Cutting calories from a recipe is like arguing with a toddler. A chicken dish with mozzarella: to make it skinny, the obvious choice is to cut out the mozzarella as, guess what, it’s a whopping 600cal. ‘But I want mozzarella’, ‘You can’t NOT have chicken mozzarella without mozzarella’, ‘It will be bOOOOring!’, ‘Waaaa! I want my mozzie?!’ What to do? Lock your inner toddler in their bedroom or try to cheat.
The chicken parcel stuffed with cheese idea is a gorgeous, albeit a rich one. I initially envisaged it crusty, crispy, golden brown on the outside; emitting a satisfying crunch when you take a bite just before the runny garlicky cheese oozes out. But deep frying! batter! breadcrumbs and flour coating! puff pastry! filo pastry! was all out of the question from the calorie cutting point of view. I know – baking it in the pastry and leaving it out on my plate would be a solution but ‘leaving food on the plate’ is not a phrase I’m very familiar with.
So I came up with the simplest solution: a parcel as we know is wrapped in paper is it not? I shaped my chicken balls (with lots of mozzarella inside) and wrapped them in buttered parchment. A dainty piece of string tied in a bow completed the look. And it worked – there was no crunch or crust but the experience was – well, like a breaded stuffed chicken bereft of the breadcrumbs.
Use parchment though, not foil, or you’ll end up with a totally boil-in-a-bag chicken. And if you’re one of those repulsively lucky individuals who don’t count calories, knock yourself out and use two sheets of buttered filo.
For the record, one portion is about 575cal. For masochists, 275 without the mozzarella.