaten

125g cream cheese, sliced thinly

125 grated Tasty cheese

700g jar of passata sauce

salt and pepper to taste



Method

Preheat over to 180*C.

Prepare an oven proof rectangular dish.  Spray with canola oil and set aside.

Prepare 3 separate bowl, one with breadcrumbs and one with the beaten eggs.

In a medium sized bowl, combine ricotta cheese and spinach and mix with a fork.

Set aside.

On a large chopping board, work the chicken pieces one by one.  Spread the chicken fillet flat, spread some ricotta-spinach mixture and loosely roll with the seam side down.  Repeat with the remaining chicken pieces.

Coat the chicken rollatini in the beaten egg, then roll into the bread crumbs.  Place in the prepared baking dish.  Repeat with the rest of the chicken pieces.

Lightly spray with olive or canola oil.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven then pour the passata sauce over the chicken pieces.

Place cream cheese slices on top of the chicken, then the grated cheese.

Bake in the oven for a further 5 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Serve in individual portions with some salad or roasted vegetables.

After 25 minutes....

Topped with cream cheese and grated Tasty cheese....

Cheese has melted.... seasoned with some more ground pepper

 

And served with some extra explosives on the side! Ha!

Now this has delicious written all over it.  We've made this many times using bocconcini as topping and some mozarella.

Don't you think it looks like Christmas?

Now... time to get some list going.   Thank goodness for online shopping!  Hahaha!

Chocolate bread cake

Torta de pane al cioccolato.  I love saying that.  With the "r" emphasised with the rolling of the tongue on the inside roof of the mouth.  Rrrrr..... I have in many posts, not just in this recent one,  blogged about loving the Italian culture and hoping someday to visit the country and do a self-drive tour with hubby. Sipping vino with the locals and indulging in the rich culture and food.  In the meantime, this is reality.  Browsing of tours and travels from magazinges, newspapers and online.  Sigh.

Now back to reality.  During the weekend, I attended one of the World Chef Showcase sessions as part of the October month-long Crave Sydney - Sydney International Food Festival. It's my second year going and its always a lovely treat to be amongst people who have the same interests - FOOD!  The morning session was a Giro D'Italia - Tour of Italy theme and of course, the maestro and godfather of Italian cooking was there himself - the other half of the Two Greedy Italians, Antonio Carluccio.  Charming, full of wit and humour and years of wisdom of the cuisine that he is so passionate about which included some tasting of his famous spinach balls (which shall be for a future post). Local Sydney chef and owner of Pendolino and La Rosa, Nino Zoccali also showcased his amazing skills in pasta making and shared a most tantalizing pasta dish of Priests' hats pasta with Calabrian wild boar sauce.  James Beard Foundation awardee Colman Andrews - founder of Savuer magazine and online foodie resource The Daily Meal,  did a brief talk about his adventures into the Catalan cuisine from his book and more on his latest book on Ferran Adria - The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat. Overall, the day was magnifico!

 

So while I can only read, dream and sigh of far away places, what better way to learn about other cultures (besides travelling)?  Through food!   Recipe books, magazines, online, product boxes and labels, supermarket newsletters... the resources are endless.  And today, we are touring Italy once again.  Giro d' Italia!

 So let me say what this cake is called again - torta di pane al cioccolate.  Chocolate bread cake.  Using stale bread!  Yes!   This is undeniably one of those recipes that will get your attention at the first instance!   Who wouldn't want to make use of neglected breads at their home?  Well this one caught my attention at the sight of the words: stale and bread, through my Instagram feeds and from the La Cucina Italiana magazine.

 

Torta di pane al cioccolato

(Chocolate Bread Cake)
Print the recipe here)

105g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature + extra for pan

5 tablespoons course breadcrumbs

8 slices stale white bread

1 litre and 60ml (or 4 and 1/4 cups) whole milk

 

220g semisweet or dark chocolate (55% cocoa or higher)

250g (or 1 and 1/4 cup) caster sugar

5 eggs, separated

80g (or 2/3 cup) almond meal

salt

icing sugar

In a medium sized pot, heat the milk to simmer.   

Coursely tear bread pieces and place in a large bowl.  Pour the heated milk onto the bread and let it soak until fully absorbed.  1-1.5hours. 

Preheat oven to 175*C.  Butter a 25cm spring form pan and dust with half of the breadcrumbs.

Prepare a pot with water and let simmer.  Place chocolates in a heatproof bowl and set over the pot until melted.  Stirring occasionally until smooth.  Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together sugar and egg yolks until light and fluffy.

Add butter and continue to beat until mixed through.

Drain the bread mixture over a sieve.  Add the bread mixture, melted chocolate and almond meal to the creamed batter and beat until well combined.

In a separate bowl (squeaky clean as you want the egg whites to aerate properly and get the desired peaks), whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peaks.

