Arlene Makes “Chicken Supreme” Casserole, Homemade Cheesecake, and More!

Well hello, and how are you doing today? I’m just so glad that you’re here and you’ve joined me here At Home. We’re gonna do some special things today. I’ve been receiving some mail and the lady said, “We like casserole dishes and we like chicken dishes.” Well, we’re gonna supply both of those today by making something that our associate producer, Linda Wilson, you see her on the open all the time. She gave me this recipe and I’ll tell you, it’s one of my favorites. My family really likes it and you’re gonna like it too. I’m calling it Linda’s Chicken Supreme. Okay, but before we start, I have to tell you this little story because I was recently at church and a lady came up to me and she said, “Arlene, I really enjoy your program. “We watch you all the time, and I want you to know “that I have been cooking for 42 years.” Now, I have to tell you, this lady didn’t look like she could of been cooking for 42 years ’cause she didn’t look she was 42 years old herself. But anyways, she said, “I’ve been cooking for 42 years.” And she said, “When you’ve cooked that long, “you kind of think maybe I’ve learned everything “there is to learn.” But she said, “You taught me how to make fluffy mashed potatoes “and lump-free gravy.” Now I have to tell you, that made me fell really good because that’s what this program’s all about. It’s not gourmet, it’s not fancy foods, it’s just the foods that everyday we’re preparing for our families, and hopefully these, by doing this, and you can see how stunned, it will help you to do it easier, quicker, and tastier maybe. So, I really appreciate that lady and I thank her for those comments. And in just a minute right after this helpful hint, we’re gonna come back and get started with not only this wonderful, wonderful Linda’s Chicken Supreme, but we’re gonna do a cheesecake. I’ve been testing in the At Home testing kitchens which is really my own kitchen at home. I’ve been testing cheesecake recipes and developing one and I think that we’ve hit on a really good one that’s so easy, it’s not one of these that takes hours to do. It’s one, two, three. And just that quick we’re gonna be right back and we’re gonna get started with today’s recipes. See you in just a minute. Here’s today’s At Home hint. Roll a package of bacon into a tube before opening. This will loosen the slices and keep them from sticking together. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints CTV Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Well, to get started today with Linda’s Chicken Supreme, you need about six to eight boneless chicken breasts and you can buy them with the skin on the bones and bone them and skin them yourself, but these we bought and Foodland has a nice, good solution down there of chicken breasts. See this line of fat that is usually on there? We don’t need that in there, so I just keep my kitchen sheers very clean and I just keep cutting that fat off, getting out as much of that as we can. As many as it takes to cover the bottom of a 13×9 pan is what you’re gonna want to use which is between six and eight, I have some done already. But we take the breast and usually cut it in about three pieces depending on the size, again, these are nice, large, plump, fresh, very fresh chicken breasts. Aren’t they nice? You do one more here. And, again, you wanna cut off all that extra stuff there that we don’t need, all that fat that’s not good for us, not healthy, not needed. Just cut in there. Our girl Lisa that works with me here, she’s a chef, and she helps me out. She prepares some of the stuff and helps me get ready for these programs. She’s got knives that are this long that look like they belong in the jungle with a machete or something. But I tell you what, she can handle them, but me? I said I’m a frustrated sewer, give me the scissors. It’s easier for me to do that. So anyway, again, we’re gonna cut this into about, what we call, these serving pieces because if you leave them whole, it’s hard to get them out of the dish once you’ve prepared everything. All right so, let’s begin. We’re gonna spray some PAM on our baking dish. And this is a 13×9. Now you could make this as large and if you have a lot to feed, you can make as many of these dishes as you want or one big pan full, but just be sure that you cover the entire bottom with chicken and kind of push them together because you want to be sure that everybody gets a good portion when they’re eating. This is one of these things that you can make ahead, and you put in the refrigerator and then bring it out and you can cook it out just as you need it. And you can spend your time with your guests and not have to worry about being in the kitchen for so long. Most families, most kids like chicken. And I think your family will like this. This is one of these you think, “Oh, who made that for four people? “Who in the world’s gonna eat all that?” Trust me, there will be no leftovers because kids will really enjoy this as adults do too. All right, next what we’re gonna do is take Swiss cheese. Now this is natural Swiss cheese, and basically all you’re gonna do is just take your slices of Swiss and if you like lots of Swiss, overlap them. Just do whatever your family likes. If they like a lot, put a lot on there, okay? I’m gonna cut some of that off. I need a knife, let me get a knife here. I’m gonna cut some of that off just to layer around the edges too because we really, we like a lot of cheese. And when this bakes, it makes. So you know how kids like cheese as strings? Well, this will be cheese as strings. ‘Cause there’s lots of cheese in this. Okay, now you’ve got your boneless chick breasts, you’ve got your Swiss cheese over it. Next thing you’re gonna do is take two cans of cream of chicken soup. Okay? And you’ll empty those into a container. Isn’t it weird how this comes out like in one big lump? I think it’s surprising. Okay, and this is just cream of chicken, not cream of rice or anything else, just cream of chicken soup. All right, get ’em all out of there. And we’re gonna add just enough water to make this start to get nice and creamy ’cause this is gonna make the gravy. Let’s start with that much. You just wanna whip it, you don’t have to heat it through or anything. Just start to blend it so that it gets creamy ’cause you don’t want any lumps in there. We better put a bit more water in there. You say how much? Until it gets creamy, that’s all. I can’t tell you exactly until we see here, okay? And the more you add to it, the easier it’s gonna be. Little bit more than that, Linda?

