Chicken roll with cherry tomatoes

The main course should be the peak of the whole meal. This recipe seasons the chicken breast with a blend of strong flavors, a combination of herbs, garlic, anchovy and olives on the inside, with bacon on the outside, and cooked cherry tomatoes on the side. Its taste is not joking around, and isn't flirty nor subtle in any way. It is direct, and to the point...

Ingredients

• black olives
• an anchovy fillet
• a couple of capers
• bread crumbs
• fresh parsley, mint and basil leaves
• three cloves of garlic
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• a shallot
• three chicken breasts
• ten thin slices of bacon, or prosciutto, or parma ham
• one branch of cherry tomatoes (around 8) per person
  

For the stuffing, pit the olives, and blend them with the anchovy, garlic, capers, herbs and a bit of olive oil, to make a paste. Add some bread crumbs if it's too runny, mix and set aside.

Wash the chicken, slice each breast once or twice if it's thick, not all the way through, so it unfolds into one thin long layer. Layer the bacon stripes on the tinfoil.

Pound the chicken a bit with a frying pan to flatten it if necessary, layer it on top of the bacon, and season with pepper.

Rub the paste on the chicken, and drip a bit of olive oil on top.

Then, carefully roll it using the tinfoil, so that the chicken is wrapped all around in bacon.

Then wrap it in the tinfoil tightly. Then put it in boiling water as is, wrapped in tinfoil, for 10-15 minutes. The meat will harden and maintain the rolled shape. Let it cool a bit and remove the tinfoil. Be careful when you roll it, so that it's not too long to fit in the pot of boiling water. I hadn't thought of that at first, so I had to unwrap it once and re-roll it thicker and shorter. Then put a bit of olive oil in a frying pan over high heat, brown the roll all around a bit, and move it to an oven pan.

Add the cherry tomatoes to the hot frying pan in the same oil (vine side up) for a minute. There's no need to cook the tomatoes all around now, just soften the underside and get a bit of fat on them.

Move the tomatoes all around the roll, in the oven pan.

Last, just before I put it in the oven, I added a couple of spoons of tomato sauce on the roll, for more color. Cook in the oven for about 40-45 minutes, medium hot.

There's no need to add water or broth, the tomatoes will be full of juice, and there's also some water left in the roll from the boiling. There's going to be plenty of juice at the end. Serve a slice and a branch of tomatoes per person, and spoon some of the juice on top.