Saltimbocca

From Dishes

I've neglected this blog for awhile, but I really should do a bit more with it. I've got a new BBQ, and have been cooking up a storm on it. But here's a recipe I've been planning to write down for quite a while, so here it goes.

Saltimbocca is a great dish to make for guests. It's easy, it tastes GREAT, it's quick and it goes with nice full-bodied wines. It's very flavorful, so even though it's not the lowest fat thing to eat, you're probably not going to be eating more that a couple of pieces, so you can round it out with a bunch of veggies, potatoes, rice or noodles and make it a pretty healthy meal overall.

As I mentioned it's pretty wine friendly. Both in that it tastes great with full-bodied red wines, and that if you've already had a couple of glasses, it's still easy to cook. And, it always impresses anyone who's never had this dish before.

Saltimbocca

• Two thinly cut veal steaks about the size of a deck of playing cards per person. (Beef, pork chops w/o bone, turkey or chicken breast can be substituted)
  
• Four slices Bundner Rohschenken per person. (Parma Prosciutto can be substituted.
  
• Two to Three sage leaves per steak. (dried is okay, fresh is great).
  
• Salt and Pepper to taste.
  

You can prepare the meat ahead of time and put in the refrigerator.

For each steak, season with salt and pepper (and I often add a bit of garlic powder) then wrap in the rohschenken or prosciutto. Use two toothpicks per steak to hold in place. If you have some nice big fresh leaves of sage, you can also stick these together on the outside of everthing with the toothpicks.

Start off cooking by heating some olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Use a good pan and you won't need the heat too high. If you're using dried sage leaves put a couple down in the oil just before adding the steak atop the sage leaves. Fry the steaks until the Rohshenken is well browned. Don't worry about over cooking, it just gets tastier the longer you cook it. Serve when well browned. I like the sage leaves on top of the saltimbocca as they absorb a lot of flavor from the rohshenken/prosciutto, but some people prefer not to eat them as the look a bit burned.

Pizza!

Yum! Pizza is much easier to make than I thought it would be. The pizza above is my first attempt at making pizza. I did have a little help in the way of Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie's Italy' cookbook. He's got a great recipe for pizza dough in there, though I did end up with about three times too much dough as I needed. Hopefully, the last two balls of dough will survive in the freezer for awhile.

The most important thing seems to be to get the crust really, really thin. It took awhile to get it perfect, but once I stretched it out enough it was great, and a bit crunchy. The other really important thing is to place the pizza at the bottom of the oven, so it gets cooked evenly. I think having it right over the element really helps out quite a bit. I haven't yet bought a slab of granite like Jamie Oliver and Ed (who's got a blog that I link to off of this one, and he has a pizza dough recipe as well) swear one should have.

Here are a couple more pizzas, with the last one having the best crust: