I love, love, love to pound a boneless, skinless chicken breast or piece of veal and stuff it! That’s what we do with
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Take a chicken breast. Put it between wax paper or plastic wrap (below and on top of). Take a pan or a pounder and pound it thin (I didn’t like that, you said that, just take that… and repeat until spread out and thin but not ripped).
Flour the back with White Whole Wheat flour. Lay it flour side down on top of a fairly long piece of plastic wrap. Place 4 or 5 pieces of spinach, top with caramelized onions, shallots and mushrooms cooked first in another pan then used as stuffing. Follow that with a small amount of white cheddar, that you can turn pink for Valentine’s Day with beet juice mixed in (careful: beet juice stains, but you can get a pre-pack of cooked beets at Trader Joe’s right before the Cheese on the wall) followed by a sprinkling of Panko Breadcrumbs. I like Panko better than Italian Breadcrumbs because if you read the label you will find they use Hydrogenated Oil. Yes. Yes they do.
So this piece of chicken view as a cigar. Pull the end of the plastic towards the top of the plastic and as you go, roll the chicken up keeping the plastic on the outside. Once it’s totally rolled up, think of it as a Tootsie Roll and twirl the ends one at a time, finishing each off by placing the plastic ends behind the roll. Put them in the fridge overnight.
When you go to pull out your chicken the next day, they will be formed. The chicken adheres to itself. How cool is that?
You can egg and Panko the outside (or not), then pan saute them on the stove top till brown. This goes into a 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, or low and slow at 300 degrees if you like and Voila! You have Chicken Cordon Bleu!
