Love me a little bit of gourmet cooking

I meant to post this a while ago but couldn't find the time. For anyone who likes to cook, there are a few awesome recipes I discovered over the past few weeks (all thanks to my fav cooking blog/cookbook Our Best Bites. I decided to be a little daring and try a tortellini bake, grilled pizza, and chicken cordon bleu. And they were delicious!

So I figured it would be easier to post the first two step by step recipe links because they of course could explain it much better than I could because they were their recipes, but I will post the pics of how they turned out when I made them (but for some reason I didn't take a pic of chicken cordon bleu, but it was still a keeper. It looked and tasted fantastic!). And I typed the recipe for the chicken cordon bleu because it's not on their website.


http://www.ourbestbites.com/2011/04/tortellini-spinach-bake-in-creamy-lemon/

For the tortellini, when the author said that you don't have to put as much lemon if you aren't such a big fan of it, you can listen to her. I personally like lemon but my mom wasn't too fond of the extra lemon taste.) but it was surprisingly not too hard to make.

Now, you may think, "Grilled pizzas? Huh? That sounds...interesting?" But oh. my. they. are. now. one. of. my. favorite. foods. Please give them a try. I actually used a different dough recipe (please make it from scratch it makes them even better) than what was on the website, but I did use their homemade sauce and their tutorial on how to grill a pizza. (And I used one of those handy lean mean grilling machines)

So here is the dough recipe I used:

1 cup warm water
2 tsp. yeast
1/3 cup oil
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 cups flour

Stir water, yeast, oil, and sugar together. Let rest 5 minutes. Stir in salt and flour. Turn onto lightly floured surface and knead 4-5 minutes. Take a lightly floured rolling pin and roll them out. *On the blog it talks about how the pizzas don't have to be perfectly round. They were just fine. Roll them out to keep a little bit of thickness and about 9 inches in diameter

Now for the sauce, I used the basic marinara one from our best bites. I didn't have tomato paste, so I just used sauce and simmered it for a few minutes. It was still a little watery of a sauce but still had a great taste.

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/06/pizza-sauce/

Here is how you actually cook the pizza:
http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/06/tutorial-bbq-grilled-pizza/

You pretty much just take the dough and lightly spread olive oil on both sides with a pastry brush and let it cook on the grill. After the grill lines begin to appear on the dough and it seems likes it's cooked alright, you quickly add the toppings and put the grill top down. It takes about 5-10 minutes to cook. You will start to see the grill marks on the pizza. You would think the cheese would stick to the grill (at least the lean mean) but it scraped off well with a rubber spatula. And for toppings I used ham and pinapple, and not everyone likes pineapple on pizza but it sure tastes great grilled!

Finally, here is the chicken cordon bleu. I don't think I will make it that often because even though it's not that hard, it gets really messy and is a little tricky (like when you have to hammer the meat and roll the chicken in the batter). But trust me it is still great even when the unfinished food looks messy.

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (use frozen, but defrost it first)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 cup shredded mozzarella, provolone, or swiss cheese
6-12 slices thinly sliced ham (ok, when I made this all we had were thicker ham slices. It was the main reason why it was more difficult for me to make because I had to shred the ham and so just use the normal deli ham)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup panko bread crumbs (i used crushed corn flakes and it was still great. You can also use crushed rice krispies)
1/2 cup freshly shreaded parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tbsp butter, melted

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Place a chicken breast on a cutting board and place your non-dominant hand on top of it. Using a sharp knife, cut each breast completely in half horizontally. Place each piece between two pieces of plastic wrap and, using a meat mallet, pound until each piece is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

3. Combine seasonings and sprinkle evenly over one side of each chicken piece. Divide shredded cheese among all pieces, layering on top of the spices. On top of each cheese, layer 1-2 pieces of ham (remember to use deli-style). Roll each chicken piece up and secure with toothpics. (When I made it, it didn't look perfect at this point. So unless you are entertaining, don't worry about it looking perfect because it will still turn out well).

4. Place flour in a shallow bowl, eggs in another bowl, and both panko bread crumbs (or cereal crumbs) and parmesean cheese in a third, and stir the cheese and crumbs to combine.

5. (Here is the messy part) Working with one piece of chicken at a time, dredge in flour, rolling the chicken around to cover the whole piece, then in eggs, and finaly in bread crumb mixture. Use your fingers to press bread crumb mixture in on all sides of chicken.

6. Place chicken on prepared baking sheet. Drizzle melted butter evenly over chicken. Bake for about 25-35 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 164 degrees F.

7. Cool for 10 minutes, remove toothpics, and enjoy! :)