Ingredients lists
Another late post. I've been busier than a hooker at a Secret Service convention. And today is officially selection day as well. I'll get to that later.
Shopping was pretty simple this (last?) week. I needed to pick up some chicken broth, cheese, sour cream and vegetables. Everything was where I expected to find it in the store for a change. Here is everything laid out, ready to start the prep.
Let's start with the Vegetable Medley, since that has to cook a bit longer. The hardest part was remembering to take the veggies out of the freezer and dump them into a colander for several hours to thaw and drain. I did have to shred the cheese, since I'd bought the giant hunk of cheese seen above. Once that was ready, everything got tossed into a bowl - with the exception of half the cheese and half the onion rings. The recipe should have stated "1 cup cheese, divided" and so on, but whatevs. I just dumped it all into the one quart glass casserole that I have and stirred it up with a wooden spoon to combine everything. This got covered and placed into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
While that was cooking, I flattened the chicken thighs with my handy meat smasher tool (forgot to include that in any of the pictures). Then I sliced off some pieces of cheese and rolled up one slice of cheese in each piece of chicken, and tied it tightly with kitchen twine. The recipe says to combine the flour and pepper on a piece of waxed paper - I had some mixed up from something I had cooked earlier in the week, so I just used that.
I was then supposed to melt the butter in a large skillet in order to cook the chicken, but used olive oil. This was supposedly a "healthy" recipe, why use butter? And I couldn't skip sauteing up some onions and garlic in the skillet just before adding the chicken rolls. Good thing I did, but we'll get to that in a moment. The rolls were cooked over medium heat for about three minutes, turning frequently, until nice and golden. Then the broth, win and dried oregano were added - except I used additional broth instead of wine. The heat was brought up until the liquid was boiling, then dropped to medium-low to simmer for 10 to 12 minutes - until the chicken was well cooked and the sauce thickened a bit.
Soon after I got to the simmering step, the 30 minutes for the vegetables had elapsed. It was time to top the casserole with the remainder of the cheese and onion rings, and continue cooking for 5 more minutes.
This was one of those times when all the timing worked out well. I pulled the chicken from the pan and removed the string, then I pulled the vegetables from the oven. I had bought some more fresh herb plants, so I was able to go ahead and garnish with parsley and oregano sprigs as instructed.
Verdict: Let's face it, Swiss cheese isn't really known for its bold flavor. Both the chicken and the vegetables tasted OK, but they could have used a bit more. A little bit of oregano popped up in a few bites of the chicken, but it was not part of the dish, it was a "oh hey, I'm here too" sort of thing. Also, this is approximately how I've made chicken Cordon Bleu in the past (of course with ham in addition the cheese), so I'd just as soon make that anyway.
Lessons Learned - nothing new this week. Wasn't I supposed to be learning things with this whole experiment thing?
Tools needed - nothing new this week.
Skills needed - nothing new this week.
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