[Linda} Just a little bit.

Little bit more, okay. Little lumpy, does it matter? Okay. It will cook. Now remember, this is just gonna keep flavoring ’cause this is chicken flavor, this soup too. Okay. Is that about right? Okay, now we’re gonna pour this, get that out of there. We’re gonna pour this over top of the Swiss cheese. We like it already, right? Because this makes gravy. Down south they eat a lot of chicken with stuffing and we all know what a pain that is to make if you’re in a hurry, to make stuffing. Well this recipe you’re gonna find out, you’ll even have the stuffing with the chicken and the gravy all in one pan and what’s nice, it’s a casserole that can done ahead of time and you don’t have to keep playing with it, okay? All right, there we go. Now what we’re gonna do. You’re ready with that, let’s get rid of this. Now we’re gonna take a bowl. And we’re gonna mix. You wanna get the herb season stuffing, Pepperidge Farm. This is what it is. It’s herb season stuffing mix. Normally you buy this at Thanksgiving time if you’re in a hurry, but we’re just gonna take about 3/4 of the bag. Now, a little bit more. You know I’m really good on measurements. That’s a joke, I’m really not good on measurements. I kind of go by how I feel. And there’s a variety of spices and breads ’cause you can see there’s some dark bread in there with the light bread. Then you take a stick of butter that you have melted and all you’re gonna do is pour that over top of that seasoned herb stuffing mix. Okay. The smell of this is incredible too. Okay. Anything you put butter in just smells so good. And you wanna mix this around. Make sure that the butter coats the stuffing. Guess it’s better to do it this way. All right. Is this good, Linda, am I doing good?

[Linda] Yeah, you’re doing good.

Linda’s speaking to me from the sidelines telling me I’m doing a good job, all right. Anyway, once you have done that, then you just take this and you spread this all over. The top of that gravy mix. Now, it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna work, does it? I’ll tell you. We’re gonna put this is in an oven. But we do we cover this, Linda?

[Linda] No.

