Eat Something Good

chicken cordon bleu

Now I’ve heard of chicken cordon bleu plenty and have had some mediocre to really bad dishes.  For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s basically chicken rolled up with ham & cheese.  The worst offenders are the fake’ish chicken ones that are prepackaged.  Steve likes those.  I have no idea why.  The last time I had chicken cordon bleu was at least five years ago.  When we first started out, Steve took me to the Briar’s (Briarcliff Manor, NY).  The place is just one good sized square room with a smaller bar attached next door.  They allow ppl to wait there for tables.  And sometimes, especially on a Friday or Saturday night, you can wait up to 45 minutes.  It’s always worth it when you sit down to a metal plate of fresh vegetables (carrot sticks, celery, radishes) and fresh bread.  Then comes Steve’s favorite part.  Their cole slaw.  They give you a whole lot and seconds if you request it.  They make plenty of it and it’s always fresh.  I think they only season it with mayo, onion, s & p.  Very simple.  I got into it, but I usually like my cole slaws a tad sweet.  So you get all this food for doing nothing.  You haven’t even ordered yet.  This is the last place I had the dish.  They served theirs with a brown gravy, I used a moray sauce.

Steve used a heavy frying pan to pound out the boneless chicken breasts between sheets of wax paper.  Then I’d take the breast, place them on a sheet pan and place a slice of ham & swiss cheese and roll it up.  I had to secure them with toothpicks.  Then comes the breading.  I so dislike breading things unless it’s shaken up in a bag.  So I dredged it in flour, dipped it in the egg and rolled it again in bread crumbs.  My favorite part of all this is that you always end up breading your finger tips.  And then you go to wash it off and you see that it’s all under your finger nails.  Ugh.  Anyway, a pat of butter goes atop each ‘roll up’ and into the oven it goes for 35 minutes at 350F.

Moray Sauce.  As I searched for chicken cordon bleu recipes, I didn’t have an inkling as to what type of sauce to use.  Many recipes didn’t even include a recipe for sauce.  Several suggested moray sauce which is just butter, flour, milk, parmesan cheese, garlic powder, s & p.

I served it with white rice and yes, mixed vegetables.  It’s the last box of Bird’s Eye.  Thank the lord.  I am so tired of them.  And I think, Steve might be getting that way too.

Steve really liked the chicken cordon bleu.  He liked it better with the white, moray sauce than the brown sauce that the Briar’s restaurant gives you.  In my opinion, the ‘roll up’ could’ve used more swiss  cheese.  The amount of ham was just right.  The moray sauce tasted good but it was a little too thick for my liking.  Next time, I’ll use less flour.  All in all, Steve wants me to make this dish again but if I do, it won’t be for a long while.   So he’ll have to wait til the urge next strikes me to do the breading thing.  Okay, petunias, take care and as always, Eat Something Good!