Gently fold the egg white meringue to the batter using a spatula, slowly and carefully folding to prevent collapsing the aeration.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and dust with the remaining breadcrumbs.

Bake for 1 hour at 175*C then reduce to 150*C and continue baking until tester inesterd comes out clean, approximately 45-60 minutes more.

Transfer cake to rack and cool for 10 minutes.  

Remove from pan and cool completely.  

Serve dusted with icing sugar, and optional chocoalte shavings.

So what do you make of these kinds of recipes?  Like one-bowl cake recipes, this is an absolute delight to make and eat.  Although it takes a bit of time than most cakes, the curiosity and anticipation after you've taken your first bite just disappears with the richness of the moist cake and that crusty top.  Its something you'd have to try, again and again.

I think this recipe is an absolute pantry saver.  A welcome treat.  Have you ever seen those lucky dip baskets at fetes? Whether you had it during your primary years (grade school days), or see it often at your child's school, these are simple fun thrills for kids.  Even the child-at-heart.  Not a clue what I'm talking about?  Imagine this - either a basket or a box, or a hat even.  You dip your hand in and pull out a surprise!  Whatever it is, its always something of a treat: a small toy, lolly, stickers (who doesn't like stickers?!),or even a recipe that will help you save those last pieces of bread!  After making this, I think we'll want to buy more bread and let them go stale. 

Minestrone

This is a late post.  Lesson 4 from Kitchen 10 (a couple of weeks back).  Still all about stocks and soups and this is just one of them.

Winter is rightfully here and we all felt its wrath with the cold snap brought on the Tuesday that second week of June .  Layers and thick jackets, beanies, gloves and scarves were the order of the day.  The winter snap was biting and sharp, which leaves us with no choice but to embrace the winter season.  Year on and year off, it’s the same thing.  Mum (and dad) still dreading the cold snap.  Embrace the cold and warm up in the kitchen, I say!

Lesson 4 @ Kitchen 10 - Minestrone

It must be timing that Term 2 is all about soups, eh?  We learned 3 soup dishes from Lesson 4 plus 2 Sardinian dishes from the masterclass with Chef Giovanni Pilu of Pilu at Freshwater.  The timing is so good that I replicated the minestrone soup we learned on that Monday, at home.  Several times already, actually.


Minestrone is a really simple soup which I wouldn’t have ventured into on my own, because I thought it complicated.  But now I know, I can make it as long as there is white wine in the house.  Minestrone is Italian in origin and is actually a peasant dish.  There is really no set of main ingredients, according to Wikipedia, because this soup is made with whatever vegetables are in season.  And can even contain meat or meat broth.  The main ingredients of this soup are vegetables and pasta (any type of pasta will do) or rice.  However, I can’t imagine having rice in this tomato based dish.  The spaghetti pasta cut into 7cm lengths were just perfect.  But any other pasta shape would do.  The pasta in this instance, thickens the soup  and makes it a perfect pair with crusty sliced bread on a cold winter evening.

To make the minestrone (in class), we used, roughly cut (mirepoix in culinary terms):

Carrots

Celery

Leeks
Onions
Beans
Turnips

The onion, leeks, celery and carrots are sautéed in oil and butter combined, until golden.  

Tomato paste is added and stirred until the vegetables are thoroughly flavoured and coloured (the colours from here on, turn from golden brown to bright red/dark orange and the aromatics are released into familiar fumes that is so inviting, dad wanted to partake of the vegetables already at this point ).

This is then de-glazed with white wine and simmered until the wine has evaporated.  Water is then added just right to cove r the vegetables, and simmered for 5-10 minutes. (Wine when heated and used in cooking releases its alcohol and leaves a unique essence and subtle flavour to the dish.)

  

Tip: which I heard from random places from cooking shows to magazines, that you should never ever use wine that you would not drink.  Because if you don’t want to drink it, you wouldn’t want to eat it.  (More on cooking with wine found in http://whatscookingamerica.net/WineInCooking.htm)

 The beans and turnips are then added and stirred and simmered for another 2 minutes.  

Finally, pasta and added, bring to a boil and then simmer until pasta is cooked.

Serve topped with tomato concasse (diced tomatoes de-seeded and skin peeled off) and finely chopped basil (or parsley).

This is the best fail-safe kind of soup, as long as you have the basic flavours of the vegetables, tomato paste and white wine in there.  There are no possible ways this soup can be messed up.  it is a fool-proof,  glorious peasant dish soup. 

The recipe may look like a bit mishmashed in instructions, as mum was a bit flustered at the time we did this in class  with so much soups to do (including a cream of corn and basil soup, cream of mushroom soup and a beef consomme) and we still had to attend the Masterclass with Giovanni Pilu, which was of course, a must-see.   It takes a bit of discipline trying to remember all the processes and tips during class.  Must make sure to write it all down ASAP.  Following the recipe in the book doesn't always cut it.  Especially Chef S has more unique tips and tricks up his sleeves every lesson.