I cant believe its not Veal...Saltimboca

I often have the problem (often being always) of wanting to eat GREAT food on a not so great budget. So when I came across a recipe for Veal Saltimboca, I knew I just HAD to figure out something. That something was round steak. Round steak is not a prime choice cut of meat. However, it is cheap. And with enough tenderizing it can be delicious. I found the round steak at my local Henry's, it was grain fed, certified organic, and only two dollars per pound!

Ingredients: Veal (or whatever you can get your hands on), thinly sliced prosciutto, flour, olive oil, white wine, butter (chilled and chopped into cubes), fresh parsley, and capellini pasta

To start, I pounded the round steak down to 1/8th of an inch and seasoned with salt and pepper. I then placed a slice of prosciutto on top of each steak and dredged in flour. I coated the bottom of a large, high walled saute pan with olive oil and set on medium high heat. Once the pan was heated through, I set each piece of the meat into the pan prosciutto side down. While the first side cooked, I added water to a pasta pan and set it to boil. After about four minutes, I flipped the saltimboca so it could get wonderful and golden crisp all around. Once the water was boiling, I salted it and added the capellini. Capellini (or angel hair pasta) only cooks for about three minutes so watch it carefully! Once the saltimboca was cooked through, I placed each piece onto a baking sheet and placed it into the ovenita to keep warm....here is where I got busy, the next step is to make a sauce and right about this time I had to drain the past and cover it to keep warm and I decided I needed a veggie for this dish so I busted out some lemon pepper asparagus too ....I used a white wine to deglaze the saltimboca pan and let it simmer until reduced by half. I then added the trimmed asparagus to a saute pan, added the juice of half a lemon, and a few twists of fresh ground pepper. Adding the cubes of chilled butter one at a time, I whisked the sauce slowly so the butter thoroughly melted and dispersed into the sauce. Once all of the butter was added, I threw in some fresh chopped parsley and let the sauce sit to thicken. I plated this dish by adding some of the capellini to one side of a plate, a few cooked asparagi next to that, then the "veal" saltimboca. I topped the whole dish off with the wine sauce.

This meal was very good, the meat was so tender and had just the right amount of crisp texture on the exterior. The capellini handled the sauce very well and the asparagus paired with the dish beautifully. The only thing I would change would be the amount of salt I used while seasoning. I didn't take into account how salty prosciutto can be, so the steak really didn't need salted at all. This was just one more dish were good food on a tight budget is no impossibility.  Till next time!