#chickenrollatini

We wanted to go big with our first Italian dish, so we decided to make our own version of a classic chicken rollatini. A traditional chicken rollatini is a chicken breast wrapped around cheese, prosciutto, and a spinach ricotta stuffing. When it came to deciding what we were going to put in our rollatini we immediately agreed that we should replace the spinach with something that would transform the dish. We loved all of the other ingredients and knew we could make a better ricotta stuffing. So, we broke out the food processor and made a pesto to mix with the ricotta.

To make the stuffing we toasted 1/4 cup of pine nuts with some olive oil on the stove. After toasting them until golden brown we threw them in the food processor with 2 cups of basil, 1 1/3 cups of parmesan cheese, 3 cups of ricotta cheese, olive oil, salt, and pepper. This makes a lot of stuffing, which is fine since you can save it and use it as stuffing for something else like ravioli.

We specifically bought thin chicken breasts for this so we didn't have to pound them out too much. However, it is necessary to thin them out for this dish so it can wrap around all of the ingredients easily. We marinated them with salt, pepper, and olive oil for a good 20 minutes after we pounded them out. We wanted to give the chicken a crunchy texture on the outside, so we threw together some panko and parmesan cheese in a 3 to 2 ratio and coated them. To do this we simply dipped the chicken breasts in egg whites and then put them in the panko and parmesan.

Once the chicken breasts were coated we immediately started to wrap them. We put in 2 slices of prosciutto and a healthy tablespoon of the rich ricotta pesto. We rolled that up tight and then threw it in the oven at 450 degrees for 25 minutes.

Once they were in the oven for 25 minutes, we took them out and layered a nice sliver of mozzarella cheese on top of each rollatini. We let that sit in the oven for 3 more minutes until the cheese was perfect melted consistency. It was truly beautiful.