Transcript: Stuffed Chicken

Budget Health Nut
Episode “Stuffed Chicken”

Joe Dias: Hi, welcome to Budget Health Nut, I am your host Joe Dias. The focus of our program is preparing meals for you under $25. While serving anywhere between 2-8 people, depending on our dish, In other words I am bringing you 5 star flavor, on a 2 star budget.
Now here at Budget Health Nut we like to offer tasty choices for some smart cooking, while also reducing calories compared to eating out at restaurants all the time. Now keep in mind moderation is the key here and focusing on your portion sizes.

Now today’s dish is going to be a awesome stuffed chicken breast with prosciutto and some creamy Fontana cheese over form the motherland, straight here from Italia. And other than that we are going to feature a nice side dish of Brussels sprouts that are steamed and then mixed in with some honey and some walnuts. That will really cut down on the bitterness.
And then a tomato salad, toped with some mozzarella and some balsamic vinegar. So let’s go over to the kitchen and stuff some chicken breast. I can’t wait because it’s going to be really tasty, I guarantee it. I will see you there.

Alright thanks for coming in the kitchen with me. Arguably this is one of the best dishes that I make; it’s the stuffed chicken breast with prosciutto and imported Fontana cheese. Um the cheese is going to be very creamy, and straight over form Italy so you are going to pay a little bit more for the imported stuff but I will tell you what, you are going to know where your money went.
We are going to butterfly the chicken breast. We are going to go ahead and go with the fat side of the chicken. It’s very fresh. We are going to cut sideways, and this is going to butterfly it. You will see what I mean because this is actually going to look like a butterfly when you filet it open. And there we go, butterfly.

I have your standards, onion powder, garlic powder, all spice, which consist of pepper and a little bit of salt. Which you know I hate, and then a little paprika for color. So let six those in here, mix them around a little bit. And just sprinkle it on. Alright you can see a really nice color coming out of that.

Alright now its time to do the stuffing, fresh out of the Italian market, so that makes me happy, and they cut this really, really thin, alright? So you are only going go to need about three pieces maybe, per chicken breast.

See that’s the problem, because I end up eating half of it so I usually have to buy it in bulk. Fontina is a nice white creamy cheese. You are going to want to cut the skin off of that. Now the best thing you can use for this is kind of like a wire cutter for cheese that’s this moist. The cheese is ready to go. Prosciutto is ready to go; I might as well start with a new fresh piece. Any excuse to eat it.

Here is our first butterfly, what we are going to do is layer it with the prosciutto. Pull off some strips of that, now put it right inside there. There you go. I will tell you that when this sautés, it is going to come out with a nice caramelized color. And we will pop it in the oven.

So upon that wee will switch over that butterfly just like that, like so. Grab some toothpicks, or if you are lucky enough to have maybe some butcher twine hanging around or something like that and you want to go ahead and sow it up,. You can do that. But toothpicks work just the same. You are going to want to put them in at a bias, at an angle so it catches the most of the meat as it possible can.

I already have my olive oil heating up, so let’s go ahead and pop it in there. That way it will keep it sealed up. We put it into the oven at about three fifty for about ten or twelve minutes because you don’t really need to cook the chicken too long. Because when I butterfly them it really thins out the meat. So it cooks faster.

You can see that Fontina is starting to heat up, it’s starting to get creamy and melty. Alright let’s flip these over, oh yeah see. Now about two minutes I will go ahead and pop them into my baking dish, put them in the oven at 350-375, and in ten minutes we will be eating stuffed chicken breast. Here we go, see you in a little bit.

Nothing better than biting into a nice thick slab of beefsteak tomato, buffalo mozzarella, you are looking at about nine dollars pound. Now the vinegar is really going to bring out some of the flavor of the tomato, alright. So don’t be afraid to douse that pretty well with a balsamic alright. Here we go.

Put some nice pieces here. Our basil and just cut across like this. And so I am going to go ahead and sprinkle that over our tomatoes. Right over the top, and this makes for a great salad. Especially in the summer, and what I like to do to add a little parsley and some cracked pepper.
Ok, a few minutes have gone by now and its just enough time to put this walnut and honey mixture so we can go ahead and marinate our already steamed Brussels sprouts. Let’s go ahead and pour in our honey under low heat because it’s a sugar based product, you don’t want it to scorch. Ok. Let that heat up a little bit and congeal, pour in our walnuts, stir those around a bit. And get them nice and coated I know a lot of people don’t care too much for Brussels sprouts, but I think if you tried this one you will be sweetly surprised.

Ok we have plated up our stuffed chicken, I know it’s been a labor of love . All in all it is kind of one of mom’s favorites, so I wanted to kind of roll it out here. Um, prosciutto and Fontina, and again Brussels sprout and tomatoes. Again we are joined by the lovely Andra Millian, maybe you could share a little bit about what you do and your background.

Andra: Well I am a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. And I am a licensed herbalist. And in traditional Chinese medicine good nutrition is a very, very important aspect of it, and so I would like to share some parts of what I know about that.

Joe Dias: So at first glance what do you think about nutrition on this?

Andra: Well, first of all I love the portion sizes on this. I love the combination of deck of card-sized chicken breast I love that you didn’t put the skin on, for the added fats. There are so many great vegetables on here. And you know all this together is kind of a building and tonifying type of a meal. The combination of the walnuts with the honey would be great if a person had a cough.

Joe Dias: So it’s kind of got medicinal purposes.

Andra: It does, all foods for Chinese medicine has certain things you can eat for an ailment. So in this case, yeah, that’s why they put honey in cough syrups and things like that. And the oil from the nuts it’s a great omega 3, it’s a really good… And the thing you want to be careful about nuts, is not to over eat the, It’s just the perfect amount. You don’t want to eat more than a handful of nuts a day.

Joe Dias: And why is that?

Andra: It’s just so high in fats, even though they are good fats. Uh, the chicken again, wonderful you left the fat off.

Joe Dias: Well I took care of that with the prosciutto.

Andra: If you wanted to go a little less sodium and a little less fat, you could do maybe take the prosciutto out for the sodium sake, change the Fontina to maybe more mozzarella, stuff it with you know spinach and mozzarella.

Joe Dias: Spinach and mozzarella would be good.

Andra: And then that would make it a little bit…

Joe Dias: Even asparagus would be good in it right?

Andra: Yeah delicious.

Joe Dias: As far as the calories I am glad you brought those up. Because the calories on this dish really round out to between 850 to about a thousand per plate, which I am guessing at a restaurant, potentially with all the butter they use it could probably go upwards of about fifteen hundred or so.

As far as cost is concerned, really the most expensive part, I hate to say it is the prosciutto. I mean it is imported so you are looking at about $16 per pound. Bu it only used 2 or 3 slices per breast. So I was really kind of, I wasn’t too liberal on that one. Not only because of the cost but because it is a really big flavor.

Umm, the chicken breast is the next most expensive and really that is only about four dollars a pound. So it rounds out here about five fifty per plate, which means you can feed about four people on a good $25 budget, which is not too bad. Because I think at a restaurant you are probably looking at thirteen, maybe twelve dollars if you are lucky, per plate. So all in all, let’s just quit talking about it and let’s give it a try.

Andra: I am going to do these Brussels sprouts because I love Brussels sprouts.

Joe Dias: Ok well, I like the uh.

Andra: Not bitter at all, real nutty flavor, delicious.

Joe Dias: The nuttiness is good huh. You can just leave the tip on the table. Anyway, that’s it for this episode, thanks for joining us, cheers.

Andra: Cheers.

Joe Dias: Thanks Andra.

Andra: Thank you.