Saltimbocca Coast to Coast and Overseas

Yep....its that time! The BakeSpace beeps have organized another cook-off. This time we have a lot more participants and even one from overseas :). You'll see links to everyones goodies at the bottom.


Ok, let me present.......Saltimbocca.


I looked around at several recipes. Lots of them called for veal or chicken.


Me? I had a pork tenderloin that I wanted to use.


Soo....after lots of searching and trying to decided what looked good, sounded good and matched my frame of mind that day, I decided to use Tyler Florence's recipe for Saltimbocca Alla Romana, with a few minor alterations.

1 pork tenderloin
10 - 12 very thinly sliced prosciutto or twice as many as there are slices of tenderloin
10 - 12 fresh sage leaves, plus more for garnish
1 tablespoon butter
All purpose flour
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons evoo
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons dry white wine
1/4 cup chicken broth
lemon wedges
1 lb of spinach (2 lbs if you know you're family will eat it :) )
minced garlic to taste (at least 2)
1 tablespoon butter (or evoo...don't matter)
a little more chicken broth or water


First...I melted some butter in a pan and crispified my sage leaves....

You're basically sauteing them, turning once. They get kinda crunchy when you do that. No need to brown them.


This is my first time making Saltimbocca. My first time eating Saltimbocca. Soo...keep that in mind as you read along. Thank God this is a simple recipe that lends itself to personalization.


Anyways...remove the leaves from the pan and set them on a paper towel (or as some of us have come to know them as....power towels...but thats a different story that requires mass amounts of consumed wine!)


Then...on to the messy stuff. I sliced the tenderloin into maybe 2" thick slabs, covered with plastic and pounded away....

(hopefully you're not in need of a lot of stress release because these babies flatten so fast that you'd be done before you started feeling better)

You want them about 1/4" thick.


I cut some of my pieces in half so that they were about the size of my hand. Easier to work with and made the next step more symmetrical...the prosciutto and the tenderloin would be about the same size.


Get a long strip of plastic wrap. Lie the tenderloins on the plastic wrap, place one slice of prosciutto over each tenderloin. Cover with another strip of plastic wrap and gently roll over it all with a rolling pin until the prosciutto adheres to the tenderloins. Remove the top piece of plastic wrap...

When I saw the sage leaves in the recipe, I thought it would be nice to crispify the leaves.....but that was before I realized what was suppose to happen when you assembled and cooked the meat.


You see...you're suppose to place the fresh, pliable, soft sage leaf on top of the prosciutto and weave a toothpick in and out of the meat to secure everything together.


Crispy leaves don't like to weave.


Oh bother.


think
think
think....


Ok....lets try this......


Place 2 leaves over the prosciutto. Then place another slice of prosciutto on top of that. Cover again with the plastic wrap and roll away....

So far so good....keep your fingers crossed


In a shallow dish, season your flour with a good amount of salt and pepper. Dredge the tenderloin ....

I got a little nervous doing that. I thought I'd end up leaving some prosciutto and sage behind in my flour. But luckily it all stayed intact.

At this point you may want to cook the spinach. Melt some butter in a pan. Throw in some minced garlic and saute for a few seconds...

Toss in the spinach and maybe a little bit of chicken broth....

Remove from pan and place on a serving platter...

Now...back to the meat: heat up the oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Put your meat in the pan, prosciutto side down. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side. It won't take long....maybe 3 minutes per side?

Transfer the cooked meat to the serving platter with the spinach and keep warm.


Add the wine to the pan....stirring to de-glaze...bringing up all those flavorful crunchies on the bottom of the pan. Let the wine cook down for a minute. Add the chicken broth and 1 tablespoon of butter......swirl around, add salt and pepper to taste....

Pour the sauce over the Saltimbocca and spinach. Garnish with lemon, and sage...and enjoy!

YUM! seriously good stuff here. It was easy.....quick. Lets put it this way. When cooking a meal, with the intent to blog, while taking pictures and reading instructions....it takes a while. I made this meal in the time that it took for my risotto to cook (that will be another blog very shortly). I imagine that the saltimbocca could be done in half the time if I weren't snapping pictures and reading instructions over and over again.


Now for our little International Saltimbocca tour....


Check this out...Thanks to DD over at DDPiesSlice, we have this awesome little map thing. Basically what you do is click on the link below...and it will take you to a world map of all the locations of the people who have participated in our little cook-off. You can either choose from the listings along the left side of the screen that pops up, ooor you can click on a utensil icon to see a picture of their dish. Clicking on the picture will take you to their blog with all the info about their wonderfully tasty version of Saltimbocca.


So click on the link and get ready for a fun filled tour of culinary bliss!!

International Saltimbocca Tour