Recipe: Saltimbocca skewers

Paleo, also known as Primal, Caveman, and Stone Age diet draws its core principles from our hunter-gatherer, ancestral lifestyle and combines those with modern scientific research and a good dose of common sense. The diet has gained a huge following lately and as a result it is often scrutinised, misrepresented, and often misunderstood. The thing about Paleo is that it’s not really a new diet. The ‘lifestyle’ – yes it’s much more than a diet – has been around for many years.

It focuses on eating whole, unprocessed foods like grass-fed meat, free range poultry, wild fish, vegetables (including root vegetables,) fruit, berries, some nuts and seeds. It avoids grains, legumes, refined sugars and dairy. So, without going into too much detail, it avoids all these foods to control insulin sensitivity, repair gut health, increase nutrient absorption and reduce negative inflammatory effects they cause.

I basically always try to include a carbohydrate in my meals in the form of rice, pasta or potato. But in the lead up to summer (and in trying to shed some of this baby weight whilst still eating a well balanced diet), I’ve decided to try including some more veggies to replace them… like this white bean puree.

Here’s hoping that these kind of meals are well appreciated by the husband, Mr Moo and {through my milk} the little Dude. No Mummy likes slaving over the hot stove for her dinners to be unappreciated!

One of the great thing about this meal is that there was little to no ‘slaving over the stove’ and that most of the meal prep could be completed whilst everyone was napping and not under my feet. I was about to prepare the skewers ready for the husband to BBQ upon getting home from work and I made double the white bean puree as it is also the base for one of my favourite healthy summer time dips {great for entertaining friends – blog post to follow shortly}. 

SALTIMBOCCA SKEWERS WITH WHITE BEAN PUREE

6 chicken thighs

12 slices of prosciutto

12 sun dried tomatoes

12 sage leaves

4 bamboo skewers

2 cans of cannellini beans

1 lemon

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

Italian mixed salad leaves*

Take a chicken thigh and cut it in half. Even it out using a mallet so that there aren’t thin and thick parts, before placing a sun dried tomato and a sage leaf in the middle and rolling up in a slice of prosciutto. Skewer the wrapped chicken to keep in place – placing three on each skewer.

Place your cannellini beans in the food processor with the juice of the lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper for seasoning. Blitz until smooth and this is now complete.

BBQ your chicken skewers until cooked and then serve on top of the white bean puree with some Italian mixed salad leaves.

* You should be able to find Italian mixed salad leaves prepackaged at your green grocer. I drizzled mine with a little balsamic vinegar, but you could dress yours with what ever you like {think lemon juice, olive oil or apple cider vinegar}.