Chicken cutlets
Swiss cheese or gruyere
good ham, sliced thin
flour
salt, pepper
olive oil
butter


Chicken cutlets, if you can get those pre-thinly sliced breasts would be perfect, if not, take chicken breasts and pound them out until they are roughly a quarter inch thick.

Good flavorful ham, black forest is good, but stay away from honey or maple ham. Smoky is better than sweet. Thin sliced, sandwich style is good.

Swiss cheese slices or gruyere if you can get it, but its a bit expensive and frankly they are similar enough that you can cut corners by using swiss. Gruyere is, once it's melted anyway, just a denser un-holy version of swiss. Why spend three times as much.

Take your hammered out chicken all laid out, put a peice of ham on it, and then a peice of cheese on it. Try not to let the cheese get to the edges. Don't roll it, this makes cooking time way too long and risk for salmonella. Instead, just fold it in half. Secure with a toothpick. (or three!)

In frying pan, have 2 tbsp Olive oil, and 2 tbsp butter heating up. Or enough of that ratio, equal half and half, to get about a quarter inch or one centimeter deep cooking liquid in your frying pan. (size matters?)

Take about a cup of flour, mix with salt and pepper. Amt? teaspoon of each is about good. Put flour mixture on a plate sizeable enough to be able to dredge your chicken in.

Dip chicken folded thingies carefully into a beaten egg, then into the flour for dredging. Coat on all sides.

Test frying pan, it should be bubbly from butter prior to cooking that chicken. Place chicken peices in pan, tommy cooked these one at a time so pan didnt get overloaded. Overloaded frying pans dont cook evenly or thoroughly, so avoid poisoning your dinner guests and do it one at a time or two for large enough pans.

Fry for four or five minutes each side until cooked through. Best way to check it is to take the biggest one, open it up (it should be like a clam shell) and check inside the bend underneath the ham and cheese to see if it's cooked solid white with no pink.

If you start without pounding out chicken but with pre-cut slices, you might want to pop the chicken into the oven at this point for 15 minutes. If you weren't lazy and did pound out your chicken so it's thin enough, your chicken is done. Take out of frying pan and place on paper towels to drain briefly. Serve with fresh steamed spinach, it goes really well together.