Sunday, May 12, 2013.
Mother's Day. Chicken Cordon Bleu.
Mother's Day at the Cool Water Ranch was long one of our biggest celebrations. All the mothers in Mary Ann's family and their broods came over, and that's a lot of people. On top of that Mary Leigh--who was born on Mother's Day--often combined her birthday party with the gathering. As all these kids grew up, Mother's Day attendance dwindled, but Mary Ann continued to insist that going to a restaurant was out of the question. "I'm a mother," she says. "A mother makes a home, so I want to celebrate mother's day at home. But you can do all the cooking."
She almost changed her mind this year, going so far as to reserve a table at Houmas House Plantation. But she stayed with the tradition--except for the part about my doing the cooking. For reasons I don't understand, she wanted to grill chicken, make a salad, boil some corn on the cob, and that would be it.
I mentioned that I had a surplus of ham, and offered to make chicken Cordon Bleu with it and the extra chicken. I knew the fact that the ham was sitting around would make her go for that. MA's idea of the perfect meal is one made entirely of ingredients already in house--preferably in the early stages of decay. But she would make her own grilled (blackened is more like it) chicken, too.
I pounded the breast meat until it was about an eighth of an inch thick. I shook some Italian seasoning on one side, with a little squirt of lemon juice. Then the ham went down, to be covered by some shredded mixed mozzarella and provolone (also from the going-south drawer of the refrigerator). I folded the chicken over, shook some salt and drizzled a little olive oil over it. I thought I might need toothpicks to hold it closed, but I didn't.
Meanwhile, the broiler and rack were heating up at 550 degrees. I put the chicken foldovers in there and let it broil. After a few minutes, I moved the chicken around to hot sections of the grill rack, so the bottom would cook thoroughly. And that was about it.
"It reminds me of pizza, in a way," said Mary Leigh, who added that she liked it--not, I think, just because I am her dad. I could see what she meant, and it gave me an idea. Pound out some chicken and put it on an oiled pizza pan. lay down a layer of ham, and pour enough pizza sauce (the uncooked kind I learned from Chef Andrea), than some cheese, then another layer of chicken, finished with herbs and a generous sprinkle of Parmigiana cheese. And bake it like a pizza. After it cools a little, slice it into pizza-like slices. I think this could make a pretty good appetizer.
Jude is not here for Mother's Day, but working on a movie. I think it's the first time MA has been without her boy on this day. She thought he wouldn't even call, but he did. Three times. He didn't send her flowers, but he did frame a photograph of Mary Ann and him taken somewhere in the last few months and had it shipped in. That did it for Mary Ann, who by the end of the day was saying that this was everything she wanted from a Mother's Day.