We don’t cover it. Notice how well-versed I am on this recipe. I keep asking as we go along because she’s my sidekick and she helps me with all of this. Okay, we just spread it out, there’s butter in that. And we’re gonna put this in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes. Just long enough for the chicken to cook through and that you can put a fork into it and it’s good and tender. So we’re gonna go ahead and put this in the oven. Make sure always, you make sure that your oven is preheated to the desired temperature because if you don’t, your timing will be incorrect and your food will not cook properly. It will start really slow. All right, now we’re gonna do an accompanying vegetable with our chicken dish. And it’s called piselli. I’m not even sure I know what that is, it’s an Italian word, but it has peas in it and I think peas are a nice accompaniment with chicken all the time. We’ve got a couple of tablespoons of butter that we’re gonna melt in our skillet. I need to do a little housework here. Excuse me just a minute ’til I clean up ’cause we’ve got a mess going here. Okay, we’ll put those out of the way. All right, so this is gonna start to melt. Once this is melted, we’re gonna add our fourth of a cup of onion. Okay. We need to get this up a little higher. And it’s nice to do your onion nice and fine like that because, as I always say, some people just don’t like onion, but this is fine enough that you don’t have a great big piece in your mouth, it’s offense. So, the finer you cut it, the better it is for this particular dish. All right, once that gets cooking for about a minute or two when the butter gets nicely melted. Then, we take a package, a 10 ounce package of peas, frozen peas. Now I like the tiny little tender ones. As you can see here, these are very small peas, okay? And they should be thawed down a little bit which these have been sitting out for a little while. Some of those great, big peas have such a strong flavor that we don’t really care that much for, but these are tiny tender ones. And if I have to buy in the can, which I don’t very often like to, I’d buy the little Le Sueur or the tiny baby peas because they just have a softer, delicate flavor. We’re gonna add the peas right in there with our onion and our butter. We’re gonna let them cook just for about three minutes just until this all gets going. Okay. Now you notice we have not added any kind of seasoning either to our chicken, a casserole or to these peas and I’ll show you why in a minute. One thing in the chicken recipe, the cheese is very salty. So, we leave that to you to do that at the table and there’s also salt in with the breading. So you kind of adjust that as you go along. In this situation, because we’re doing the peas with the onions in the butter, we’re also gonna add some little julienne strips of ham. Now you can use prosciutto, that’s an Italian ham that is very expensive, but we just decided we would about a fourth of a cup of ham strips. Now we’re gonna let this just cook for about three or four minutes until those peas are nice and tender. Notice how the butter has gotten all over them because they’ve been cold when you put them in there. Which is not too bad, okay. And we’re gonna let this cook a little bit while we get started with our cheesecake. All right, I’m gonna turn that down a little bit, so that they’ll cook. All right now, as I said, we’ve been developing a cheesecake recipe that is quick and easy and tastes good. What good is it if something is quick and easy if it doesn’t taste good and nobody wants to eat it? There’s not much sense in even considering that, but this one I think we have a winner and I hope that as you work on it, you send for the recipes and you try it and you like it. I hope you’ll let let me know what you think about ti, okay? First of all, we’re gonna start with the crust which is graham cracker crumbs. Now this is going to make a cheesecake this large, okay? This size. If you don’t want one that size, you can half the recipe and do it in a small, eight-inch round or square cake pan and just cut the slices and serve it from that. But I like the spring type form pans because I think it just, if you go through the trouble of making it, somebody should say, “Oh, look how pretty that is “or, boy, does that look good.” And that’s what we’re striving for here. So I’ve got a couple of cups of graham cracker crumbs and you can buy the graham crackers and take the rolling pin and roll them out, you get the same effect to this. And to that I’m gonna add some powdered sugar and some cinnamon. Now we’re making our crust here, okay? Better get me a spoon here. And what we’re gonna do is mix those up real good, okay? Need to do that really, really well. I like the taste of cinnamon in this crust with this. You don’t very often find that. To do that we’re gonna add some melted butter. And, really, this is an easy crust even if you don’t want to make a cheesecake. My dad’s a pastor. When I was a teenager, missionaries used to come in and stay at our house. This was when I was busting in the kitchen and so I used to make graham cracker crust all the time ’cause they were easy ’cause I had not perfected the other type of crust yet. And so we get a missionary from the Philippine islands who every time he came to the states had to come by because I’d make him a banana cream pie with graham cracker crust and that was his favorite. So, you can use this just to make a cream pie, this same crust. You could put it in a pie plate and use it and bake it to the same amount of time. It’s such an easy crust if you have not perfected the other type. In fact, to tell you the truth, I always tell you about my mother-in-law, what a wonderful cook she is that Paul would rather have a graham cracker crust than a flaky crust, do you believe that? And his mother makes the best crust I know. All right, so we’re just gonna spread this with your hand. I guess you could do with it a spoon if you had to, but you get a better feel for it when you do it with your hand. And you press it and press it. Trying to make it even and level the whole way around the edge of the plan. Okay, you don’t wanna any crumbs sticking up ’cause what happens when you put the filling in there, then the crumbs will go up the side of the cake. So you kind of press it down. That’s all it is to that crust. We’ll bake this for five minutes in our 350 degree oven. For five minutes, let me see here. I better do that one so I make sure I know. There we go. Stir the peas, make sure that they don’t burn. Boy, they smell wonderful. That little bit of onion in there, that’s a nice treat. Okay, let’s make the filling now for the cheesecake while the crust is baking and this is just your regular chunks of cream cheese. You can use the lowfat or the light cream cheese. It all works perfectly fine. I know Linda sometimes uses that when she’s making her cheesecake. And you have three packs for this recipe ’cause that’s a big cheesecake pan. So you’re gonna have to have a lot of cheese in that and what I like to do is kind of get it started. I like to just blend it a little bit to get it all together before I start adding ingredients. This is the basic foundation for most cheesecakes is cream cheese, better known as Neufchatel or Philadelphia cream cheese is probably the best known, the Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese. But any of those cheeses makes, you have to have cheese for a cheesecake, and I read a lot of cookbooks, I’ve been searching around and I think, like I said, I think this is one of the easiest. So we’re gonna take our cream cheese and we’re gonna add sugar. This is about two thirds a cup to 3/4 of a cup and you can adjust the sweetness. Once you make, when you say that’s a little bit too sweet. Write that on your recipe so that next time you make it you’ll know, oh, I need to add a little bit more. Okay, what I found is when you have some of the basics, you can vary some of the flavorings in the seasonings for especially a cheese cake and it won’t affect the outcome of it. So, we wanna beat this very well. Of course the cream cheese, don’t even think about doing this if you don’t have it at room temperature because if you do, you’ll have major problems. Mostly it’ll be flying out of the pan, that you don’t need. So incorporate the sugar very well with this. Then we’re gonna start adding eggs one at a time. You say, “Well can I just dump all four of them in there?” No, that doesn’t work. You mix them in one at a time because this is what will make it creamy, okay? And you’ll see the change begin immediately in the way the cheese starts to look and it’s gonna get fluffier instead of heavy and dense. You’ll notice that it really gets fluffier as we go along. Now you don’t have to do this for 10 minutes after each egg, but you do have to do them separately ’cause it does make a difference. Just until it’s blended in. Okay. The important thing, too, is to scrape down the sides because if you don’t you’ll have some there that has not gotten the egg mixture. See the big chunks of cheese? You have to do that ’cause the cheese tends to stick to the side of the pan. Okay. So you want to be sure that you get that incorporated in with those eggs. Okay. So far we’ve got the two. We got with another one. And you always check and make sure it’s a good, fresh egg. Don’t just dump it in there thinking, oh, it’ll be okay. Sometimes it’s not. Okay. See how nice and creamy this is getting? And it’s changed the color too. With those yokes, it makes it yellow, more yellow. Now I have to tell you, four eggs in that size of a pan is not much because when I was researching recipes, one cheesecake called for 11 eggs. I said, nah, we can’t do that one, that’s too much. Okay. All right so basically we have everything in here. We’re gonna put a little bit of vanilla. Vanilla is a good flavor, we’re gonna put that in there. Just about a teaspoon, okay. ‘Cause that adds to the flavor of the cheese. Okay. Now. At this point we have everything in there, all right. Let me see how many minutes. We’re almost done. I think we can bring this one out. Let me get my pot holder here. It says only five minutes, it’s been in there about four. I think it’ll be all right. Okay, the chicken’s coming along good. And some people say to cool this, but I didn’t cool it because you’re gonna put it right back in the oven and heat it right back up, so it’s not gonna hurt this one bit. All right. Then you take your filling. Okay. And you’re gonna pour. You stir it from the bOttom, make sure that it’s all totally mixed well and just pour it over your chest. I tell you what, you gives you a good feeling when you do that. I don’t know why, I don’t understand it, but it’s like a feeling of accomplishment, like boy. Look at that, I’m making a cheesecake. Now I have to be perfectly honest with you, I have not made a lot of cheesecakes in my time, but I knew that this was something that I wanted to do ’cause I wanted to show you that it could be easy and I think this is pretty easy, isn’t it? I mean this is an easy recipe. Now what you’ll do with this cheesecake, we’ll put it in the oven. And we will bake this for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the very center comes out clean, okay? Okay, I hear the beeper, I’m gonna set it again. Okay, and we’re gonna put this in the oven. And we’re gonna go for 30 minutes. Now let me tell you what we do at the end of 30 minutes. At the end of 30 minutes, you take a cup of sour cream, you take about a third of a cup of sugar and you take a little bit of nutmeg. And what’s that other thing in here?

