Chicken breast rolls with mould-ripened cheese

Apparently if you move to Warsaw, get yourself sorted out, find a place to live and so on, but still go back home every now and then, and on top of that you live in Wilanów, you’re a “jar”. They call us lemmings too, but I’ve never come across a lemming in my kitchen. A jar I can relate to.

I’ve lived in Warsaw for 10 years now, though if someone had told me a dozen or so years ago that I’d end up living here, and what’s more that I’d really like Warsaw, I’d have served them the traditional black soup that means “no chance”. For a start I’m from Czeladź (hence the idea for my “Czeladź cheesecake”), which means I’m from Zagłębie Dąbrowskie (never, ever confuse it with Silesia in my presence). Czeladź is a little town with nearly 900 years of history but no railway station (yes, the folks from Sosnowiec teased us). And I’ve got a “small-town mentality”. Somewhere along the way I went off the rails in Kraków, a city I fell in love with at the time.

These days I know why. I also know why I’m not particularly keen on Kraków any more. But that’s a separate, long and complicated story. The reason I loved it was thoroughly mundane. If you’re studying at the Jagiellonian University and living inside the ring of the Planty gardens, it’s impossible not to like the place. And as everyone knows, being a student is a tough time in a person’s life. Especially for a person “from inside the Planty”.

So how did I end up in Warsaw? By chance, which is often what steers my life. I was on my way back from… guess where? China. But not the way people come back from China these days. I took the train. First the little matter of the Trans-Siberian Railway, then our very own Polish railways, PKP. And in Terespol my travelling companion and I had a dilemma. A whopper. You should know that on the way home from that sort of trip, those last few days were pretty grim. As in, no cash. But we always had the exact train fare tucked away somewhere. So there we were in Terespol, having crossed the border on the “smugglers’ train”, faced with that dilemma. Should we buy tickets straight to Sosnowiec (yes, they have a station there), or tickets to Warsaw (stay the night with friends and borrow the fare to Sosnowiec for the following day) and something to eat? We rang our friends, who practically begged us to let them lend us the money. So on Sunday we rolled into Warsaw, well fed and in fine spirits. We had fun. STOP. Now’s not the time for drinking stories about two blokes thirsting for Polish beer after 2.5 months in Asia. What matters is what happened next. Late on Monday afternoon we caught the train to Sosnowiec, and since these were still the days when you bought a newspaper for the train, I found an ad in Gazeta Praca (as Gazeta Wyborcza’s jobs supplement was called back then) that changed both my life and my attitude to the capital city of Warsaw 🙂

Back to the “jars”, though. Sadly, I’m not a jar myself. Sadly because I’m more of a “belly”. I bring the food back here in my belly instead of a jar. So from today until Christmas… you know, going easy on the calories.

Sorry about the long intro, but Mum sent me the recipe in Word. On the way back from Częstochowa today I texted, “Mum, email me the recipe for the chicken rolls.” By the time I got to Warsaw, it was in my inbox. So I had to get my writing in here.

And the rolls themselves? They sound simple, but they’re outstanding. Chicken with a completely different flavour, delicious, and oh, that sauce. I recommend them. Great recipe, Mum. You always manage to surprise me in the kitchen. Thank you.

At a glance:

Prep time: 20 minutes

Frying/cooking time: about an hour

Serves: 6 people

How many calories? The “belly” doesn’t ask

Ingredients for some excellent chicken breast rolls:

• 2 double chicken breasts (split each double breast in half)
• 4 garlic cloves
• mould-ripened cheese
• fresh dill or rocket
• pepper, salt, lovage (ground)
• whole white and red peppercorns (a dozen or so of each)
• a glass of dry white wine (a note from Prymitywna Kuchnia: I’d pour in two)
• half a glass of cream (the kind for sauces)
• 1.5 teaspoons of wheat flour
• wooden cocktail sticks  (16 in all)

The recipe (Mum’s writing, so at last a normal recipe instead of all that “I did this, I did that”):

Wash the chicken breasts and pat dry with kitchen paper. Split each double breast in half. Cut the small pieces of meat that stick out off each half (you can fry them up later for little Nina – a note from Prymitywna Kuchnia: Mum, giving my child the scraps… ;), then trim away any membranes and bits of cartilage.

Slice each of the 4 breasts lengthways into two slices. Gently flatten the resulting 8 slices with a meat mallet (to avoid making holes, lay a plastic bag over the meat before using the mallet). Sprinkle the pieces with salt, pepper, dried lovage and crushed garlic. Refrigerate for 1–2 hours.

Take the meat out of the fridge and put a piece of mould-ripened cheese and a sprig of dill or rocket (or both) on each slice, then carefully roll it up. Secure each roll with 2 cocktail sticks (a note from Prymitywna Kuchnia: I found 3 sticks in one of the rolls I ate today). It’s worth sticking to one rule: the same number of sticks in every roll (they need to come out after frying, so remember how many there were. If you run out of time, which happens, warn your guests: “Watch out, two cocktail sticks!” Not the most elegant solution, but I’m afraid it’s the one I used yesterday).

Put the rolls in a saucepan in well-heated olive oil and brown on both sides until nicely golden. Turn the heat down, pour in half a glass of wine, add the whole peppercorns, cover and braise over a low heat. Check whether the wine has evaporated, add the other half glass and a little water if you like.

Braise with the lid on (it might take about an hour, I don’t really know, maybe less). Season the sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Whisk half a glass of cream for sauces with 1.5 teaspoons of flour and pour through a sieve into the sauce to keep out any lumps. Bring the sauce to the boil over a very low heat.

Lift the rolls out of the sauce. Once they’ve cooled a little, gently pull out the sticks (remember, two in each roll), return the rolls to the sauce, bring it gently back to the boil and they’re ready to eat. You can serve the rolls and sauce separately (in which case you’ll need to make more sauce). Enjoy!

Update from Mum: [That recipe was a draft and you put it up without editing it. Besides, the bits you cut off are the best part of the breast, the little tenderloins (my favourite bit, actually), and those were for Ninka. I’m lodging an objection with Prymitywna Kuchnia and I demand a correction.]