Bleu-Lite Special: Chicken Cordon Bleu Roulade

Free at last! Free at last! I have been banished from the Land of the Eternal Bluelight. That’s right; I have FINALLY been able to punt my weekend gig! (I never knew that freedom could be so satisfying)

What I thought was going to be a 5 or 6 month stopgap measure turned into 2 ½ years of multiple nights per week. Talk about exhausting – this is the first week in that amount of time that I get to work under 60 hours. One thing the experience has taught me – I really enjoy being my own boss. There is no way I could work in corporate America – common sense is something I value too much and (evidently) large corporations don’t value at all. Enough said.

I celebrated my first evening of freedom by hitting happy hour on the waterfront. Honestly, to empty your head of the nightmares of discount retail, there’s nothing like a nice glass of Malbec at your favorite restaurant as you watch the water traffic. Ahhh, peace and serenity…

Of course, I also had to play a little in the kitchen as part of my ongoing festivities. And since I’ve now ditched my second job, I still have to keep an eye on the grocery budget – so Inexpensive Eating must go on. I’ve saved this recipe for just this occasion – the play on words was just too childishly easy to pass up.

Chicken cordon bleu is one of my all-time favorite dishes. It just seems so decadent to shove a ham & cheese sandwich in the middle of chicken doesn’t it? (People love shoving ham & cheese in a variety of things – can you imagine the guy who came up with a Monte Cristo?) But we’ve also been trying to eat a little healthier lately, so I wanted to lighten it up a little. And I was still celebrating; I thought a little unnecessary fanciness was in order too. The result was this little ham & cheese roll-up.

I pounded the chicken out pretty thin between two sheets of plastic wrap (the poor dog always runs and hides when I start beating the countertop with a frying pan). It’s a little satisfying to release all of that aggression too (maybe I should have made this before I ditched the part-time gig). Once I added the ham, cheese, and other things, I rolled it up tight and secured them with toothpicks. I then proceeded to sear them off right away, but I think 20 or 30 minutes in the fridge would have helped them hold their shape a little better.

You could easily run these through a breading station before you throw them in the pan, but in an attempt to be virtuous, I skipped it. Instead, I made a pan sauce at the end that was mostly butter. (What can I say? Virtue is in the eye of the beholder.) It was still definitely decadent enough to celebrate with.

So make this dish and hold your own little celebration on my behalf. And remember – never take a job that requires you to utter the phrase, “Attention Kmart shoppers…”

Recipe: Chicken Cordon Bleu Roulade

Bothersome Baby Brunch: Ham and Tomato Mini Frittatas

My good friend, Carol, is on her way to Hawaii as we speak (I know – we hate her). She’s headed there for her first grandchild’s christening. OK, it’s not a ‘christening’. It’s a New Age, hippy-dippy, nondenominational, waterside, baby-blessing (but ‘christening’ is so much easier to write). Either way, she’s thrilled. Of course, she’s been there two weeks out of every month since the baby was born (and she wonders why she’s always tired), so you would think the ‘new’ would wear off after a while, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, a couple of nights before she left, she casually said, “I meant to ask you: could you come up with a recipe for me? We’re doing a brunch for 30 people after the waterside baby blessing. Oh, and I leave day after tomorrow, so there’s not much time.” (Some days I really don’t care to be the food and entertaining expert of the group, you know?)

Luckily, the day in between was Sunday, so I had some free time to kill (yeah, right). She wanted something egg-y that could be done ahead of time and could be used as finger food. On top of all that, it also had to be fairly easy to make because everyone’s hands would be a little full, what with a newborn to look after and thirty guests and all. (Anything else? Want me to solve world hunger for you too while I’m at it?)

So that’s what I set out to do: easy, egg-y, finger food. What I came up with was a ham and tomato mini frittata. I think it fills the bill pretty nicely.

I tried desperately to figure out a way to crisp up the ham and use it as the shell, but I didn’t have any luck. When I used just the ham, the egg bled through and you couldn’t get it out of the muffin tin. I tried baking the ham first, then setting it inside a paper liner, but that didn’t get anywhere either. I finally gave up on crispy ham and settled on a paper liner, then lined the liner with ham as well (maybe if I’d had more time).

And evidently the grocery stores in Hawaii don’t stock quite as wide a variety of items as stores here on the mainland do, so I kept to a pretty simple set of ingredients. (Carol loves to tell the story of trying to find smoked salmon while in Hawaii. The clerk said, “You mean, for Jewish?” Turns out, they didn’t have it.) The tomato slice on top helps keep the eggs from being too dry, and the cheese, both in the eggs and on the top, give the whole thing quite a bit of richness.

Personally, I like to eat them warm, but they’d be perfectly fine at room temperature too. And it’s stable enough to make a day or two ahead, stash in the fridge, and just bring back to room temperature on the morning of the brunch. Should be a snap (these are all subliminal directions for the party throwers).

Like I said, being the resident party authority can be bothersome – then again, how could anything be too much trouble for a face like this?

Macy, the Party Girl

Recipe: Ham and Tomato Mini Frittatas

Call It Whatever You Want, Just Eat It: Three Cheese Grits Soufflé

There’s something about a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast that just makes the morning better. Granted, you can’t do it every morning, but a weekend indulgence is just the time to reacquaint myself with my rural roots.

When I was a kid, the best thing in the world was to spend the night at my grandparents’ house. It was totally full of unique experiences: hunting forgotten treasure in the woods; a ride in the wagon pulled behind the tractor; sleeping on the hide-a-bed (OK, I was 6. It seemed like an adventure then – now it would break my back); but the best experience was breakfast. READ MORE

Recipe: Three Cheese Grits Soufflé