Pollo pizzaiola and cabbage

I still have some leftover ‘pizza’ sauce from my steak pizzaiola from Saturday night.  

The photos aren’t pretty but under that layer of mozzarella is a beaten chicken thigh on a wedge of red cabbage. Butter was used to keep the cabbage moist as it cooked. The leftover sauce was really nice with the chicken.

Ingredients

• Chicken thigh
• Red cabbage
• Iodised salt
• Black whole peppercorns
• Butter
• Mozzarella
• Leftover ‘pizza’ sauce

Instructions

• Cut a nice wedge of red cabbage and place it on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
• Season the cabbage with salt and pepper and put a knob of butter on the cabbage.
• Remove the femur from the chicken thigh by carefully dissecting it out with a sharp paring knife and using your fingers to get between the muscle planes and stripping away the connective tissue from the bone. Use the knife to cut the tendon insertion points on the femur.
• With absorbent kitchen-paper dry the skin of the chicken thigh.
• Remove the chicken skin from the muscle.
• Use a coffee tamper or something heavy to flatten the chicken thigh and at the same time embedding the salt and pepper into the flesh.
• Place the chicken thigh on the wedge of red cabbage.
• Cook in the oven at 200 °C for about 30 minutes.
• Hopefully, the skin is crispy.
• In the last ten or so minutes that the chook is in the oven, put some mozzarella on the chicken and heat up the leftover ‘pizza’ sauce. You could do this with microwave radiation if you felt inclined or you could do it in a small saucepan or in a skillet.
• Once the chicken is cooked, spoon the sauce onto the plate with the cheese encased chicken and red cabbage.