Chicken Cordon Bleu seems to be one of those dishes, like crème brûlée or foie gras (which is literally just duck fat), that just sounds so fancy and restaurant-quality. Really, it's just the classical French name, but names do sell, and these items are associated as high class. They are not necessarily difficult to make, but they can be nailed or not so great. Everyone seems to know chicken cordon bleu involves chicken with ham and Swiss cheese, but not many are really aware of the origin of the name. Well, most of these French terms cannot be taken literally, and cordon bleu just refers to meat wrapped around cheese. So you could have steak cordon bleu or pork cordon bleu, but chicken is by far the most common.
Add another French term - en croûte - to the mix, and it sounds even fancier, when really I am simply baking the chicken, ham, and cheese in a pastry crust.
I have had chicken cordon bleu a few times, but this was my first time making it. Here is my recipe for chicken cordon bleu en croûte.
Chicken Cordon Bleu En Croûte
oil
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
thin ham slices, diced
Swiss cheese, grated
2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or hard margarine, cold
1 cup milk
Trim off any pieces of fat from the chicken. Slice each piece in half horizontally almost all the way through and open like a book. Pound until very thin and flattened, but not paper thin.
Heat a little oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Place about two to three teaspoons ham and a good heaping two tablespoons cheese on one end of each chicken breast. Press down to compress. Gently roll up chicken breast. You may secure with toothpicks if needed.
Sear the chicken breasts for a few minutes on all sides until golden.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375◦F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Prepare the crust by mixing the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Cut in the butter until crumbly. Mix in the milk, dough will be soft. Knead lightly until dough comes together. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to a rectangle about one centimeter thick. Cut into squares or rectangles just large enough to wrap around the chicken breasts.
Place a chicken breast in a crust square and pull the sides up, overlapping on top. Biscuits can then be brushed with milk, egg wash, or a little melted butter if desired. Place on prepared baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked thorough. Be sure to remove toothpicks before serving/eating.
One word of advice: CHEESE! Do NOT skimp on the cheese! You want the cheese oozing out of the chicken - that is the beauty of the dish. If you think there is too much cheese, you are probably wrong, as long as you can still roll up the chicken around it. A little ham goes a long way but you need a lot of cheese.
Here is a really quick and easy recipe for a juicy and flavorful ham. This is my go-to recipe whenever I need a quick main-course meat dish that doesn't require much preparation work, and goes with a variety of different side dishes. This recipe is easily scaled up or down, depending on the size of the ham used. In fact, I never measure the ingredients, I just eyeball based on what kind of ham I have. I have always used the fully cooked hams without the bone. Since the ham is fully cooked, the method used and the amount of time for cooking the ham can vary, but you do want to ensure the ham is heated thoroughly. This is what I do:
- Steam the ham for thirty minutes.
- Prepare a simple honey mustard sauce. I heat up two parts of pure, natural, creamy honey until liquidy, then blend it with one part of prepared yellow mustard. I add any spices and seasonings as desired - paprika and garlic are particularly good.
- Place the ham in a pan, pour the sauce over top, and spread on all sides to coat the ham.
- Bake the ham for 45 minutes at 300◦F.
- Remove ham to a cutting board and slice thinly, or remove rind and cut into pieces.
- Baste with sauce again.
- Either serve immediately with a spoonful of sauce, or cover with foil to keep warm before serving.
Just like we sometimes have pancakes for supper, we occasionally have waffles for supper (or lunch) as well. My mother seems to hold the title of pancake master while my father owns the title of waffle master. My father doesn't make waffles too often, maybe once or twice a month if we are lucky, but when he does, he really seems to take a lot of pride in making them. He carefully measures out the ingredients and gently mixes up the batter. Then he cooks the waffles - two at a time - in our standard waffle maker. It's just a simple one that makes two square waffles at once - not a fancy shape or Belgian waffle maker or anything. He also tailors the waffles to suit our own personal tastes - whether we like them extra crispy, or slightly soft, or fresh from the maker, or from the oven. And we all put whatever topping we like on our waffles - butter, syrup, yogurt, applesauce, peanut butter, honey, fresh fruit, cinnamon, etc. We like to enjoy these waffles with pan-fried ham and scrambled eggs, or sometimes a bowl of cereal, or sometimes just waffles alone!
Here is the delicious dinner I enjoyed tonight with my family. It consists of slices of a simple baked ham, corn, green beans, and cheesy scalloped potatoes. Simple, but tasty. Actually this plate represents the ideal plate: half full of vegetables, one quarter lean meat, and one quarter starch or whole grain. Ok, I admit there could be a few more vegetable piled on there, but that's okay. They say you should eat one green and one orange or yellow colored vegetable everyday, among others. Well, this plate has both. Although a leafy green vegetable would be preferred, and brighter oranges such as those of sweet potatoes or squash are probably more beneficial, green beans and corn are a very good match for ham. Peas and carrots are also a good pair with ham. If you want to add some fruit into the mix, both pineapple and apple are good with ham. You can eat these fruits fresh, or make them into a sauce for the ham, using either canned pineapple or applesauce. Scalloped potatoes also go very well with ham, but other potato dishes as well as rice or noodles are also good matches for ham. The cheese in this dish also adds another food group! Overall, this is a tasty, nutritious, and well-balanced meal that is pretty easy and quick to prepare.
Remember all of that extra sauce I had from the Maple Pudding Cake I made on Sunday? The cake was excellent, but the sauce was a bit too liquidy, and there was a lot more of it than there was to serve with the cake. Well, I couldn't let that sauce go to waste, so I used it to serve a maple-glazed ham. To do this, it is really simple, just buy a whole or half ham, pierce the skin all over, and drizzle the maple sauce over top, allowing it to go into the ham. Bake the ham as usual, and serve extra sauce over individual slices. Even with the maple glazed ham, there was still some leftover sauce, which we poured on our homemade waffles we served with the ham. Luckily, the sauce had thickened a bit compared to when it was first baked, as a result of being refrigerated. Some of the cake broke down into the sauce, so you got a few cake crumbs in with your sauce, but it wasn't very noticeable on the waffles. Since the sauce was composed of only sugar, water, maple syrup, and a spoonful of flour, it kept well in the fridge, and would probably be good for another week or two. It is very similar to using just plain maple syrup.
Pancakes for supper are a regular occurrence for my family. In fact, we rarely eat them for breakfast. We commonly enjoy waffles for supper too. Often these are served with pan-fried ham and scrambled eggs. Having breakfast-style meals for supper is quick, easy, and tasty. It also makes a very well-balanced meal that doesn't require a lot of preparation work and uses ingredients on hand. These are the pancakes that my mother has been making for as long as I can remember. Mom likes to make small pancakes, about four inches in diameter, instead of large plate-sized pancakes. That way we can eat a lot more, and they fit on the plate and in your mouth better. Everyone enjoys different toppings on their pancakes, common toppings in our house include butter, syrup, jam, peanut butter, and applesauce. Cooking pancakes on a griddle makes the work go a lot faster - we can fit up to ten pancakes on our griddle at the same time. That means a lot less batches, and a lot less cooking time. Griddles are also very easy to use and clean. Here are some pancakes that were cooked up for supper tonight!