[Woman] Salt.

A little bit of salt, okay. You mix that together and you bring it out of the oven and you pour that over the top. Put it back in the oven for 10 minutes, bring it out, let it come to room temperature. When it comes to room temperature, you take the spring off of it, put it in your refrigerator and you leave it there for at least six hours. So this is a dessert, do it the day before just like the chicken can be done the day before. Then we bring it out and you can serve it immediately ’cause it’s good and thoroughly chilled and it tastes so good with a little bit of blueberry topping, fresh strawberries on it, some raspberries, whatever you want. We’ll be back in just a minute, here’s the way you can get today’s recipes.

[Narrator] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped, self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home CTV Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter Enjoy featuring an entire month of At Home recipes including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.

Well, here we are at the dining room table. I wanted to show you that this is what our supreme chicken, Linda’s Chicken Supreme looks like, nice and crusty on the top and you cannot believe the flavor and the taste of the peas. I believe your family will really enjoy them. They’re so good and so different I wanted to cut this wonderful cheesecake. This is what it looks like when it comes out of the oven and it’s chilled. Of course you put a little bit of Cool Whip or whipped cream on it, but this cheesecake, I’m telling you, is absolutely delectable and you can see the texture of it. I’m gonna cut a piece and serve it just so you get an idea of what it’s gonna look like because you wouldn’t bake this everyday, but you would certainly bake this on a special occasion like for a birthday. Come on out here now, there it goes. Look at this. You see the texture of that cheesecake? Let me show you from the side. Isn’t that wonderful? Nice and creamy and, of course, if you didn’t wanna go with the fresh strawberries, if they’re not in season, some delicious blueberries or black raspberries or raspberries, we’re gonna put a little dab on the top here just to give it some more tasty fruit flavor. This is your cheesecake. My cheesecake, I’ll say it that way, and it’s so easy to do. Please, be sure to send for recipe 117 because it’s there. All the directions, it’s not hard. Just try to do it and do it special for your family, but most of all be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you right here At Home. We’ll see you then, bye, bye now.

[Narrator] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholeys, your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less at Whole Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.