Or as Jaimie Oliver called it, “Roasted Chicken Breasts with Pancetta, Leeks and Thyme”, of course I think the name “Chicken with Pork Dresses” sounds a little more catchy don’t you? I had been watching the Graham Norton show the night before and he had Lady Gaga on as a guest and one of her fans had made her, as a gift, some little dollies with very realistic reconstructions of several of her stage costumes. Of course one of the dollies (which I might note had no heads and this pleased Gaga greatly) had her famous “meat dress” and it was actually made out of prosciutto! Everyone on the show thought that was hilarious, and I had a good laugh about it as well. I had been scanning Jamie Oliver’s website for a lamb recipe as I’d never made lamb before and wanted to try something new but when I saw this I thought hey, I want to make meat dresses too! They weren’t exactly meat dresses for headless dollies, but I would at least get to eat these later rather than give them to Lady Gaga (sorry, but she already has one – how many meat dress dollies does a lady need?). I was going to be cooking this feast all by myself because Shawn was off helping his cousin haul scrap metal that afternoon, and I thought it would be nice to have it all made for him when it got back into town. Especially after he helped me, the night before, clean up and then glue back together my toe nail second from the end that had split right down the centre. Not one of the most pleasant things I’ve ever experienced, and not the worst – really it only hurt if I touched it. I was concerned if I got it removed it would grow back in funny, but a good friend who rehabilitates song birds suggested trying to just glue to back together if it wasn’t infected because that’s what they do with birds who have broken beaks. So that’s what we did and it seems to be working marvelously. I added an extra layer of gel clear coat just to be careful. But enough talk of gory war wounds of undetermined cause, on to the food!
So like I was saying the name of the dish is “Roasted Chicken Breasts with Pancetta, Leeks and Thyme” and you can find it on Jaimie Oliver’s website right here:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/chicken-breast-with-pancetta-leeks
The original recipe was only for a single serving so I doubled everything up of course. It also called for white wine, and as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before I’m not a wine drinker so I didn’t have any on hand and I didn’t want to go out and buy any so I used a fresh lemon and lemon zest instead. I wasn’t sure if that was ok but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Later on my boyfriend said really all the wine does is deglaze the chicken and a lemon does the exact same thing, so hooray for lemons! I’m not sure how my brain came up with you can substitute wine with a lemon, but thank you brain! I guess if I have to have chronic tension headaches the very least it can do for me is have psychic cooking powers? After a quick stop out to the shops I started out with these ingredients:
I mostly stuck to the recipe except for that whole wine thing, which I already explained and well – olive oil, grape seed oil. There isn’t a massive difference, some purists make a big argument over oils but if you have an oil you like, use it! I like grape seed oil so I use it. Also if you know me well you might be shocked that there is a stick of salted butter in this picture. It is just getting way too hard to find unsalted butter in small quantities so whatever, I give up butter makers of the world – I bought your silly salted butter. I hope you’re all happy now.
So these are leeks. I’d never cooked with them before. I actually had to stop and ask someone in the grocery store where to find them and accidentally asked someone even younger than me and they showed me fennel, and after making our last Jaimie Oliver recipe I already knew what fennel was so I was a little disappointed that he was trying to tell me the fennel were leeks. Luckily an older grocery stepped in and said, “ahem no” and explained that those things were fennel, these were the leeks. So I washed them up took the outside leaves off here and washed them again for good measure.
Then I chopped the nasty bits off the end and choppity chopped the rest up. You probably don’t need to use that dramatic of a knife but my dad bought me a lovely knife set a few years back because he thought it would be important for me to have one and I like it so much that I bought him the same one this past year for Christmas. I really like this one in particular – it’s nice and heavy and it goes through everything… probably your fingers too if you’re not careful. So leeks were no match for it. A word to the wise, leeks are related to the onion and might make you tear up a little – but they aren’t quite as bad as onions. I was still a little surprised as I was not expecting that! You don’t need to chop up the leafy part up top.
This is where I just adore Jaimie and his “technical” terms. You’re supposed to add a ‘glug’ of oil and a ‘knob’ of butter. Ok then… poetic license I assume?
Then we start to make the pan really pretty for the chicken by inserting laurels (thyme sprigs) fresh ground sea salt, fresh ground pepper and of course the afore mentioned lemon – but we couldn’t stop there.
I have a lemon zester that has a lemon for a handle… it amuses me pretty greatly. Anyways – I added some of that as well as the lemon juice, for extra awesomeness. Not really sure what I was going for there really – I was just making things up as I went along. I didn’t even know at this point that wine deglazed chicken and so did lemons. I like these lucky cooking guesses. They are much better than unlucky cooking fails, I suppose.
So now my pan is ridiculously good looking, my leeks are ready to go, and I still have half a lemon to do something with.
It’s time to put the little pancetta dresses on the chicken breasts! First I squeezed the last half of the lemon on to the breasts. I don’t know why – I just thought it sounded like a good idea, figured might make them taste good later. Then I set about affixing the thinly sliced pork to the chicken. I’ve never really done that before, odd I know. But I some how managed. I just kind of folded them on in an over lapping fashion, started at the top and worked my way down. Each breast received 7 pieces of pancetta. I’ve been told since that you can use tooth picks, but mine seemed to stay on just fine with out.
I carefully placed each breast into the pan after it got it’s dress and made sure the knob of butter (oh those technical terms) stayed in the middle. I then added some more lemon zest on top. You can kind of see here how I layered on the pancetta to make the little pork dresses for the chicken breasts. It’s amazing how it actually stayed on fairly well!
Then I placed all of the leeks around and in between the chicken so they were all snug and cozy, and adorned the top with a few more sprigs of thyme. Then I got to put tin foil on top and put it in the fridge for about an hour because my prep work took way less time than anticipated and I didn’t need to have this ready until 7 and it was too early! So despite how fancy this may look, it’s really quite easy! I was very impressed with that part of it.
When it was time to cook I took it out and cooked it – although I must note one thing we discovered, it takes longer to cook if you cook it with tin foil over top… but that’s ok! I made up a lovely cheese plate with an assortment of mushroom oka, red leicester, and tomato havarti and we nibbled on that while we waited. Cooking with foil over top adds an extra 20-30 minutes to your time but I think it’s well worth it in the results department.
Another thing you might want to consider is having a side as I’m not sure I’d consider this a stand alone meal – perhaps it could be, but I felt like having a side with it. This is tabbouleh. I picked it up at The Bulk Cheese Warehouse and it’s a nice salad made with cous cous (but apparently normally it’s made with bulgur) and an assortment of veggies. It was delicious! I’m sure most larger grocery store deli’s carry their own variety or you could look up a recipe online.
After much cookery it comes out looking like this 
of course the one breast looks a little mangled because I had to make sure it was cooked, but I fixed it during plating.
Dinner is served! The leeks were buttery goodness that I am pretty sure you shouldn’t eat every day or even every week but oh my they were delicious! The chicken came out so moist and tender and quite full of flavour, and what isn’t to like about choice cuts of pork? I would recommend this recipe to anyone! It’s easy to execute and the results are amazing.
