Monday 27 January 2014

Random Recipes #36 - a Hairy Dieters' delight

The Random Recipe challenge for January over on Belleau Kitchen is all about new recipe books. Excellent, thinks I - I have India by Rick Stein to drool over. It is a gorgeous book - page after page in homage to the food of India, with beautiful photography. You can almost smell the spices, the ovens, the finished food. It's mouthwatering. And then, a late gift - The Hairy Dieters Eat for Life. What to do? Hairy Dieters is much less of a visual, or actual feast (the clue is in the 'diet' part) but I don't want to cheat.

And what do you know? 'Dieters' wins in my random selection between the two, but it's not so bad after all because the winning recipe was a 'quick chicken cordon bleu' which looked quite tasty, even if it is 'diet'.



It's pretty straightforward - you split chicken breasts out and bash them thin in between a piece of clingfilm, fill each with a slice of ham and a slice of emmenthal cheese, and fold back over, then pan fry on both sides and finish in the oven.

It was OK. The recipe says to season the filled and refolded breasts well, but actually, with the ham and cheese, it probably doesn't need any more salt and as I'd followed the recipe faithfully, they turned out a bit salty. My version also suffered from having to sit around in the pan under some foil while the kids finished watching the film they had started. Normally, we wouldn't pander to that, but we'd taken them off for a very long and, as it turned out, wet walk, that afternoon, and they'd done very well, and the film was Back to the Future, so we indulged them...


  

Looking forward to the next challenge - which I may have to enter from my new Welsh kitchen...

11 comments:

  1. mu god, this is diet food? Really hard to believe, it looks gorgeous... I will be making this!... thanks so much for the random recipes entry xx

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    1. It was OK - not sure everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did - or as I anticipated they would. Might try it with mozarella & basil leaves next time, or with some low fat boursin/philly type stuff (although imagine that will be a bit oozier)

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  2. my mum loves the Hairy Dieters cook book - I'm pretty sure that's because it's the only one she's ever managed to get my step dad to use...
    Very fond of a chicken, cheese, ham combo, so this would be perfect for me!

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  3. This looks way too good to be diet food, which is my favourite kind of diet food. I've had good results with the curries from their diet books, too.

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  4. Quite a fan of the Hairy Dieters recipes - we've tried quite a lot, including this one (which I enjoyed). Like your idea of trying mozzarella and basil next time.

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  5. It looks really good. I've also found the Hairy Bikers to be a bit heavy on the salt so I definitely think it's a good idea to reduce it a bit.

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  6. I've just been trying to remember how many years it is since I ate chicken cordon bleu. I think it was before Back to the Future appeared in cinemas. Of course, I really want to eat it again now.

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    1. :-) I'd probably go for the proper version though, for a trip down memory lane!

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  7. I made these for the first time last night, I really enjoyed them. Especially considering they were 'diet'!

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