Chicken Saltimbocca Stuffed With Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese

I am not the type of person who needs a shower upon waking in order to get my day started.  In fact, it would have been tough when I worked on a dairy farm and rolled out of bed, pulled on my boots, and was in the barn before achieving full consciousness.  This means that I shower at weird times.  (Why am I talking about my shower habits on a food blog?)  Lemme 'splain.

I think pretty well in the shower.  The idea for this recipe came during a late weekend afternoon shower.  I'd already cooked the sweet potatoes for the hash and decided to shower while they were cooling.  I was pondering the rest of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve.  It came to me--in between the first and second time I washed my face--why not shred a butternut squash?  Why not stick that shredded squash onto a thin piece of chicken, roll it up, and cover it with a sauce?  (I think I ended up washing my face twice because I was distracted debating between grapes and band fundraiser oranges for the sauce).

Then I got out of the shower, dried off etc, and got on my computer.  First, I found this, followed by this.  Then I found this.  Then this.  And finally this.

After mulling all of those over for a while, this is what I ended up making:

Thanks to a comment from Annemarie of Real Food Real Deals, I decided to try rice noodles with this dish.  Depending on the type of chicken broth you use, this recipe could be gluten free.  Despite my utter inability to make it look as easy as in the videos, it was pretty quick to assemble, cooked fast, and tasted great.  I think it would work well for both an impressive Valentine's day meal or a tasty family supper.

And then stay tuned, because I've been busy stuffing shredded butternut squash into muffins and pizza!
I've revamped my Visual Recipe Index! For more ideas on what to do with your butternut squash, click here.

I never used the onion or half and half.  Why are they here?  Photo crashers.

Chicken Saltimbocca Stuffed With Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese (serves 4)

4 thin sliced chicken breasts
a healthy pinch each of salt and pepper

4 thin slices prosciutto

8 leaves fresh sage

1/4 cup goat cheese
1 cup shredded butternut squash

1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 Tablespoons lemon juice

rice noodles (I didn't measure this, I had my son separate what looked like "a good amount" from the package)

Lay out the chicken breasts on a cutting board and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Top each breast with a thin slice of prosciutto, a generous tablespoon of goat cheese, a couple of leaves of fresh sage, and 1/4 cup of shredded butternut squash.  Roll up as in the photo.  Realize your toothpicks are too puny.  Holler for your son to fetch the giant bamboo skewers since your hands are all . . . raw chickeny.  Stab the rolls vertically with the bamboo skewer, realize that's not a good long term solution for actual cooking, and re-stab in a horizontal way.  Add the puny toothpicks on vertical angles to help hold the roll together.

Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Realize the skewers are way too big to fit 4 chicken rolls in your skillet.  Grab your handy dandy kitchen shears and chop off the ends of the kitchen shears so that everything fits in your skillet.  Brown the chicken for about 2-3 minutes, then carefully flip to the other side.  Brown another 2 minutes, then add chicken stock and lemon juice.  Cover and simmer 10 minutes until chicken is fully cooked.  While chicken is cooking, pour boiling water over rice noodles in a bowl and set aside.

When you're ready to serve, remove chicken to each plate.  Crank up the heat to high and reduce the sauce, while your daughter removes all the various skewers.  When the liquid has reduced, a few minutes later, drain the rice noodles and toss them in the skillet with the sauce.  Add the noodles to the plates and pour any remaining sauce over top the chicken.

This post is playing with the rest of the food at the Wednesday Fresh Foods Link Up at Gastronomical Sovereignty, What's Cookin' Wednesday at Buns In My Oven, the Farm Girl Friday Blog Fest at Let This Mind Be In You, Laura at Sprint 2 The Table's Strange But Good, Food on Friday (twice) and  What's In The Box by In Her Chucks.  Check 'em out!