Chicken and Prosciutto Parmigiana

A very modern twist to preparing and serving parmigiana, which is traditionally made with shallow-fried filling, layered  with cheese and tomato sauce, then baked. The original version came from Southern Italy with eggplant used as filling. Through the years, many variations have been popularized in different countries with Italian migration. This one is a very easy meal to prepare. More of like a cheat’s parmigiana because this uses bottled tomato sauce instead of starting from scratch. If you are short of time and want to impress the family or guests, this will do the job.Ingredients

• olive oil, for frying
• small breast fillets (one per person)
• mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced ( allow 25g per breast fillet)
• thin slices of prosciutto ( one per breast fillet)
• 375 ml ( 1-1/2 cups) bottled Italian pasta sauce. ( I used Sacla Originale Cherry and Tomato pasta sauce)
• fresh thyme sprigs, to serve

Method

1.   Preheat oven to 200 C degrees. Heat oil in frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook chicken breasts for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden. Transfer to a plate.

2.   Top the chicken with the cheese. Wrap a piece of prosciutto around each piece of chicken. Tie with kitchen string to secure.

3.   Spread the pasta over the base of a baking dish and arrange chicken over the sauce. Bake for 20 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.4.   Tuck thyme sprigs under the string just before serving.Serve it with mashed potato or vegetable in season of your choice. I served the dish with broccolini. Simple and quick but surely tasteful and visually appealing. Recipe adapted from Taste.com.au

15 Mar This entry was published on March 15, 2012 at 4:30 pm. It’s filed under cooking, food, Quick Meals, recipes and tagged Cook, dinner, food, Italian cuisine, italian migration, italian pasta sauce, Olive oil, Parmigiana, Pasta, Sauce, Southern Italy, thyme sprigs, tomato pasta sauce, Tomato sauce. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.