Chicken involtini, a 9-year old can do it

Recently, the BF got me hooked on a new cooking show the likes of which I had never seen before.

Let me restate that, just to let it sink in properly. The BF. got ME. Hooked on a cooking show. What kind of cooking show could that possibly be, to draw my very own BF in so much he looked up the episodes on Youtube because he couldn't wait for the next day's episode? Why, Junior Masterchef Australia of course! 12 contestants, aged 9-12, in the most positive-spirited, up-beat, cheerful cooking competition ever to have hit the international networks! I loved watching it, and last Tuesday, the finale was aired (finally!) and one of my favourite contestants won. And I say this, knowing in the back of my head that I really, really loved all of those kids and would have wanted all of them to win. Because watching them cook... Was a delight!

And it made me jealous. So, very, very jealous. There were kids not older than 9 that knew things about cooking that I couldn't even dare dream of. I wanted to try all those recipes, taste their food, make it myself... It made me crave all sorts of new kitchen appliances and accessories so I could give all that cooking a go.. I'm beginning to think I should start a wishlist for all the cool kitchen things I want to have. (First on the list: more cabinet space. Also, tarte tatin tins. Because, well, try to say 'tarte tatin tin' thrice in a row! Awesome! Plus: candy thermometer. Can you say caramels? Ooohh... )


I figured I had to start off with something not as daunting as some of those things those kids made. So for tonight, I made a chicken involtini with tomato sauce and tagliatelle for dinner. Does that sound fancy, or what!? Get your twine out, you can be making this too! I adapted the following recipe a bit, by using mozarella instead of provolone, because I'm a mozarella kinda gal. Also, because my local grocery shop doesn't have provolone. Or any other kind of crazy dairy product. Like condensed milk. Seriously, how is a girl to cook ridiculous things like sea-salt caramels without condensed milk? I'm looking at you, grocery shop chain owner!


Chicken involtini (source)
For 2:

2 chicken breasts
prosciutto
thinly sliced mozarella
whole fresh basil leaves
salt
pepper
garlic powder
olive oil

Roll out a large piece of plastic wrap and put a chicken breast on one side, and fold the other side over the top, keeping about 1 inch of room free for the chicken to expand when you're pounding it out. With a kitchen mallet, small pan, or a rolling pin (if you're like me), pound out the chicken breast until it is 1/4 inch thick. Make sure it really is on the thin side, because you'll need to be able to roll it up later. (don't forget the other chicken breast!)

Season the chicken on both sides with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Then place some slices of prosciutto on top, followed by a layer of thinly sliced mozarella and the whole basil leaves. Roll up the chicken breasts, starting at a smaller end, and tie the rolls up with kitchen twine.

Grab your grill pan, or if you have one, pop these babies onto the grill! (make sure you heat it first, though.) Grill the chicken until golden on all sides.

Remove the twine before serving. I had these with a simple tomato sauce and tagliatelle. Hmmm...

I'm a winner!

How about that! The lovely Sarah from The Student Knitter held a giveaway to celebrate her 2-year anniversary of blogging and I won one of the items: a set of 6 really wonderful buttons!

These buttons are made by Etsy-seller Retronana who not only sells these lovely buttons, but also a ton of other lovely, lovely stuff! (she's currently on holiday and has closed up shop until she's back, but check out this post on Sarah's blog for some examples)

The buttons I won are HUGE. See, that's a pound lying next to it. (a pound? yes, a pound. I was out of euro's!) Right now, they're propped up on my desk, right underneath my monitor, so I can look at them all day long. I haven't found the perfect project to use them for yet, and I won't, not until my thesis is all done, but I can't wait to start browsing Ravelry for the perfect project!

Thank you Sarah for the lovely giveaway!

*whoooosh* fly-by-post!

Just a quick note today, because I've got someone you need to go and visit!

Blogging buddy Sarah from The Student Knitter is celebrating her 2 year blogging anniversary (aka: Bloggiversary The Second) and she's giving away lots of amazing things! Now, I would appreciate it if you would go over there and tell her that it's her blogbirthday and that we should be giving her things, not the other way around, but if you like this arrangement better, just head over there, check out the awesome stuff she's giving away, and leave some comments!

Thanks!

Iced tea, anyone?

Oh, how I love iced tea in the summer... Love it! Sweet and cold, in a glass filled with ice cubes and fruit... My favourite one by far is the Summer fruit tea from Simon Lévelt (yes, I'm aware that this website is Dutch, sorry), which is a blend of all types of summery fruits, like peach, apple and citrus, and blossoms like hibiscus and orange blossom. And it's pink. What's not to love?

