Baked Chicken with Bread Crumbs and Caciocavallo Cheese is a Sicilian recipe. In the Sicilian culinary tradition bread crumbs are used in many ways.
In fact it’s an essential ingredient for many Sicilian dishes such as Pasta with Sardines (Pasta con le Sarde), Pasta with Broccoli (Pasta con i Broccoli in Tegame) or Sarde a Beccafico.
Caciocavallo cheese is a typical product of Italian southern regions: it’s a hard cheese made of spun paste, round in shape, produced with very fat cow’s milk, with the addition of rennet, lactic ferments and salt. This cheese gives the dish a very tasty flavor.
Baked Chicken with Bread Crumbs and Caciocavallo Cheese is not a quick recipe as the chicken must be cooked in a vegetable stock for half an hour, breaded in cheese and breadcrumbs, and finally baked in the oven for another half an hour.
Eventually the chicken will be flavorful, crispy on the outside but soft and tasty inside. And it will be worth it!
See also:
- How to make crispy Italian chicken cutlets
- Chicken Cacciatore Recipe | Pollo alla Cacciatora
- Roman Style Chicken with Peppers
- Parmesan Pork Cutlets
Baked Chicken with Bread Crumbs and Caciocavallo Cheese Recipe
- Prep Time: 30Min
- Cook Time: 1 H
- Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 chicken, cut into pieces
- 1 onion
- a few parsley leaves
- 1 carrot
- 1 celery stalk
- 2 lemons
- 120g (4oz) grated Caciocavallo cheese
- 2 cups of breadcrumbs
- origan
- extra virgin olive oil
- coarse salt
- salt and pepper
Directions
Make a vegetable broth. Wash and clean celery, onion, carrot and parsley. Cut the vegetables into fairly large pieces (1). Place them in a large pot and fill it with 3 liters of fresh water (2). Add a handful of coarse salt (3). The recipe for vegetable stock is made with potatoes and tomatoes too. In this recipe the stock is more simple.
Meanwhile clean the chicken pieces. Remove the skin and the larger bones (4). When the water boils, add the chicken (5). Cook over medium heat for half an hour with the lid lifted slightly(6). Taste the stock during cooking and add salt if necessary. The stock must be tasty, not bland.
While the chicken is cooking, prepare a sauce with copious extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, plenty of oregano and freshly squeezed lemons (7). Beat with a fork to emulsify (8). Now prepare (in separate plates) bread crumbs and grated caciocavallo cheese (9).
With a slotted spoon remove the vegetables and put them in a plate (10). You could use these vegetables to make a great vegetable soup or as a side dish. Remove the chicken pieces (11) and put them in the bowl in the emulsified sauce. Let rest 5 minutes while stirring repeatedly (12).
Take a piece of chicken at a time and put it in the grated Caciocavallo cheese (13). Press the cheese with your fingers to the chicken so that it sticks (14). Then put it in bread crumbs for breading (15).
Place the pieces of breaded chicken in a baking dish (16). Add a little oil (17) and bake for half an hour in a preheated oven at 180 ° C (350 F) (18).
Remove from the oven and serve Baked Chicken with Bread Crumbs and Caciocavallo Cheesestill hot, maybe with a salad or with potatoes. You can try Baked Potato Fans with Herb Butter as a side dish.
