Chicken herb roll

Sometimes I want to make something a little more elegant, but still simple. For Christmas, I decided to make rolled chicken. The inspiration came from when I was a teenager in Australia - at that time, frozen boneless turkey rolls were sold for Christmas. It is a pity I can't buy turkey fillets in Japan, but chicken is great!

For something more gorgeous, get some expensive brand name chicken. This time I cut costs by using some "a little expensive" meat plus some "very expensive" meat. In this case, the fillets were "jidori" and the sasami fillets were "red meat jidori". I forget the price but the red meat jidori was not something I can buy every week :)

I try not to cook in the oven so much because it takes time and electricity is expensive. If you make this dish, try to cook other oven foods such as roast vegetables and a baked pudding after that.


Preheat the oven to 210 degrees.
1. Put a flat chicken fillet onto a cutting board, skin side down.
2. Put a 5mm slice of butter in a small dish and melt it in the microwave.
3. Add some chopped herbs into the butter - chives, thyme, rosemary, sage.
4. Spread the herb butter over the meat side of the fillet.
5. Put two sasami chicken fillets in the middle of the big fillet.
(Make sure you put the sasami with two different ends together - one thick end and one thin end so it is one even log.)
6. Wrap the big fillet around the sasami and tie up with meat string in 4 places.
7. Top with some more herbs and black pepper.
8. Bake on a tray in the oven for 40 minutes.

These rolls are best hot because the skin is crunchy. The are also nice cold in a lunch box or as picnic or party food.

Ginger roasted pork

 I like to watch some cooking shows on the Internet, but I rarely take the time and trouble to make anything in real life. Just before Christmas I saw Nigella making some ginger baked ham. Well, we can't buy a leg of cured ham to cook here in Japan so I just used pork and changed things around a little.

This dish was another rule breaker and honestly, even though the taste was great, I would change it to something easier next time.



1. Buy a big block of pork. I used the kind of pork that is used for "tonkatsu" steaks and asked the butcher for a block, not steaks.
2. Put the pork in a big pot and cover it with ginger ale! (Yes, ginger ale.)
3. Boil it for one hour.
4. Drain the pork, and preheat the oven to 220 degrees.
5. Mix about 150g of ginger jam with 50g of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon whole grain mustard, and 1 teaspoon of whole cloves.
6. Put the pork in a baking dish and cover with the jam mixture.
7. Roast for about 30 minutes until the jam is golden and the meat is firm.
8. Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes.

1. This roast meat is nice cold, so buy a big block.
2. This is not healthy! Next time I will use water and dry ginger powder, plus a little honey.
3. She boiled hers for 4 and a half hours!!!
5. I got the ginger jam from Kaldi Coffee. Maybe you could use fresh chopped ginger and honey? She used powdered mustard but I didn't have any. She also used powdered cloves, which would be better.

This roast meat was really nice but not ham :)  All that sugar is bad, but for Xmas it was something special.
If you want to check Nigella's actual recipe, please search for "ginger glazed ham".