Cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Gradually stir in 1 cupwater, alternating with the vinegar, and season with salt andpepper to taste. To make the sauce, melt the butter in a pan, stir in the mustardand flour and cook for a few seconds. Scant 1 1/4 cups smoked pancetta, chopped Cover and cook over lowheat for about 20 minutes, adding 1 tablespoon hot water if necessary. Heat the oil in a skillet, addthe roulades and cook, turning frequently, untilbrowned all over.

Rollup, wrap in the pancetta slices and securewith toothpicks. Place two of the sage leaves on eachportion and season with salt and pepper. Lightly pound the chicken with a meatmallet. Oh, all right:Īmazing - The Silver Spoon is required reading, owning, eating, and living.Ĥ skinless, boneless chicken breast portions So take that, Phaidon Press, you have been denied your flowery one liner praising the book. See, this tome is found in the cooking section of stores, but is really an avocation - not just a book at all - make no mistake. It is just too easy too obsess over, and only comes with two ribbon markers - it needs about 50 to be truly useful. It seems a little shady really, almost trying to come off as attractive as a coffee table cookbook (it practically is the size of a coffee table - ha!) but is too heavy to lug around the house, so you end up having to buy two copies - one for the kitchen, and one for the shelf or table with reinforced legs. Any book that has recipes for ostrich, octopus, oxtail, orecchiette and omelets has to be fallible at some point. We haven't found them yet, but will update this review when they show up. It must be chock full of recipes that end up not tasting very good. Surely we can't follow these simple directions and reproduce such attractive results.

The photos accompanying many of the recipes are surely just setting us up for disappointment (such 'preparing simple food with fresh ingredients in starkly rustic-yet-elegant setting' photos abound in The Book). Look down below, see what we mean, we'll wait. I mean come on, I'm lost here - shouldn't that have taken up at least two or three flowery paragraphs?īut no, the entire recipe it comes from - 'Chicken Roulades with Sage' - clocks in at a puny 90 words total of instruction. Roll up, wrap in the pancetta slices and secure with toothpicks.' 'Place two sage leaves on each portion and season with salt and pepper. Yes.įirst off, a couple sentences as example: You're probably sick of hearing the rave reviews on this behemoth (you know: blah blah, 2000 recipes, every Italian kitchen has had one for 50 years, Italian bible of cooking, beautiful photography, etcetera, etcetera), so here we go, we're going to try to pan it at epicurean.

The Silver Spoon by Clelia D'Onofrio