It has been said before that the best food relies upon the simplicity of allowing good ingredients to speak for themselves. We’ve all seen the pretentious magazine recipes that have a half a page of ingredients. All too often, those recipes include ingredients like ground Tibetan turnip seed, only available at one market in Kathmandu. In June. This is not one of those recipes. In fact, there are just 4 simple ingredients:
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Prosciutto
Sweet peppers. I used orange and red. De-seeded and sliced.
Goat cheese
Method
Preheat BBQ grill to low or medium depending on your Que with the lid closed.
Using your sharpest knife, remove the tender strip from the underside of each breast and put them aside for use in another dish. Then, lay the breast down on the cutting board and gently hold it in place with the palm of your hand. Holding the knife in a horizontal position, carefully slice 2/3 of the way through the breast so that you can open it up like a book. You have just butterflied a chicken breast.
In the middle of each breast, put a strip of pepper. Put a heaping tablespoon of goat cheese on top and then another piece of pepper.
Roll up the chicken around the filling as if you were rolling a fajita.
At this point, you may want to season the chicken with S & P. Because the prosciutto I was using had been smoked and was quite salty, I decided not to add any additional seasoning.
Lay out 2 strips of prosciutto on a clean cutting board, overlapping each other on the long side. Place a piece of chicken across the 2 strips and then wrap it with the prosciutto. A toothpick or two can be helpful to keep it in place while cooking.
Place the chicken on the grill and cook with the lid closed for about 5 minutes. Quickly, open the lid and turn the chicken, taking care not to pull off the prosciutto. Close the lid again and walk away for another 5 minutes or so.
Again, depending on your grill, you may want to move the chicken to the top rack for the last few minutes to allow the chicken to cook through without burning the ham.
Remove chicken from grill and allow it to rest for 5 minutes while plating your sides. Then, slice the chicken into inch thick pieces so your guests can see the pretty colours inside. It also allows the cheese to ooze a bit which looks quite yummy.
Serving suggestions
We served this on top of a simple angel hair pasta with alfredo sauce. Other ideas might be plain, buttered pasta or on a bed of rice. Garlic mashed potatoes might go nicely too.
