When cooking with Carlos Manriques, he showed me such an entirely new technique to making a stuffed chicken roll that I just had to try it myself. Try it I did… And I must say, it was a complete success (thank God, because there was no dinner back up whatsoever).

Part of the appeal to me of these chicken wraps is that you can throw anything you like in them. You want flavor, of course, and something to stick it all together, like cheese, but after that - it’s really all left to your own imagination.

I call this Chicken Dijonaise, but as you will see, this recipe has no mayonaise in it at all.

Ingredients:

One half Boneless Chicken Breast
2 slices Bacon
12 Stalks Asparagus
4 oz Cream Cheese
1 Clove Garlic
Fresh Rosemary
Fresh Thyme
Italian 4 Cheese Blend (bought, shredded in a bag)
3 Tblspns Dijon Mustard
1 Medium Tomato
1/2 Small Onion
1/2 Tspn Salt
1/2 Tspn Pepper
1 6 oz Can Aunt Penny’s Hollandaise Sauce, (I have never tried any other).

Salad fixin’s or any side you like.

I already had chicken breast, and I was (sort of) trying to be frugal (as frugal as I can get when it comes to feeding the food monkey on my back) so the only items that I bought on the way home were some Asparagus (OK… so this is gourmet frugal), and Cream Cheese (on sale). I looked at a beautiful chunk of Havarti with Dill longingly before I decided that at $6.49 it just wasn’t worth it… I knew that I had some fresh Thyme and Rosemary, and some leftover ‘Italian Style’ grated cheese in a bag, so I just decided to get home and wing it.

The first thing of course, is to Pound your Chicken! This step is absolutely necessary not only to break down the chicken and make it ‘melt like butter in your mouth’, but also because you have to make it big enough to roll up around your ingredients. For this particular cooking method, you want your chicken really thin… like 1/4 inch or even less. In the end it looks seriously, almost viciously, beaten, and even torn in places, but it really is best if it’s that thin.

I cooked two slices of bacon, cut in half, in a frying pan on the stove, sweated 1/2 cup diced onion in the bacon fat, and cored and seeded a tomato and set aside.

I boiled 6 stalks of asparagus until they were crisp tender.

For the Cream Cheese Filling:

I took 4 ounces of regular style cream cheese and mixed in about 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Dijon Mustard, as well as a 1/2 teaspoon of both fresh Thyme and Rosemary, chopped fine. Add one finely chopped Garlic Clove as well and the Salt and Pepper.

On the Dijon Mustard you want to use straight Dijon. None of that ‘Country Style’ or any of the others. Straight Dijon has the strongest flavor without all those little seeds, and we are going for flavor here. I then added about 1/3 cup of the grated Italian cheese blend.

I used one Chicken Breast (once pounded it was huge) and simply layered my Bacon and Asparagus in the middle, evenly down the length of it. I then took the Cream Cheese Mixture and kind of rolled it in between my palms into an even log and layed that on top. I added the Tomato slices, (seeded - not a lot of juice), the sweated Onions, and rolled the whole thing up. It was so long it wasn’t going to fit into my pot so I cut it in half.

Then, the ‘Carlos technique’. I ripped off a big section of plastic wrap and rolled the log into the wrap like I was rolling a body up in a carpet (whoa, where did that come from?). Then I took the excess plastic wrap on each end, pinched it between my fingers, and just kept rolling it against the counter, and pinching until it wouldn’t get any tighter. I did this with each roll, then wrapped them both in regular strength foil and tightly twisted the ends together.

Ker-plunk… into a pot of boiling water they went. Just like that… for about 25 minutes, praying all the while that the water didn’t soak into my wrap job.

Remember, I was kind of winging this whole thing. I knew it would have asparagus in it, and some fresh herbs, and cream cheese, but I really didn’t know what else I was going to put into it until I got home. Same with the sauce. While it would have been OK without sauce, but as Carlos would say, ‘It’s all about the sauce’.

I have had a can of Aunt Penny’s Hollandaise Sauce in my cupboard forever. I don’t even know where I got it from. I know how to make a pretty good Hollandaise sauce, so I can’t even imagine why I bought it, but when I opened up my cupboard, there it was. Hmmm.

I opened and tasted. Not so bad. Not bad at all in fact. In fact-a-mundo, I am going to get more. There are so many things I can think of doing with it that it will now be a staple in my cupboard.. but I digress. It’s time to…

DR It UP!!!

I dumped the 6 ounce can into a microwaveable bowl (hey - the can said that is was microwaveable…), added perhaps 1/4 teaspoon of the fresh Thyme and Rosemary, and a teaspoon and a half of Dijon Mustard. I pushed the start button on the microwave (about 1 minute) and wow! If only I had remembered the white wine in the fridge, I would have added a tablespoon of that as well. But I didn’t.

The ‘Dijonaise’ is a combo of Dijon Mustard and Hollandaise Sauce, rather than Dijon and Mayonnaise. Yum!

I thought I was going to make a boxed pasta to go along with it, but it turns out we were out of milk. I felt I needed to make it a little more substantial so I boiled six more aparagus.

After 25 minutes, I took the wraps out of the boiling water, let cool for a few minutes, unwrapped… and viola! It worked! No water leaked in, and the chicken was cooked perfectly. How did I know it was done enough to take out? You can poke the foil with your finger to test the resistance. If it’s mushy, it ain’t done, but if it feels like your thumb muscle on a clenched fist it’s done.

I simply sliced it into wheels to serve.

So in the end, this is what it plated up to look like, and I served it just like this, with a small salad.

It looks kind of sloppy, and if serving to guests I would put the sauce into a baggie, cut a little bit of the corner off of it, and swirl the sauce on all fancy like. Bit there was no company, and I was hungry!

One half of the roll up fed us both, because it’s pretty rich. You would have to be an incredibly healthy eater to finish a whole stuffed chicken breast by yourself, so I have leftovers as well!