Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Cordon bleu casserole

I love cordon bleu. My work cafeteria has it sometimes and I loooove it. Since I happened to have ham and chicken in the house currently, and it seemed like too much work to make, I looked up recipes for cordon bleu casserole. But of course when it came right down to it, I didn't have swiss cheese and I didn't have time to follow a recipe. It still turned out very tasty.

I diced up raw chicken breasts and put them into a casserole dish with some water and baked until they were done. Then I added cream cheese, cheddar cheese, flour, onion powder, and diced ham. The ham was salty enough that it didn't need salt. I baked it again until the sauce was thick and bubbly, and put it over rice. Mmm mmm mmm.

I also love the concept of homemade salad dressing. It has the potential to taste better, I can make the tiny amount I need, and I can control the ingredients. Long ago I printed out two pages with 50 different salad dressing recipes. Most of them are easy to make, but I'm always lacking the ingredients. I'm fine at making italian dressing and improvise my own anytime I make pasta salad. I haven't quite mastered improvising anything else. We don't eat much salad anyway. My MIL left a bag of pre-packaged salad in our fridge, and it had to be used, so I pulled out my recipes and started substituting. It still needed improvement but it was much better than my last two attempts at dressing.

Apple cider vinegar
Mayonnaise
Sour cream (it was supposed to be buttermilk)
Water (to make the sour cream thinner)
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Celery salt, white pepper, salt, cayenne (it was supposed to be seasoned salt, but I was lacking all the ingredients to make my own.)

I just ordered powdered buttermilk, which I only learned about a few months ago, so I'm excited to try using it.


It would have been nice if pictures accompanied this, but step-by-step photos don't work well for me. My hands are usually gunky and I don't want to get flour (or worse) on the camera.

4 comments:

Ryan and Tammy said...

have you ever tried adding a little lemon juice or vinegar(1/15 ration) to milk to make a substitute for buttermilk? Or I do half milk and Half SC or yogurt depending on how healthy I want it. Oh ya we LOVE homemade dressing so I can send ya easy "on hand" style recipes if ya want. You just need to send me a good bread recipe;)

Amy said...

I LOVE chicken cordon bleu too. Sounds delicious. I'll have to attempt something like that sometime. I wish you were more of a measuring type cook like I am and could give us a recipe to follow. I guess I'll have to get more adventurous!

Danna said...

Gosh I think you are SO adventurus in your cooking. I don't think I could just start adding ingredents!!!! It scares me!!! :) Love you!

GinaJ said...

So, I'm interested in your Italian dressing recipe (or strategy, if it's not so formal as an actual recipe...). I have decided I don't really like the commercial versions, and I have a recipe I've been using, but it's not quite "there." You are one of my cooking idols, so would you mind sending me how you do your Italian dressing?