Saltimbocca

[Grub]

Marcella Hazan's "Marcella Says..." is an excellent book, but I recently came across a recipe for "Chicken Breasts Saltimbocca style," that lists pancetta as an ingredient -- not prosciutto. Checking up on this, I've found about a dozen different recipes for both the veal and chicken variant, and while one listed Parma ham and a couple simply required "ham," the rest all called for prosciutto. None called for pancetta -- or any similar bacon-like product...

This book seems to be extraordinarlily well researched, so I can't see how this could have been a typo, but I don't understand why I can't find any other recipes that uses pancetta (or bacon) for this application... I mean, it's a pretty significant difference -- between using uncooked bacon, and cured, ready-to-eat ham, right?

What do you make of this?

[Chad]

Weird. Could just be a copyediting error. There's no way that pancetta would cook through in the brief time that saltimbocca takes. I do about three variations on saltimbocca/chicken'n'prosciutto and -- as you've discovered -- every recipe out there calls for cured ham. As much as I love pancetta, there's no way I'd put it in this dish without cooking it beforehand.

As an aside, I used to butterfly and pound my chicken breasts to a paillard, layer on prosciutto and then roll and tie them into chubby pinwheels o' goodness. Now I just butterfly, stuff & saute. The end result is just as tasty and I have more time to do a pan sauce -- deglaze with crisp white wine, add in some chicken stock or demi-glace*, reduce till it coats a spoon and add in a blob of butter (about a tablespoon). We spoon this over the saltimbocca, certainly, but mainly over the arborio rice I serve with it, which seems tailor made to suck up good sauces. Goes great with broccoli (trees with cheese), asparagus or sauteed green beans.

Chad

*When I don't have homemade stock on hand, I cheat. Fond de Poulet from More than Gourmet is pretty darn good and doesn't have that weird chemical aftertaste that many prepared stock bases have. About a tablespoon of this stuff in the deglazing liquid and dinner is good to go.

[Franci]

Saltimbocca are with: VEAL AND PROSCIUTTO.

My idea is that Marcella Hazan spent too many years in the States , I met her ones and we had different views on a dish that is traditional from my hometown

[Franci]

There's no way that pancetta would cook through in the brief time that saltimbocca takes.

Maybe will not brown...but except for a matter of personal taste it doesn't matter if cooks through. We eat pancetta raw with bread (not the one bought in the States, for some reason that taste terrible)

[Grub]

Hm, I used to think of pancetta as bacon that had to be cooked, but the suggested usage on the packaging includes salads, which clearly indicates that it is ready-to-eat.

I tasted this dish the other day, and it was excellent. Maybe prosciutto and veal is the classical, or original dish, but chicken and pancetta works extremely well too. Maybe the increased amount of fat in the pancetta helps keep it moist.

And by the way, the chicken breasts were simply cut in half, lengthwise and the two halves placed on top of each others, with the pancetta and sage leaves in between them -- essentially becoming a stuffed chicken breast. So it took far longer to cook, than a flattened veal scallopi. The pancetta appeared to have been cooked, but I couldn't tell if it could or should have been cooked more...

[Kevin72]

I think it's along the lines of what you're theorizing, Grub, that she feels that Pancetta lends more fat to the fairly lean chicken breast. Too, as a native of Emilia-Romagna, maybe she just doesn't like seeing her beloved prosciutto cooked through . . .