chicken at cooking
January 20, 2010
Many times while growing up, my mother made us chicken kiev. I loved it so much, and it was my dinner of choice almost every year for my birthday. When I was in my early teens, I went to visit my grandmother in Pittsburgh, and though I had never done it before, I made chicken kiev for the first time, from memory. I had watched my mom make it so many times; studying the process and the ingredients, it was hard to forget… A little bit of guessing, and some lucky choices, and I ended up with a fantastic dinner that wowed my grandma so much, she was off bragging to the neighbors by lunchtime the next day.
My mom, who of course wanted me to cook more at home, was stunned that I made such an involved dish on my own. In thinking about it I think she was a little worried after the fact, possibly because I attempted something more daring than she expected… and without much supervision. To her disappointment, that didn’t spark my interest in cooking for the family at home.
Fast forward about 8 years to my freshman year of college, and a big group of friends were buzzing around about the interest in throwing a dinner party. One guy was a self proclaimed wine-o, volunteered to get us under-agers a few bottles of red to ‘up the class’ of our rundown, brick-house affair. Not caring or contemplating the balance of the meal, I think I made chicken kiev for 13, my “curry and wild rice chicken casserole’ a-la Better Homes and Garden, and a green salad… a friend assembled praline cookies with homemade chocolate mousse. Again the dinner was a hit! (Though the wine, to our our taste buds was not)
It would be a few year drought before I really got in front of the stove again.
Since graduating college, I’ve been more inclined to bake than anything else. My simple favorites, though, were unimaginative pancakes and grilled cheese. Don’t knock the grilled cheese, though! My dad has shared his formula for the perfect gooey sandwich, which I make when I feel homesick or gloomy, my comfort food.
In the last two years, living with my boyfriend-now-fiance, I’ve been experimenting more and more with baking (and a wee-bit of cooking!) I’ve made beer bread, zucchini bread, a lot of cookies, brownies, cupcakes, creative candy sushi and ironed out my favorite buffalo chicken dip. But this past long weekend I’ve just emerged from yielded yet another big cooking event, which again featured chicken kiev.
This time it was a bit different, made completely from scratch, without my usual short cuts (such as crushed caesar croutons for breading) and did everything myself. It was a two-day event to make a dinner and dessert that could feed at least 12. I felt bad for our downstairs neighbor. At 9pm I started to flatten chicken breasts, and wasn’t done until 11, because I had over bought groceries and had flattened kievs with a small sauce pan. I want to note that yes, I was able to do this with my dinky little sauce pan. But it was tiring. I ordered a nice meat pounder online that night. To my frustration, it showed up the very next day… Wish I had thought ahead on that one! I could have cut my time in half.
So, the menu was kiev, green beans amandine (Cook’s Illustrated recipe) good ole’ Uncle Ben’s wild rice and boston creme cake! The dinner was another fantastic success, thankfully, for a large group of people, of whom I only knew about half! I think I made a few friends. ^_~ I think I surprised a few of my friends, because the weekend was supposed to be a ski trip… which, for everyone else, it was! A few thought I was crazy when I said this was my idea of relaxing!
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I’m like many other wanna-be foodies out there who recently got to see the movie Julie & Julia. It’s inspiring to anyone that wants to explore the depths of their ovens and refrigerators beyond the staple meals they grew up with. Aside from a hit movie, I’ve been watching America’s Test Kitchen with my mother, and have watched so many episodes of Good Eats, I’d be hard-pressed to find an episode that I haven’t seen. Heck, I’m a Food Network junkie on a rainy weekend.
Alton Brown’s show has been most instrumental in learning to cook on my own, since he dives into the science of cooking like Food Network’s own Bill Nye the Science Guy. One of my first memories of Alton was when he climbed into a large model nose and explained how our sense of smell contributes to our ability to identify so many complex flavors beyond the bitter, sweet, salty and sour. I’ve been waiting to employ some of the dos and don’ts that I’ve learned over the years!
I haven’t had much more training at this art than shadowing my mother a few times at home, and the home economics class in middle school. Now I have two friends who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Sacramento, California. And when Eric and I helped them trek back to the east coast by eating our way back. Starting at some posh bistros in Napa Valley, to covering our forearms in BBQ sauce in Kansas City, Mo., I had slowly psyched myself out of cooking for some time, letting myself become so intimidated by these dishes that were so mind-blowingly delicious. Even now, while I have learned to enjoy more of my own cooking, I’m still intimidated to cook for anyone who’s worked in a restaurant!
While I am waiting on my very own copy back-ordered of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I’m not cooking my way through a cookbook, or a television series. My appetite is too fickle for that. My goal is to make use of the piles of recipes I have clipped from magazines, dog-eared pages in cookbooks, recipe cards from family, and others that I’ve downloaded in the past few years. I have so many non-dessert recipes in my collection… come to think of it there are very few dessert ones by comparison, but I always have defaulted to the sweet treats. I just am so satisfied by the action of whipping something together in a mixing bowl, scooping it into a pan and shoving it into the oven and an hour later having something heavenly. And who doesn’t love frosting, seriously.
Now, to Eric’s delight, it’s time to see what tasty dinners (and leftovers) I’ll be making!