I'm fully aware that you all might know exactly how to make iced tea and that I might sound like the redundancy department of redundancy, but here's a quick rundown of how I do it.



Get your favourite, summer-y flavoured loose tea. Like I said, mine has all sorts of dried fruit in it (and hardly any tea, I believe, so basically it's not even a tea) but if you're a big fan of green tea and lemon, go for it!

Grab a lemon and grate the peel (and put it in a bowl, don't toss it out!), then cut up the lemon in thin-ish slices.

Also, grab your sugar. I used almost a cup in 1.5 litres of tea which was slightly too much as it was very, very sweet but the BF seemed to like that, so if you like sweet, go for it!

I usually make about 1.5 litres in one go because that's how much can go into the largest soda bottle I can still fit in my fridge, so by that reasoning, heat up slightly more than 1.5 litres of water. Once boiling, turn off the heat and dump in your tea, sugar, lemon peel and lemon slices! I use about 20 grams of tea a litre, which is slightly on the stronger side.

Now let it stand for a while. Once it has cooled down enough, you can pour it into a bottle that can fit in your fridge or, if you're not a hillbilly like me and actually own a pitcher, you can use that. Filter the tea when pouring so the bits and pieces and slices of lemon will not end up in your tea. (trust me on this, those slices you dumped in when it was still hot will no longer look tasty and fresh. If you want, you can cut up a fresh lemon and put those slices in your pitcher or bottle, along with a whole bunch of ice cubes, when you serve the tea. Gives it a nice bit of extra flavour.)


Now for the fun part. Grab a glass, and throw in about 4 ice cubes. Then fill the glass about half-way with frozen fruit! I usually use strawberries, as they're slightly larger and give off a lot of juice, which means added noms. Another way to go is by freezing bits of fruit into your icecubes. Stick in a drinking straw and enjoy!

And don't be like me and knock over your glass when you've had one sip. Sure, the ice in my lap was refreshing on a hot day such as we had yesterday, but I still feel sticky, even after a shower...

Yesterday was scalding hot, and I haven't slept for more than a few hours so today I have a throbbing headache and a bad temper. But boy oh boy, the weather today... Look at that. The sky is yellow, people! Yellow! We've got a lot of rain coming our way by the look of it. The bf is looking forward to it, after getting about the same amount of sleep. He's been playing songs that reference lightning or storms or rain all morning.

See? DuunDUN, DuuunDUN, Dundun, dundun, dundun, dundun... Okay, so that doesn't look like much yet, but there's more coming, trust me. I'll report back as soon as possible whether we've flushed away or not. Now I've got to go and find my rubber boat, I think it might come in handy.

I've gone and done something!

Something... blog-related! Yep! It's special, as well. Really. Never done it before. Or, well, done it once or twice, but not consistently!

Any idea what I'm talking about yet?

Ha, okay, I'll tell you. I've gone back to all my posts and added tags! Exciting, isn't it?! Now if you want, you can see all the posts I made about food, or about crafts, or about photography, in one go!

It taught me a lot about my little blog. For instance, it taught me that Blogger does not have a nifty 'this is a label? now it's a page!' button. Booh, Blogger. Booh. So yeah, those labels don't have a place to go yet, apart from underneath all my posts. You can click on the label and it'll give you a list of all posts labelled with that label. Nifty.
It also taught me that I had 5 more posts in my archives than I actually have posted. Can you believe that in 1.5 years, I have only made 86 posts?! I could have sworn it were tons more! Or well, there were 5 more, but these turned out to be drafts containing no more than a few words, if any, and one rant about my birthday. Good thing I threw that one out. But it does mean that I have only 13 posts to go before the big number! 100 posts! I'm going to do something fun for that one. Only 13 more posts to decide what that fun thing will be.


It also taught me that my photography skillz (which, really, aren't exactly skillz yet) have vastly improved over the course of the year-and-a-half that I've been running this blog. Like, really. It's almost embarassing that those pictures are up there.

Speaking of pictures, I've also decided that from now on, I will use larger pictures and scale them down to size, so that if you want, you can see the larger version of the picture when you click on it. Nifty, huh?

And to prove that it works, and because I hate pictureless blogposts, here's a picture of two ducks that has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Because who doesn't like ducks?


And in a last act of 'it's summer and therefore things should change'-ism, I decided that I will be fidgeting with the look of this blog a little in the next few days/weeks. Because with all the work I have lined up already, I sure could use another timesink to add to the list.