Whatever Happened to Saltimbocca alla Romana?
Our lesson on saltimbocca started at Checchino dal 1887, a 137-year-old Roman restaurant with deep historical roots.
Quick, easy and flavor-packed, it’s time to bring back this Roman classic
Walking the streets of Rome, you may miss the nasoni, 19th-century water fountains that are just over a meter high and made of cast iron. (The name means “big nose,” which describes the curved pipe.) To drink from them, place your finger at the end of the pipe, and a jet of water shoots up from a small hole on top of the pipe. Free drinking water is the right of every Roman citizen.
The recipes that make up classic Roman cooking also seem to be a basic right, since local chefs include them on almost every menu. One of my favorites is not a pasta dish; it is saltimbocca alla Romana. A thin veal cutlet is topped with prosciutto and a fresh sage leaf, lightly floured and then cooked quickly in a skillet with white wine and oil and/or butter.
Elio Mariani, chef and co-owner with his siblings at Checchino dal 1887, gave me a personal cooking class, starting with the rump-cut cutlets that he seasoned with a pinch of salt and a mixture of dry and minced fresh sage (to evenly flavor the meat). He started cooking the cutlets in a butter-oil mixture over medium heat, prosciutto side down to start. Near the end of cooking, which takes only a few minutes, he added a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan and to add flavor as it reduced. (Checchino backs up on Monte Testaccio, a massive pile of ancient broken amphorae—the shards are called cocci—which make up the far wall of the wine cellar.)
We made a couple of changes back at Milk Street. We cooked fresh sage leaves and two smashed garlic cloves in oil to start and then removed them. This flavored the oil—plus, we crumbled the fried sage leaves over the finished cutlets. We also pressed the prosciutto to the cutlets (we use chicken breasts, not veal) without using toothpicks to fasten, which worked well. No additional flour was added to the sauce.
One last minor point—when we added the white wine, we poured it around the perimeter of the skillet, not directly onto the cutlets, to avoid disturbing the coating.
Christopher Kimball
Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."
Preparing the Cutlets
1. If your chicken cutlets are more than ¼ inch thick, place them between two sheets of plastic wrap and use a meat mallet to pound them to ¼ inch.
2. Lay a prosciutto slice on each cutlet and gently press to adhere. The tackiness of the meat holds them together, eliminating the need for toothpick fasteners.
3. Dust the prosciutto-topped chicken with flour prior to cooking. This assists with browning and lends body to the white wine sauce.
