Week 27 - Tenderizing

Tenderizing was the theme quite a few weeks ago (Week 27), but I had to put it off. I knew immediately what I wanted to do - some form of chicken roll-ups - which would require using a meat tenderizer. Unfortunately, for medical reasons, I was restricted for a bit from doing any intense physical activity, and this would have raised my blood pressure too much. Since I had to wait so long to do this, I had plenty of time to look at chicken roll-up recipes to find one that looked good.

I decided on these Rachael Ray spring chicken roll-ups with lemon dijon pan sauce. It looked like it was one of her 30 minute meals, but I was prepared for it to take me about an hour, since (1) her 30 minute meals are never 30 minutes, and (2) I always take longer than the estimated time. It did end up taking about an hour or a little more in total, along with sides of quinoa and asparagus, and that was with A's help. Can't imagine how much worse it would have been without another person to help in the kitchen. Maybe it's because I obsessively wash my hands when handling raw chicken. They don't do that on TV, do they?

For the roll-ups, we needed:

- 2 pieces boneless, skinless chicken breasts ($2)

- lemon pepper spice blend ($0.05)

- 4 slices provolone cheese ($1.60)

- 4 slices prosciutto ($2)

- 12 spears of asparagus ($1.29)

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- 2 tbsp butter ($0.50)

- 2 tbsp flour ($0.10)

- 1 cup chicken broth ($0.08)

- 1 tbsp dijon mustard ($0.20)

- juice of 1 lemon ($0.40)

- 1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped ($0.45)

The roll-ups cost about $8.87, with another $1 or so for the quinoa and $1.40 for the rest of the asparagus bag. At $11.27, not too bad considering how much meat and cheese is involved. Funny to think about how this entire dinner cost about the same as the ensalada de choclo from the Week 18 challenge.

I generally followed the recipe, but the steps to make the roll-ups were:

1. Heat a pot of salted water to boiling and blanch asparagus (about 2 minutes). Drain. Can do this any time before step 4. Luckily I had A's help and he did this while I worked on the chicken.

2. Halve chicken breasts. Using meat tenderizer, pound chicken breasts until they're very thin, about 1/8 inch thick.

2a. Wonder why the end result of step 1 looks so misshapen when all these other people post pictures of almost perfect rectangles. I don't think it looked this bad the last time I used the tenderizer but I also didn't halve the chicken breasts that time. Realize that some parts could be thinner but already threw out the plastic bag, so get chicken juice all over the counter (nightmare).

3. Lay chicken cutlets on cutting board and season with salt and pepper. Knowing that the recipe eventually called for lemon flavors, I used a lemon pepper grinder (that also has sea salt, garlic, and onion) that I picked up this week at Trader Joe's, which was quite a convenient pick-up.

4. Add a slice of provolone cheese on top of the chicken, followed by a slice of prosciutto. Add asparagus (I folded them in half since they were so long) to one end of the cutlet, and tightly roll up. Season roll-ups on top with more salt and pepper (or lemon pepper blend).

5. Heat olive oil in nonstick skillet. Once hot, add chicken roll-ups (using tongs) with seam side down. Loosely cover with foil and cook for 5 minutes.

6. Flip chicken and re-cover. Cook for another 5 minutes and then remove to plate.

7. Melt butter in the same skillet and add the flour. Add chicken broth and dijon mustard. Keep stirring the entire time. The sauce will be nice and thick.

8. Add most of parsley and lemon juice to the sauce and keep stirring. Sprinkle a little bit of parsley over the roll-ups.

9. Add sauce to roll-ups and eat!

We ate the roll-ups with some quick sauteed asparagus (with more lemon pepper), since we wanted to use the rest of the bag of frozen asparagus, and a quinoa blend from Costco that microwaves in about 90 seconds (so convenient).

The roll-ups were good (and somehow the entire process took less time than the zucchini chips from the day before), but they were a bit heavy with all the meat, cheese, and butter sauce. The flavors were good, and like Rachael Ray said, a bit of a healthier version of Cordon Bleu chicken. As far as what we would do differently if we made this again, I would (1) try to do a better job with the chicken cutlets as those were a bit of a mess, (2) cook the chicken for a little bit less time, since it got a tad bit dry, and (3) make less butter sauce, as we definitely didn't need as much as I made. In the end, it was a good meal and I would make it again, but I can't see us putting this into the regular rotation. I'm glad I tried it though, since I've been wanting to make roll-ups for a while and now I finally have!