Chicken Roulade with Red Currants and a Raspberry Sauce

Chicken roulades are hands down my favorite way to eat chicken. Really, who wouldn't want to eat chicken rolled around a soft bread and red currant center for every meal?! The best part about this dish is that it looks refined, but requires few ingredients and is easy to make. This chicken roulade will take any dinner from average to star status. 

Chicken Roulade with Red Currants and a Raspberry Sauce

Involtini di pollo con ribes e una salsa al lampone

Ingredients: 

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

4 cups (100 grams) day-old French bread cut into cubes

2 cups parmesan cheese

2 sprigs of marjoram 

1/2 teaspoon salt

A pinch of pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup red currants

2 cups raspberries

Instructions: 

1. Take one loaf of day-old bread and cut off the hard crust. Next, cut the bread into small cubes and fill four measuring cups. Put the pieces of bread into a bowl with enough milk to almost completely cover the bread and leave it to soak for at least 5 minutes. 

{French bread with the crust removed. Obviously this is not four full cups, but we forgot to take pictures of the process so this is the bread we had left!}

2. Slice a whole chicken breast into 1/2 inch slices...or go easy on yourself and use pre-sliced chicken breast :) Place the slices between two sheets of parchment paper and pound the chicken with a meat mallet until it's less than 1/4 inch thick. By placing the chicken between parchment paper (or plastic wrap), the meat will be less likely to tear apart when the mallet hits it. (Also, see here for an article that will convince you to always pound your chicken before cooking it.) 

3. Cut the chicken into rectangular pieces, as regularly shaped as possible. For example, if some slices are too wide or too long, cut off the excess meat until you have a nice rectangle generally 4 inches by 3 inches. If some pieces of chicken are not anywhere close to 3 inches wide, you can lay one skinny slice on top of another and in the oven they will bake together. 

4. Take the excess meat and dice it into small pieces. This meat will be used in the filling. 

5. Return to the bread, which should have softened sufficiently. Firstful by fistful, firmly squeeze the bread of excess milk. Discard any hard pieces. 

6. In a bowl pour 2 cups of parmesan cheese, the extra diced chicken (about 1 cup), the milk-soaked bread, salt, pepper, and the leaves of 2 sprigs of marjoram. With your hands, knead the ingredients together. 

7. Roll the stuffing into long cylinders and lay it on the strips of chicken breast. Stick the red currants into the stuffing. 

8. Roll the chicken lengthwise and tie with cooking twine. You can tie the chicken in any way you'd like, but if you're like me and need some extra guidance here are step by step directions. 

 {Nonna's hands. They've blessed many lives, especially ours!}

Lay the chicken on top of the cooking twine lengthwise. The twine on the left side of the chicken should be about 3-4 inches long while the cooking twine on the right side of the chicken should be at least one foot long. Summed up, the twine on the left should be shorter than the twine on the right. 

Pull up the two pieces of twine and make a cross on the far left hand side of the chicken. 

Take the cooking twine on the right and wrap it around the chicken 3-5 times. 

Next take the cooking twine on the left and wrap it around the back of the chicken as well. You should now have one end of the twine pointing upward and the other pointing downward. Pull the two ends together and tie into a knot. 

9. Place the tied chicken in a pan and dress with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then put in the oven at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Be careful not to overcook and dry out the chicken. 

10. While the chicken is cooking, prepare the raspberry sauce. Blend the raspberries (ideally with a small hand blender) and then press the berries through a strainer which will allow the raspberry juice to bleed through but keep the seeds seperate. 

11. When the chicken is golden, pull from the oven and serve immediately with the raspberry sauce on the side. Enjoy!