Porchetta, but it's chicken.

What happens when you take the idea of herbed-up, crisp-skinned porchetta and apply it to chicken? Dinner happens.

Porchetta is one of the great dishes of the world, and quite pure in its simplicity. It’s also not the sort of thing you can whip up for dinner after a day in which your computer has died, editors are asking where your stories are, and you’re about to fly out of town for a few days.

Hence the pivot to chicken in the style of porchetta. It’s a keeper.

Ah, but what IS the style of porchetta?

Talk to an Italian, and the only thing they’ll agree on is that it is made with the finest pork possible (and not chicken). Depending where they’re from, they’ll say the flavourings are just salt and lots of black pepper, maybe a little bashed rosemary, perhaps some garlic. Others say no to garlic, but might allow lemon zest. Fennel seeds can sneak in there, too.

All the best porchetta I’ve had, either from food trucks parked outside churches in the hilltop towns of Italy, or from the finest Italian restaurants in Italy, the UK, New York and Australia, have involved way too many crunchy black peppercorns, a hint of garlic and fennel and the feral whiff of rosemary. So that’s what I’m aiming at here, with the addition of parsley for freshness, and dried oregano, because I put dried oregano into everything Italian. Porchetta, but chicken.

Chicken alla porchetta

Serves 4

• 4 chicken breasts from good chickens

• 1 tsp sea salt

• 2 garlic cloves, grated

• 1 tsp fennel seeds, toasted

• 1 cup flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

• 2 rosemary sprigs, de-stemmed, leaves finely chopped

• Half tsp dried oregano

• 1 tsp black peppercorns

• 4 oblong slices of prosciutto

• 1 tbsp olive oil for frying

BASH each chicken breast out a bit just to flatten it. Make a small cut into the fattest part to help it flatten out.

SCATTER with sea salt and massage into the meat.

POUND the garlic, fennel seeds, parsley, rosemary, oregano and peppercorns in a mortar until you have a rough paste that smells AMAZING.

SPREAD the paste over each chicken breast, and roll up.

WRAP each chicken roll tightly in clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.

REMOVE the clingfilm when ready to cook, and wrap each chicken roll in a slice of prosciutto.

HEAT oven to 200C.

HEAT oil in a fry pan and fry the chicken rolls on all sides, just enough to brown the prosciutto.

ARRANGE on a baking tray lined with baking paper and roast in the oven for 15 minutes or until the chicken no longer gives to the push of a finger; it cooks quite quickly.

SLICE and serve with the pan juices or a salsa verde.

# A few hours resting in the fridge infuses the chicken with all the feisty herbs and garlic. No time? Just go straight to the wrap-with-prosciutto stage instead.  

# Always wash and dry your chopping board or any surface touched by raw chicken – it’s so ingrained in me now, I do it without thinking.

# Chicken thighs would be even better - boned and bashed out a bit - but will take a bit longer in the oven.

# You might think that all those strong herbs would overpower the chicken. They do. I like that.

# Serve with a quick salsa verde made of springtime rocket leaves, recipe below. Also peas, green beans, broccolini, or new season asparagus or a salad of shredded radicchio.

Quick rocket salsa

• 1 cup rocket leaves

• 1 cup parsley leaves

• 1 garlic clove, crushed

• 1 tbsp tiny salted capers, rinsed

• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar

• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 50 ml water

Whiz the rocket, parsley, garlic, capers, vinegar and olive oil with sea salt and pepper together until smooth. Lighten with a spoonful or two of water until slightly runny and set aside.

Thanks for reading! And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, who always whips the breasts off the chicken before making stock (they would add very little to the stock, where they overcook anyway), so there can be random chicken breasts in the freezer waiting to be schnitzelled. Or, now, porchetta’d.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.