Tomatoes stuffed with Salmon and Fricassed Chicken with Cabbage

I'm back to Marcella tonight. The old master returns.

For a first course we had baked tomatoes stuffed with salmon, parsley, capers, olive oil and breadcrumbs. This is a recipe from Marcella Cucina. I made the breadcrumbs fresh, as I do now.

I've made these little blighters before. I had two halves. I think I preferred the smaller one, which means that I think I like them a bit crunchier. I'm not sure if this is because I'm not a great salmon fan.

I want to make these again cooking them say for another 5 or 10 minutes over the 35.

Visually they were very attractive.

For our second course, we had the Fricasseed Chicken with Red Cabbage, served with Italian potato mash. This is probably the best dish of Essentials so far for me and I have written about it on this blog before. It is truly delicious, and is my winter fricasseed chicken (summer being the white wine rosemary tomatoes and olives from Cucina). Every little scrap of it and its sauce was devoured by the three of us.

I'm pleased to report I used a little nutmeg and parmesan in my mash and it is growing on me. I think I use less butter and salt this way so it all works out.

PS - I wanted to point out I browned the chicken in the same pan I cooked it in. The only difference was I poured out most of the chicken fat (not all!) as there was so much. Worked perfectly.