>>Chicken cordon bleu is a wonderful dish, but it's a little bit dated.

To me, it's kind of like dinner party from the sixties.

So I wanted to do something a little bit different with this chicken cordon bleu to give it a little upscale feel.

We're going to use some pancetta and a little bit of Dijon mustard.

So what I wanna start with is just about four to six ounces of pancetta.

Now, you can get this presliced in your deli section, or usually, you can also get it in the deli thickly sliced if you order it that way.

I want to just cut this in some cubes, like so.

And then I'm gonna put it in a really hot fry pan so that I can sear it off and get it nice and crispy.

(gentle music) Now, traditionally, in cordon bleu, you're going to use ham and a little Swiss cheese.

For this, a little Emmentaler, which is a lovely Swiss varietal cheese, and it just melts beautifully.

And the pancetta just gives it a little upscaled value.

So we're just gonna drop that pancetta in the pan, and let it start cooking.

Now let's get that chicken ready to stuff.

It's so much fun to make chicken cordon bleu, and you can really be creative with this.

You can be as simple as you want with your cut into your chicken, or you can make it so that you're rolling up, which is what I'm gonna show you today.

So I have a chicken breast that I've already trimmed up a little bit.

I've taken off that sinew that just kind of looks like skin and fat hanging.

So I took that off.

And you can see that I've got the tenderloin right here.

I want to just cut into that tenderloin a little bit, but not all the way through.

The key to cordon bleu is making sure that you have enough chicken to roll.

Now, if you're uncomfortable doing this, all you have to do is put a slit into the chicken and make a pocket.

But I like to make it so that I'm rolling it up.

So I've got the tenderloin here on the side, as you can see.

I wanna take my knife and run a nice horizontal line through my chicken.

And if it's still thick, do another one.

You're making a nice piece of flat chicken that you're going to stuff.

Now, don't worry if you get a couple of holes.

That's not gonna matter.

And if you feel more comfortable, you can actually just pound out this chicken, and it's going to be fine.

But here we have our chicken breast all ready to be stuffed.

Now let me check on that pancetta.

So while that pancetta continues to fry, (pancetta sizzling) I'm going to make my dip station.

So anytime you're frying chicken or baking chicken, you want to set up that traditional three station dip station.

But our special one for today will be the wet station.

So I'm going to start with one egg.

Now the first thing I wanna do is just break the yolk on that egg, and start to mix it up a little bit.

And then I wanna take a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

Now, this is gonna give you a really rich taste that's going to blend so well with a beautiful Chardonnay.

Now I've got about 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder.

Now, I use powder in this instead of salt.

Remember that when you're using onion salt and garlic salt, that's a lot of salt.

All right, let's whisk in all of that Dijon and our onion powder and our garlic powder.

Remember, 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder.

And then we're gonna take a cup of milk.

And you can use any kind of milk for this.

I just like a whole milk because I think it coats the chicken really well.

Now my pancetta is all done.

You can see how nice and crispy it is.

It's going to be perfect in this recipe.

And what I wanna do is just put it onto a paper towel so I can drain off all of that excess fat that has come out of the meat.

So we have our pancetta.

And we have some chopped Emmentaler here.

All right, now let's set up our whole station.

This is easy to do.

Don't be intimidated.

Now, let me just tell you, if you are doing this just with a pocket, take a slice of Emmentaler cheese, and cook your pancetta in a slice instead of chopping it up.

And then you can just slip it right into that pocket, secure it, and it will not fall out.

But for the rolled version, which is the one that I love to do, this is what we're gonna do.

We're gonna take a little bit of Emmentaler and just sprinkle it all over.

Now remember, anytime you've touched chicken and then you dip into your product, you wanna make sure you use all that product or get rid of it because you can spread salmonella, et cetera, if you don't.

Okay, so I have this all spread out.

Now, what I wanna do is roll it.

And as I roll, if things fall out, just tuck them in.

No problem.

Just tuck and go.

Now, the first thing we wanna do is put it in flour.

Now, after I've laid it in the flour, I like to just toss it with some tongs.

So you can secure this with a pick before you do this, but I've done enough of them that I feel pretty comfortable, so I'm not going to secure it with a pick.

So what you wanna do then is take it to your wet station.

And with another set of tongs or dry fingers, you want to just roll it through.

There we go.

And then a nice panko crust.

I love panko that has just a little bit of seasoning in it.

So it usually has a little bit of parsley.

Sometimes I add a little garlic powder or onion powder to mine.

But this is just right out of the can, and it works beautifully for this recipe.

Now, let's just shake that off.

There we go.

And put it onto our greased cookie sheet.

And we'll do that with all three.

Then we're gonna pop this into a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

After it comes out of the oven, we'll let it rest, slice it, and then we'll plate it up.

All right, my chicken is out of the oven.

It temped at 165 degrees, which was exactly where I wanted it.

Now, I love hollandaise sauce with this chicken, but I'm going to beef that up a little bit too.

Well, I'm gonna lemon it up.

So what I wanna do is take a lemon and just zest about half of that lemon.

And this is gonna give so much more flavor to an already great hollandaise sauce.

Right about half of a lemon, maybe a third.

Just depends on how much lemon you like.

I love lemon.

It's my favorite flavor.

So I'll juice about half of the lemon.

So maybe a teaspoon and a half to two teaspoons of lemon juice, depending on how juicy your lemon is.

Make sure that you catch all of those seeds.

And then I want to add just a little more acid because I really like this flavor.

And that is, of course, the white wine that we're using with the chicken.

And then let's do about three egg yolks.

So I just want to crack my egg whites into the bowl, and then separate my eggs.

Now there are lots of ways you can do this.

Use the shells if the shells aren't too rough.

Use your hands.

You can buy all kinds of tools.

My favorite ways are just like this and using my fingers.

Now let's sprinkle in about 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

You don't want too much, but you don't want too little, because you want a nice flavor with this.

And then I'm gonna take two dashes of hot sauce.

Now, you can use a cayenne for this, but I really like the hot sauce because it has a little extra vinegar in it.

All right, now let's whip that up.

And then I have a stick of very hot butter on the stove that I'm gonna drizzle in on top.

(blender whirring) Now we have this lovely hollandaise sauce.

You can see how it coats the back of the spoon.

It's just beautiful.

So let's take one of those pieces of chicken and a nice sharp knife, and we're just gonna give it kind of a little slice, sort of on the diagonal.

It makes it more tender that way.

(gentle music) There we go.

Now let's just kind of shingle that on our plate.

Make it really pretty.

And we'll take some of our beautiful hollandaise and drizzle over.

So let's pour the Chardonnay.

It's crisp yet it has an amazing finish, and it's gonna be perfect with this dish.

So a little upscaled hollandaise, a little upscaled cordon bleu.

Mm.

(gentle music) Wonderful.

Wow.

(gentle music continues) Mm, oh yeah.

It's perfect.

So good together.

(gentle music) (bright music)