For 2.5 years I’ve dated the same guy (which, in and of itself is a great feat). During those 2.5 years, I never once cooked him a meal. By now, you’re probably in awe of me if you’re a woman or mad at me if you’re a man.
There was no real reason, mostly our schedules were crazy, we didn’t have time…we’d grab something and go to his place or mine or eat at a restaurant…the point is, I never had to cook.
Finally, decided it was time…I researched recipes, I wanted to have something laden with yummyness…something that would knock his socks off.
Yea, not so much. The chicken was overdone, the rice was undercooked…the beans..don’t get me started. I made copious excuses. He told me it wasn’t bad…awww what a horrible thing to say! May as well as said ‘I didn’t eat lunch and my blood sugar was low so it’s better than a diabetic coma’.
Anyhoo since then I’ve made him breakfast twice (which I rocked) and then, for New Years Day I made dinner again…which turned out pretty well: chicken cordon bleu and orzo with parmesan and roasted red peppers.
Ingredients for the chicken:
1 pack THIN chicken breasts (I bought thing chicken breasts but they weren’t thin enough so I ended up having to pound them out more. With a bottle of olive oil. Because I’m lame and don’t have a meat mallet.
¼ lb of ham (I used smoked ham from the sandwich mean section of the store, I didn’t use quite a whole pack, so I’m guessing its about ¼ lb
1 slice of swiss cheese for every piece of chicken (I should have said that for the ham…duh
3 or 4 eggs, beaten
About 2 cups breadcrumbs
About 2 cups Flour
A heavy liberal splash of oil…I use canola but I don’t think it really matters
A handful of toothpicks
How I did it:
- If the chicken isn’t thin enough, cover it with plastic wrap and beat it with (preferably) a meat mallet…or whatever else you have on hand that is really heavy
- Beat the eggs
- Put the flour in a bowl or plate
- Put the breadcrumbs in a bowl or plate
- Pour the oil into the pan and begin heating up (sidenote: I actually prepared ALL the chicken first, then put them into the pan at the same time so I could control the cooking time better.
- Place a piece of cheese on top of a slice of ham, roll into a vertical
- Place vertically onto a piece of chicken and roll/wrap the chicken around it. Because I’m lame and didn’t properly thin my meat, it wasn’t a perfect thing.
- Fasten with toothpicks so ALL of the ham and cheese is covered. This happens to be important because the idea of chicken cordon bleu is that when you cut into it, the cheese oozes out. YUM
- I generally needed 3 toothpicks per chicken piece
- The chicken will be moist, so dip into the flour thoroughly
- Next dip into the egg
- Next coat with breadcrumbs
- Put into the hot pan ( to test if the pan is hot enough, put a few drops of breadcrumbs into the oil..they should sizzle)
- COVER
- Keep this on a moderate heat…not high…maybe a medium high…you want to chicken to hae a nice crust but also actually cook and be moist…hence why I covered it with a lid
- Turn after a few minutes…you will want to keep a close eye on this.
- Since you can’t cut into it to test doneness, if you have one, use a meat thermometer…much better than ruining the awesome chicken-ham-swiss combo
Serve…some recipes I saw called for serving with a béchamel sauce…I didn’t…and don’t regret it. This was awesome on its own.
Ingredients for the Orzo
½ box of Orzo (I made half a box but ended up with lots of leftovers. Shoulda made a whole box
½ stick butter
¼ cup chopped roasted red peppers (you can buy these in most grocery stores any more. They usually are in the
A about ¼ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
How I did it:
- Boil the orzo, drain and return to pain
- Slice up the butter and throw it into the pot
- Add the chopped red peppers, stir and let set over medium low heat for about 5 minutes
- Throw in most of the parmesan, stir
- Serve and top with a few sprinkles more of cheese
- You MAY need some salt…but parmesan is a salty cheese so taste before adding
And that was our meal. We drank some white wine during the meal. Wait, actually I drink wine, but he didn’t. lol. It was super yummy and the chicken is a bit time consuming…it was not that bad and well worth the effort.
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