Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Creamed Cheese chicken

 Crunchy and creamy at the same time
I'm not one to experiment while at home, but since I had started defrosting six pounds of chicken, I figured that I needed a big recipe. I looked through the foreign cuisine books first, but not one recipe was good enough to get me out of my cooking rut. 

One of my grandmothers' complained that I don't have Puerto Rican cuisine books ( I have the best cookbooks on speed dial :) ).  One of them in mom's library is called Puerto Rican Cookery by Carmen Aboy Valldejuli. I modified her 'Creamed Cheese Chicken' a little considering the palate of my family and the ingredients available.

The result was a creamy, savory main dish that I'm very likely to repeat on a smaller scale when I come back to campus.

Ingredients
2 lb of chicken pieces (I used boneless tenders)
4 cups water
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp of butter

For the White Sauce
4 tbsp butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk
1/4 cup of shredded cheedar cheese

2 slices of bread
8 oz of Velveeta (or your preferred sliced cheese)

Start by boiling the water and two teaspoons of salt in a large pot. Boil the chicken for 20 minutes.  While the chicken boils, toast the slices of bread until brown and crumble (it should make about a cup of crumbs).

After cooked, dice the chicken. Melt the first four tablespoons of butter on a saucepan and brown the chicken slightly.

Preheat the oven at 350F. To make the sauce, melt the remaining butter in a second saucepan and combine the flour until combine. Add the milk and cheese gradually until the sauce thickens. 

In a deep baking dish, start assembling by placing half the crumbs first. The second layer is the diced chicken. Pour the sauce to cover the chicken as uniformly as possible. Cover with the rest of the crumbs and the sliced cheese last.

Bake for 20 minutes and serve hot.

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