__Denise Joanne Yennie


Serves: 5
Total Calories: 529

Ingredients

Chicken Florentine Panini ..........Click the Edit tab and select this entry to open the recipe.

Directions:

Denise JoAnne Yennie says her cooking experiences got off to a rocky start. When she was nine, she made a tossed salad for her family. As she brought it to the table, she tripped and literally "tossed" the salad. To this day, Denise's mother also recalls a "Hawaiian" ham dish, lovingly prepared from a children's cookbook recipe, that 10-year-old Denise made in celebration of Mother's Day.

Denise confesses a lifelong passion for food, inspired by her mother, her aunts and her German grandmother, all good cooks. Still, to most of her acquaintances, Denise is known as a business consultant. Her consulting firm challenges clients' conventional wisdom in doing business, and Denise carries a bit of that renegade spirit into her cooking.

"Everything I do has to be quick and easy," the Nashville mother of two says. "My mom and grandmother used to cook things slowly, all day. Not me. I turn on the heat and crank it up." For the contest, "I wanted to create something special enough to get recognized," she says. And her recipe for Chicken Florentine Panini did just that. The Italian sandwich made with refrigerated pizza crust, garlic-flavored mayonnaise, sautéed chicken breasts, spinach and caramelized onions won the $1 million Grand Prize in the 2002 Pillsbury Bake-Off® Contest. The recipe's simple, convenient ingredients paired with sophisticated cooking techniques made it a standout.

Denise herself was described as a standout at the Bake-Off® Contest. Amid the soft whir of blenders, she turned heads as she used a mallet to noisily pound chicken breasts and an electric knife to cut her sandwiches into precise squares. "I pounded so much chicken that I have 'chicken-pounding elbow,'" she joked.

After her Bake-Off® victory, Denise made several television appearances. "I had to practice getting the preparation of the sandwich done in five minutes for the OPRAH show and in two minutes for the TODAY show," she says. "The publicity came in a whirlwind and left just as quickly as it happened," she says. "The best part has been the impact and effect on all the people who know me-how they go and tell their friends. They get to live this joy with me."

From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Nutritional Facts:

Serves: 5
Total Calories: 529
Calories from Fat: 255

This __Denise Joanne Yennie recipe is from the Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.


More Recipes from the Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook Cookbook:
* Introduction - Bake-Off® Contest
_ Baking Power
_ Celebrities
_ Changing the Tools of the Trade
_ Cheesecake
_ Current Events
_ Delivering the News
_ Don't Mind Her. She's a Cook
_ Fate
_ Former First Lady and Prominent First Bake-Off® Celebrity
_ Hardware: It's Not Just for Carpenters Anymore
_ Mishaps with the Press
_ More Celebrity Notes
_ More Delivering-the-News Stories
_ Original Autographs
_ Recipe Swapping
_ The Personal Side of Judging
_ The Technical Side of Judging
_ Tricks of Memory
__Alda Menoni
__Annette Erbeck
__Barbara Benton
__Beatrice Harlib
__Betty Chromzack
__Birdie Casement
__Bobbie Sonefeld
__Christie Henson
__Christine Vidra
__Dale Grant
__David Schmitt
__Debbie Russell
__Del Tinsley
__Denise Joanne Yennie
__Dorothy DeVault
__Dorothy Wagoner
__Edna (Holmgren) Walker
__Elizabeth Zemelko
__Ella Rita Helfrich
__Ella Schulz
__Ellen Burr
__Ellen Nishimura
__Gilbert (Gil) Soucy
__Gilda Lester
__Gina DeRoma
__Gladys Randall
__Harriet Warkentin
__Janice Weinrick
__Janis Chudleigh
__Julia Hauber
__Karen Casillas
__Karen Durrett
__Karen Kwan
__Kathryn Blackburn
__Kathy (Gardner) Herdman
__Kevin Koors
__Kitty Cahill
__Kristina Vanni
__Kurt Wait
__Leona Schnuelle
__Leonard (Len) Thompson
__Lily Wuebel
__Linda Rahman
__Linda Wood
__Lisa Keys
__Lois Ann Groves
__Margaret Hatheway
__Margaret Kramer
__Maria Baldwin
__Marilou Robinson
__Marilyn Belschner
__Marion L. Maire
__Mary Anne Tyndall
__Mary McClain
__Nancy Hindenach
__Nina Reyes
__Norma Eckhoff
__Pat Harmon
__Paula Blevllis-Russell
__Phelles Friedenauer
__Reta Smith
__Roberta Mintz Levine
__Rosemary Sport
__Sandy Bradley
__Stella Riley Bender
__Susan Cox
__Susan Porubcan
__Ted Viveiros
__Teresa Hannan Smith
__Vesta Frizzel
__Wayne Hu




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