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ManicMicah An old crowd pleaser of mine is chicken cordon bleu. It's actually really easy to do, just takes a bit of time to butterfly all the chicken breast and dredge 'em. (Though if you're doing it for just yourself you can just do one or two and it won't take long at all.) Fairly cheap too, though you can fancy it up with more expensive ingredients.
All you need is chicken breast, bread crumbs, eggs, milk(optional), butter, cheese(ideally swiss or something else with a nice bite), ham and toothpicks. Seasoned bread crumbs work best but you can use plain and in a pinch I've just taken slices of bread, dried them out and toasted them a little in the oven then pulverized them into breadcrumbs to use. Works great. You'll also want a nice deep pyrex baking tray.
Butterfly the chicken breast. This means to slice it down one side, kind of like a sandwich roll, and open it up so it resembles butterfly wings. This way you basically have a sheet of chicken instead of a lump.
Take a bit of cheese and wrap it in the ham or vice versa, just want the ham and cheese together, and then place the cheese/ham in the chicken and roll it shut. Toothpick it shut as best you can, try to seal it on all sides. It's okay if you get little leaks but big leaks and you may lose most of your filling.
Take your sealed stuffed chicken and stage it for dredging. Crack an egg into a bowl and lightly beat it like for scrambled eggs(about 1 egg per breast you're doing depending on the size of eggs and chicken breast), add a bit of milk if you want it to be slightly lighter and fluffier coating, and then set up a bowl full of bread crumbs.
First dip the breast into the eggs, make sure to get it well wetted, then dip it into the breadcrumbs for as thorough a coating as you can. Let rest for a moment then repeat that process, adding a second layer of breadcrumbs after the first and soaking the first layer in egg. This will allow it to form a cohesive crust and seal in the juices. If you still have some bare spots you can go through a third time or you can just try to kind of pat on some breadcrumbs where it's bare.
Melt the butter, enough to give the outside of the cordon bleu a good coat probably a couple tablespoons each, and then pour that into your baking tray. Place your prepared cordon bleu in the butter, roll it in the tray to coat all sides. You can forego the butter and just oil the baking tray, but you will have to be much more careful about burning it and may need to cook it longer at lower temperature. I have done that in a pinch too.
Bake the cordon bleu at 350F for 30-40 minutes, possibly longer if they're very large pieces.
Enjoy. If you want to make it more fancy you can use prosciutto instead of ham and you can use fine cheeses for the filling too. You could also mix things up with using various cheeses or fillings. I've toyed with the idea of doing broccoli and cheddar chicken cordon bleu but haven't yet gone through with it, though I have no doubt it would work wonderfully.
