Sunday Dinner - Reconnecting.

GRUYERE, ARUGULA & PROSCIUTTO STUFFED CHICKEN WITH CARAMELIZED SHALLOT SAUCE

Did you ever find yourself going along with your day to day and realize that things were starting to slip? You turn around and realize you haven’t eaten a real sit down meal in like 3 weeks and your poor family is subsisting on PB & J. Well, I did! These days it seems like we are running all the time, but getting nowhere! I mean you get the laundry done (okay most of the laundry) and deal with the household hoo-ha, walk the dogs and we’re painting the house every free minute... By the time you stop for the day you want to smack anyone who might actually want you to drag out a pan and create a culinary masterpiece (and the mess to go with)!

This realization has caused me to re-institute the Sunday Dinner. There are a few self-imposed rules; it gets made at home, by yours truly (squinting my eyes and remembering I LOVE to cook). It is a real honest to Gawd meal, not a one pan wonder – and no box dumping (unless it is pasta). When ever possible, the meal should have at least one new item or recipe. Not so bad really, it has made me actually slow down on Sunday and think about a nice relaxing dinner with M.

This week in pursuit of, I brought out my Cooking Light 2003 Annual Recipes Book and after much flipping I made a choice. I gotta tell ya, I love CL and all, but their cookbooks are a very confusing jumble. Jumble not withstanding I came across 3 of my favorite things; chicken, cheese and prosciutto – all in one recipe. Yeah! Hurray! This recipe calls for arugula too, not one of my favorites, and difficult to find around here (not to mention grossly expensive). Go ahead and use spinach if you need to, don’t fuss too much, the end result will still be yummy.

I made a few changes to this recipe ; I doubled the cheese, not so light any more, mostly because my chicken looked rather empty with only a half an ounce of cheese (this adds about 62 cal. per serving). I also added a bit of chili to the sauce for a twist. I rolled instead of folding as folding sounded like it might be a touch too messy to flip. The rolling actually took a bit longer in the oven, but by the time I had reduced the sauce twice as called for, the chicken was done and it all came together beautifully. Oh, and another diet buster; I found the pan to be a bit dry after cooking the chicken, so I added a little butter (this only adds about 25 cal per serving) before sautéing the shallots.

All this being said; the flavor was terrific and the presentation was great. I can’t help but think that folding wouldn’t have been half as pretty. I tossed some potato gnocchi in a bit of sauce for a side.

Light a candle, serve up some of the left over wine and you have yourself one nice Sunday Dinner!

Cheers M.