When I was a little girl, my mom went in with a few friends to purchase large quantities of frozen foods every now and then.

I’ve forgotten all the details, but I do remember that it was a Very Big Deal when she would make these orders. She would ask if I had any special requests, and I can remember just one: chicken cordon bleu.

I had never had the stuff other than when my mom placed those orders, and I loved seeing them finally come in.

They were so fancy! White chicken meat shaped like a perfect little football, filled with a melty white cheese and slice of ham. The whole shebang was coated in breadcrumbs and baked up to perfection.

It was heaven in a deep freeze.

I’ll be honest: it didn’t occur to me until sometime in college that they could even be made from scratch.

Even then, it wasn’t an original thought: I caught sight of the recipe in someone else’s copy of “The Joy of Cooking.”

At the time, I was seeing a young man who suggested we cook a meal together as a date. (These kinds of dates were adventurous back then, before I cooked an average of one hundred meals a month.)

“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “We can make chicken cordon bleu! Did you even know it was possible to make your own chicken cordon bleu?”

Well, gentle reader, as it turns out, he did know it was possible to make chicken cordon bleu. What’s more, he considered it passe – boring, even! – to make such a mundane meal.

He convinced me to cook with him the recipe one page over, a similar chicken concoction – this one stuffed with gorgonzola cheese.

If you were today years old when you first heard the term “gorgonzola cheese,” then you have some idea how I felt when he suggested it. As it turns out, gorgonzola is a close cousin of blue cheese.

And so, instead of rolling chicken breasts around good ol’ ham and swiss and frying them to juicy perfection inside a lovely veil of breadcrumbs, we tortured those poor chicken breasts and shoved them full of rotted cheese.

(Don’t get me wrong: blue cheese and its ilk have a place in my heart. It just doesn’t have a place in my chicken.)

At any rate, it would be years before I tried making chicken cordon bleu by myself. And I’ll admit it: it was delicious.

But it was also time-consuming. The product was worth the effort, but I seldom have the counter space cleared to pound chicken flat, much less the time to do it.

That’s why I was glad to find this recipe, a simplified version of the classic meal. Now we can have chicken cordon bleu whenever we want it: no special order or meat mallet required. And not a speck of rotted cheese in sight.

EASY CHICKEN CORDON BLEU

(adapted from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe)

Ingredients
2 pounds chicken breast tenderloins
Salt and pepper
1 package (about 9 ounces) sliced deli ham or cubed ham
6-8 ounces mild white cheese, shredded or cubed (Swiss is traditional, but I prefer muenster or havarti)
1 cup Panko bread crumbs
2 tablespoons melted butter

Sauce (optional):
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon chicken bouillon or Better Than Bouillon
1 tablespoon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup grated hard cheese (Parmesan or asiago)

Directions
■ Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Salt and pepper both sides of chicken tenderloins liberally. Place tenderloins in a greased casserole dish. Top with ham; sprinkle evenly with cheese shreds or cubes. In a bowl, mix panko with melted butter. Sprinkle buttered crumbs over top of cheese. Bake in center rack for about 30-35 minutes.
■ If you are making the sauce, melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and mix well. Cook flour about one minute. Add milk and bouillon slowly, whisking to incorporate the flour and break apart lumps. Cook mixture over medium heat until thickened, about 5 minutes, whisking very frequently. Remove from heat and add mustard, worcestershire, and grated cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. Keep covered over low heat until chicken is cooked.
■ Serve chicken with sauce.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.