Chicken Cordon Bleu

I think this was like the first "real" recipe that I ever learned, it was something that really got me into enjoying cooking. It's fairly straight forward and simple, I might have added a couple of personal touches over time, but in essence it's still the same. Hopefully you'll enjoy this as much as I do.

Ingredients:
boneless, skinless chicken breast (1 piece per person)
deli-sliced ham
sliced Swiss cheese
cream of mushroom soup (2 cans)
salt
pepper
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, thyme)
garlic salt
butter
tooth picks (not for eating)

Cooking Instructions:

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2.) Flatten/tenderize the chicken breast as much as possible. If the breast is really thick, I'd say, thicker than your hand, then you can fillet the breast in half, which saves you on some of the tenderizing. If you don't have a meat tenderizer, I've found that the flat of a cleaver works quite well.

3.) Rub the Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper into chicken breast. You can kind of make up your own rub, I made it once with a basil, oregano, and thyme mix that was a free sample in a Sunday paper, and it worked out really well, so I've never really looked back since.

4.) On the breast piece, place a piece of ham and a slice of cheese (the size of the chicken breast should be comparable to that of the ham and cheese), then roll into a roll and skewer with a tooth pick to hold together. Place it into a greased casserole dish or roasting tray. Do this until you run out of chicken, ham, or cheese

5.) Place tray into oven for 25 minutes. So some people have also had chicken cordon breaded, which you can do to if you'd like, just bread it when you roll it up. I'm not a huge fan because I think the chicken flavor with the rub will be brought out, especially when you make the sauce.

6.) In a sauce pan, heat up cans of cream of mushroom soup (add only one can of milk, not water). Add in butter and garlic sauce and mix until it is a thick sauce.

7.) After the chicken has cooked, apply sauce and reduce oven heat to 375 degrees F and bake the chicken with the sauce for about 10-15 minutes.

And there you have chicken cordon bleu. It's a simple and straightforward recipe I think and the result is a very, very tasty piece of chicken, ham, and cheese. The mushroom sauce sort of accents the chicken flavor, and hopefully also keeps the chicken from getting too dry. Hopefully this works out for you.