Chicken and Green Bean Bundles

It's not very often my mother passes along recipes, but when she finds a good one that my dad even approves of it definitely gets passed along for me to try out. I'm not sure where the recipe came from originally, but it was "Chicken and Asparagus Bundles". I decided to give it a go to see if it would be a good dish to add to my recipes that have been deemed "worthy of company" since I've been meaning to add a few "nicer" dishes to my repertoire lately. This looked really cool and even semi-fancy. I decided to kick it up a notch by adding in some prosciutto and swapping out the asparagus for green beans and this is what I came up with:

Chicken and Green Bean Bundles

Serves 4

1 lb chicken breast cutlets or chicken breasts cut in half

4-6 slices prosciutto

30ish fresh green beans (trimmed, but kept long)

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Juice and zest from 1 lemon

1/2 tsp basil

1/4 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp pepper

1/8 tsp salt

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp flour

1 c. chicken stock

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Lay out the chicken breasts on a plate (cut side up) and put one piece of prosciutto on top.
3. Wrap each chicken breast around 6-8 green beans (prosciutto side towards the green beans) and secure with a toothpick. (Note: use plain wooden toothpicks...I made the mistake of using colored wooden toothpicks and this turned out weird as the color bled onto the chicken...ew.)
4. Place chicken bundles in a greased 13x9 baking dish.
5. Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, herbs/spices together in a small bowl and then pour over the chicken bundles.
6. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Uncover and bake for 20-30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
8. Once chicken is cooked, remove from baking dish and place on serving platter.
9. In a small skillet, melt butter and cook flour out a bit to create a roux.
10. Stir in the chicken stock and any drippings left from the baking dish.
11. Bring sauce to a boil and cook for a few minutes until thickened.
12. Remove toothpicks from the bundles and pour sauce over chicken bundles just before serving.

While this was quite tasty, I do not think the green beans were an appropriate substitute for asparagus. Asparagus is a no-no in this house (so says The Husband) so while this technique may not be used again (the effort to roll the bundles did not pay off -- granted I am a bit OCD and have lots of kitchen/cooking germ issues so it has to be quite the pay off for me to man-handle poultry as much was called for by this recipe), the flavor combination and the lemony sauce will DEFINITELY make a reappearance in some form once I figure out what exactly that is...