PETTI FARCITI AL MASCARPONE!
Firstly it was a sad day in La Cucina yesterday as one of our longer serving members of staff left to return to Estonia. We just want to say a big THANK YOU AND GOODBYE to Raido, he was one of the best employees we ever had and we are sad to see him go. We find it quite difficult to get staff as there are very few Italians in Limerick, most of them go to Dublin, we’re always so jealous when in Dublin and the Italian restaurants are full of Italian staff. It just makes it easier to train someone when they are Italian as they know the basics already. We have a busy few weeks ahead of us anyway with staff on holidays but we’ll get through it, we always do!
This is one of his many great 20″ pizza, maybe someday we’ll visit La Cucina Estonia!
As I mentioned in my last post the “italian foodie” kitchen was a hive of activity over the weekend with our guests who came expecting a foodie haven so the pressure was on not to disappoint. We don’t often cook chicken, maybe once a month but we had made this a while back and really liked it so we made it for dinner on Monday night. A couple of glasses of Prosecco with fresh strawberries was had as an aperitif, we then had this chicken dish stuffed with mascarpone, ham and mushrooms served with roast potatoes and peas with pancetta and then Bruno put on his cocktail hat and rustled up a few tasty mojitos. The guests had to catch a flight at 6am, not a picture of happiness I would imagine.
This chicken recipe from the Silver Spoon is quite easy to make and very tasty.
WHAT YOU NEED! - SERVES 4
- 40g butter
- 250g mushrooms
- juice of 1 lemon strained
- 1 garlic clove peeled
- 1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
- 4 chicken breasts - I used organic but they were too small and too hard to fill so I would recommend buying the biggest fillets you can find.
- 2 cooked ham slices cut in half.
- 100g mascarpone cheese
- salt and pepper.
WHAT TO DO:
- preheat the oven to 200 degrees - could somebody please tell me how to do the little symbol.
- grease your roasting tin with butter.
- chop your mushrooms and pour your lemon juice over them to stop discolouration.
- melt 25g of butter in a pan, add the garlic and cook until brown and remove.
- add the parsley and mushrooms and cook for 5 mins over a high heat, season with salt and pepper and cook for another 2 mins.
- slice horizontally through the chicken without cutting all the way through, open out each one like a book, pound with a meat mallet and season with salt and pepper. To be honest I’m useless at this so Bruno did it!
- place a piece of ham on one side of the chicken, divide the mascarpone among the fillets and top each one with mushrooms.
- fold the fillets together and secure with cocktail sticks.
- season with salt and pepper and put a knob of butter on each one.
- place the chicken in your roasting pan and cover with foil and roast for 15 mins.
- discard the foil and brown the chicken under the grill.
BUON APPETITO!!
I know how to do the degree symbol in MS Word (Insert symbol), but not sure if that will work in your blog editor. Maybe you can just copy and paste it in from MSWord ? : 200°
Ooh looks nice, I guess you could try it with any veg. of choice instead of the mushrooms (my better half isn’t a big mushroom fan…)
OK the degree symbol, hold the Alt key and type 0186 using the number pad to the right of your keyboard (as opposed to the numbers along the top), it should work… 200º.. yep it works!
That’s much easier than copying it from somewhere else, I tried the ASCII code but didn’t know you had to use the numeric keypad. Thanks, Mary !
Thanks guys - the problem is I use a laptop so it won’t work with the numbers along the top so maybe i’ll just have to copy and paste!
Mary T - can’t see why you can’t substitute the mushrooms or just leave them out all together! So many people don’t like mushrooms in Ireland, I’m always amazed by it - we love them and would be lost without our PORCINI!!