good cook

Rolatine
con Pancetta,
Rosmarino e Salvia
from Gabe Moretti


Italian cooking is as much
about philosophy as is it about
what's going on in the kitchen.

Choosing the recipe

It is difficult to choose a recipe to give to Peggy for her web site. The spectrum of food choices is so wide, that picking one inevitably results in an arbitrary decision. So, I set down a few rules to guide the choice.

  1. The recipe is relatively easy to prepare. Even those with a superficial acquaintance with cooking utensils should be able to obtain good results.
  2. Preparation time should allow a person to prepare and consume the dish in a normal workday, so one hour from start to finish should be the maximum required time.
  3. The ingredients should be readily obtainable. Preferably you should be able to purchase all ingredients from the average supermarket in any of the fifty states, whether blue, or red (although these may present more of a challenge).
  4. The dish should be different enough that you may want to cook it for company next time you have someone you really like as your dinner guest. (Yes, I did see The Silence of the Lambs.)
  5. It should be Italian because that is what most people would expect from me.

In Italy, a meal – especially if you have guests over – consists of at least four courses:

* Appetizer,
* Pasta (or primo),
* A main course (secondo), and
* A dessert that can also be cheeses and fruits.

Since in many cases, I find a pasta dish used as the main course in the US, I decided to disqualify those recipes from the list of finalists.

I settled on a dish that has a flexible main ingredient. You can use veal or you can use chicken. In either case the dish will be succulent and easy to pair with green beans, carrots, or green peas.


Rolatine con Pancetta, Rosmarino e Salvia

** The list of ingredients for four people:

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts or 12 scaloppine, or four veal cutlets
4 teaspoons chopped rosemary leaves
4 teaspoons chopped sage leaves
12 slices of pancetta
black pepper
salt
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1/2 cup white wine

The actual amount of butter and oil depends on the size of your baking dish. Use enough that none of the rolatine will be dry while they cook.

** Instructions for shopping and preparing the ingredients

Pancetta is cured pork belly, sort of like bacon, very common in Italy. You can certainlly find it at any Italian delicatessen stores, but chances are high that the deli department of your supermarket also carries it.

The trick is going to be to communicate with the clerk, since it is one of those Italian words that Americans have a hard time pronouncing. Pointing at the pancetta roll in the display case helps a lot.

Have them slice the pancetta so that it is thin but not paper thin. You are not making canapés, the pancetta will be cooked, so it has to have enough form to withstand the cooking process. Pancetta comes rolled, but you unroll it after it is cut, but more of this later.

Resist at all costs to substitute bacon for pancetta for this dish: you can add this for certain pasta sauces, but in this case the results will not be pleasant.

So, decide if you want to use veal of chicken. If you are using veal you can buy scaloppini, or you can buy cutlets. If the latter is what is available, pound them thin and cut them in strips about 3 to 4 cm wide. That’s about a inch and a half for those still resisting the metric system.

If using chicken you need boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Generally they also will be too thick for this dish, so cut them horizontally in half first, and then cut them in half.

Okay. You are done with the most difficult part.

** How much do you need?

Well, you should allow for two or three rolatine per person, so one chicken breast, three scalloppine, or one cutlet per person would be a good initial guess.

If you find fresh herbs, use them. But the world is not going to implode if you have to use those that come from a jar. Remember that dried herbs are stronger than fresh ones, so use common sense. Rosmarino is rosemary, and salvia is sage.

During the cooking process, you will also need some butter (I like non-salted organic, but any butter will do.), plus some vegetable oil, a bit of white wine, and some salt and black pepper. Go easy with the salt because pancetta is quite salty already. Using scalloppine or cutlets is almost the same, so I will now describe the rest of the process using the chicken.

** Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Be sure that you trim the fat and any cartilage from the pieces. Lay the chicken pieces flat and sprinkle the herbs over them. Then unroll a piece of the pancetta and put it on top of a fillet. Do this with all of the fillets.

Roll each piece to form a cylinder and using kitchen twine tie the roll so that it does not come apart. Put the butter and the oil in a baking dish and roll the rolatine in the oil to coat them. Put the dish in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Take the pan out, turn the rolatine over, add the white wine, and bake again for another 10 minutes.

The cooking time will depend a lot on how thick the chicken or veal pieces are. This time is certainly enough for scaloppini, and probably enough in most cases.

Take the rolatine out of the pan, remove the twine (use scissors or a pairing knife), and arrange them on the serving platter. If the juices in the baking pan are too liquid, pour them in a small skillet and boil briefly to reduce them.

Pour the juice over the rolatine and serve.

** Buon Appetito!