Playing chicken

On my first date with Dale, it seemed we moved in completely different circles. But we realized oddly enough that the two guys who reached out to him when he first moved here, were none other than my closest friends Larry and Tom. The apartment-share that he had lined up just wasn't working out, and after they heard his story of the couch of terror, they promptly offered him their spare room until he landed a place of his own.

So for this reason, and so many others--Larry and I run on similar culinary tracks and Tom's display of appreciation by licking the plate of an especially good dish-- I tend to push my cooking when they are coming to dinner. They are great comapny with lots of laughter shared, from Tom's channeling of Golum's scream"It burns!" when Larry makes him put on a sweater to Larry's ancedotes about eating bacon in front of his Jewish parents.

Pork is now out of the question, though as is my suggestion of sacridelicious trafe appetizers for his Passover dinner (where did I read that word!?!?) I turned instead to Cooks and made the Chicken Kiev, which was the secondary main course. It had several good ideas, like slicing the breast thickness in half. The butter mixture was taken up a notch, too, from the usual butter/chives mixture. Then it used toasted bread crumbs and oven roasting instead of frying--what, no potato chips? It is much easier to prepare for a dinner party than deep frying while guests are milling about. And although Larry, who chose the largest breast*, had piece that lost most of its molten butter, the other three were delicious.

I varied the recipe a bit, using lemon zest when the juice kept leaching out, and sauteeing the shallots to bring out a bit of sweetness. I also used my patented method of pounding the breasts in cereal bags that I saved. Most plastic will disintegrate when pounded, but not the world's most indestructible material, the plastic cereal bag.

While I love Chicken Kiev, which I first made in high school from Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook, but sadly before I understood the concept that oil got cooler the more items that you added to it, and the buttery crumbs in the pan were delicious in themselves, I'll probably pass next time in favor of Cooks Ultimate Stuffed Chicken Breasts.

*When will I learn to simply buy two uniform chickens and bone them myself--the four breasts in the package, although they each looked the same size, varied considerably when removed.