Recipe 25: Swiss Chicken Casserole

 The next recipe that I made in Texas was a very simple Swiss Chicken Casserole.  I didn't really have any inspiration for this, but it looked good when I was looking for recipes.

I managed to forget to take a picture when I ate this, but is one from the recipe page:

 And here is the recipe that I ended up using: (link)

Ingredients

•  6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
•  6 slices Swiss cheese
•  1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
•  1/4 cup milk
•  1 (8 ounce) package dry bread stuffing mix
•  1/2 cup melted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. Arrange chicken breasts in the baking dish. Place one slice of Swiss cheese on top of each chicken breast. Combine cream of chicken soup and milk in a medium bowl, and pour over chicken breasts. Sprinkle with stuffing mix. Pour melted butter over top, and cover with foil.
3. Bake 50 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear.

The Process

This was a really simple recipe, especially compared to many that I have made.  The first step was to lay out the chicken and the slices of swiss cheese.

 Next I poured the soup and milk mixture over the entire thing and spread it out.

 Finally, I covered it in the bread crumbs and drizzled the butter over it.

Then I cooked it.  I somehow managed to not get a picture of the final result of this recipe... but I really liked this.  It was really simple, but I thought the tastes combined really well, it almost reminded me of thanksgiving.

Since I made this while I was in Texas Sprinkles again was not available, but here is a picture of her playing with her water glass.

Recipe 24: Steak Sandwich

I am always looking for inspiration for what to cook next and often they come from rather interesting sources.  Sometime while I was in Texas I went to a restaurant called Texadelphia, which was supposedly a cross between Philly Cheese Steaks and BBQ food.  I thought that it was pretty decent and so I decided to try making something like a Philly cheese steak sandwich.

I decided to start easy, and so I went with the Easy Steak Sandwich recipe.  Here is the final result:

And here is the recipe that I used: (link)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 medium onion, sliced
• 4 large fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1/4 green bell pepper, sliced into long strips
• 1 (1/2 pound) well-marbled beef steak of any type, sliced as thinly as possible
• 3 tablespoons chopped pickled hot peppers
• 1 teaspoon Hot pepper sauce
• 2 slices sharp Cheddar cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/3 French baguette, cut in half lengthwise

Directions

1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion; cook and stir until tender. Push onion to the side of the pan, and add the mushrooms. Cook and stir until softened, then add the bell pepper and cook just until tender, about 3 minutes. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon, and set aside.
2. Add the remaining butter to the skillet. No need to clean the pan, just let it heat up a little bit. Place the steak in the skillet along with the pickled peppers. Season with salt and pepper. The steak cooks really fast, just a couple of minutes. Once the steak is mostly browned, return the onion and pepper to the pan. Cook until heated through.
3. Turn off the heat, and place the slices of cheese over the top of the pile so they can melt. Scoop the whole pile into the awaiting bread, making sure to pour some of the juices onto that wonderful sandwich.

Changes

I didn't change a whole lot here, but I did scale this up.  It seemed like the recipe was mostly for one sandwich, so I added more bell pepper and onion.  I think I sliced up 1 green and 1 red bell pepper and a whole onion.

I also couldn't really find a french baguette that I wanted, so I went with smaller french rolls.

The Process

This recipe lived up to its name as being easy to make.  The first step was to cut up the steak into strips.  The recipe didn't really talk about how to select the correct meat, but a lot of the comments talked about making sure you get really thin cuts and you also want to make sure that there is some fat in it, because that makes for a better sandwich.  Here is the size of the steak that I picked out.  I am not sure if it was the perfect type for this sandwich, but it seemed to work well enough.

 After slicing up the steak I started cooking.  I added the onions to the pan and let them cook for a little bit.

Then I pushed them to the side and cooked up the mushrooms.

 Finally I added the bell peppers and cooked those up.  When they were done, I removed all of the veggies from the pan.

I then added the steak and the picked hot peppers and cooked them up.  Since the steak was thin it cooked fairly quickly. 

I then added the veggies pack in and cooked them for a little bit to heat everything up and mix it together.

Then I made the sandwiches, by first layering the cheese.

 And then adding the steak and veggie mixture.

I added some hot sauce as well to add a bit of kick.  In general I really liked these, I did think that the bread was a little dry and could have been better, but I liked the steak and veggie mixture and I actually thought that the hot sauce added a lot to the sandwich overall.

Since I was in Texas when I made this Sprinkles didn't get a chance to appear in pictures and I know that she is really the only reason people read this.  So here is a picture of very young sprinkles in a sink!