TacoCat (kinda) Cooks! #25: Chicken Cordon Bleu and Creamy Pasta! 🧀🍝

Hey Hive!

We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some of the recipes we've been trying at home since we've been cooking a lot nowadays! Also I'm running out of content so yeah gotta make the most of it!

So I've been trying out a bunch of new recipes not only for content but also to try cooking different things and one recipe I really wanted to try was chicken cordon bleu! I never knew this was the name of it but my auntie used to cook this sometimes during my childhood and I loved it so much! I used to just call it chicken ham and cheese since that's basically what it is. And it was delicious so I thought I'd try to make it too!

But I needed a recipe and I found this seemingly simple one by Tasty:

There was even a video and it looked pretty simple to make so I thought I'd try it. The recipe also included homemade cream sauce but I wanted to focus on the chicken first since I planned to make cream pasta with this so it wouldn't be dry. Anyway, these were the ingredients I used for the chicken:

• panko bread crumbs
• salt
• black pepper
• cayenne pepper
• paprika
• picnic ham
• cheese
• chicken breasts
• 2 eggs

Step 1: Season the chicken with salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne pepper.

Step 2: Place the chicken breast between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and pound the chicken until about 1cm thick with a mallet or rolling pin. I don't have either so I actually used a glass bottle of oyster sauce haha.

Step 3: Remove the plastic wrap and place 2 slices of cheese and ham and another layer of cheese then roll up the chicken and place onto another piece of plastic wrap.

Step 4: Roll the chicken up tight by rolling it back and forth on the counter like this. Tie up the sides real tight so that it's compact. Then let it sit in the fridge and chill for 30 minutes.

After it's been chilling, it's time to bread and fry!

Step 5: Dip the chicken in the egg bath. I kinda screwed up here and didn't coat it in flour first but I highly recommend doing so to make sure the breading sticks properly before coating it in the breadcrumbs.

Step 6: Place the breaded chicken cordon bleu in a pot of hot oil and cook for about 5 minutes per side, or until the outside is an even golden brown.

Flip the chicken after a few minutes and cook until the outside is golden brown as well.

I actually didn't read this part of the recipe when I was cooking because I was focused on the video instead, but make sure the chicken's internal temperature is 165°F (75°C) if not, place the chicken cordon bleu on a wire rack set over a baking sheet and finish the chicken in the oven at 325°F (170°C) until that temperature is reached.

While the chicken was chilling in the fridge, I used that time to prepare the pasta! I wanted to make cream based pasta to accompany this since I didn't want it to be dry with rice.

So for the pasta I followed this alfredo recipe also by Tasty!

This one is for chicken alfredo penne but since neither of us are a fan of penne I like to use normal spaghetti which works well with the sauce too.

So these were the ingredients I used for the pasta:

• spaghetti
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups fresh milk
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• garlic
• carrots
• frozen broccoli and cauliflower
• salt, pepper
• 2 tbsp salted butter

Since this is a different recipe I'll separate the steps for this one.

Step 1: Cut the carrots and boil the veggies.

Step 2: Mince the garlic while the vegetables are boiling.

Step 3: Once the veggies are soft, put the pasta in.

Step 4: Drain the pasta then add garlic and butter. Cook until the garlic is golden brown then stir in the flour slowly.

Step 5: Pour in the milk slowly and stir continuously until well incorporated. Season with salt, pepper and add in the cheese while mixing until the sauce thickens.

Step 6: Add in the spaghetti and vegetables and mix well so that it's fully coated in the sauce.

Then it's time to serve! This was my chicken cordon bleu:

And here's the spaghetti alfredo:

But the moment of truth was when we sliced open the huge chicken cordon bleu:

The inside actually looked pretty okay, at first..

But we found out after closer inspection that the parts of chicken that was in contact with the ham was actually still raw! It was really sad since 70% of it was cooked but only those few parts was not. But we tried our best to salvage it and cut out the cooked parts and put the rest in the air fryer. Unfortunately it meant that the cooked parts would be dry but at least everything would be cooked.

At least the pasta was good though! It was nicely seasoned and wasn't too cheesy. Sean's favourite type of pasta recipe is carbonara so this was definitely to his taste and I'm glad he loved it! While the chicken wasn't the best, it was still pretty alright albeit a little dry since we had to air fry it as well.

Overall, I think it was still a pretty delicious meal but it's definitely quite a lot of trouble. I'm not sure how my auntie used to cook it and now I wish she had taught me. I think I'll just stick to grilled chicken for now but maybe I'll try cooking it in the future again!

Sorry for the long post but thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat (kinda) Cooks! #24: Savoury Salmon Aglio Olio! 🐟🍝

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_{Posted via foodiesunite.net}