Someone’s In The Kitchen

Remember the poll about the Ile de France cooking contest? Well, a couple of weeks ago, RJ and MJ came over for a day in the kitchen. RJ whipped up a pink horseradish sauce and completely unrelated roasted vegetable and brie hogies, which were to die for.

She entered them, and breakfast strata in the contest, and is raking in the stars. Deservedly so. But as I have so often asserted in this blog, cooking is a competitive sport in these parts, so while I applaud her efforts (and want more of those little hoagies), and urge you to vote for her too, I’m here today to beg for my own stars.

MJ was taking notes for us, transcribing our efforts as we cooked and offering advice for herbs and spices.

The Chicken Kiev/Chevre won my little poll, and I went ahead with my plans. We started with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and pounded them into scallopini. The chevre log was cut into quarters length-wise, then pressed into a thin rectangle, wrapped around three fresh, trimmed asparagus stalks and rolled in a mixture of freshly grated lemon zest and herbs de provence.

Those were then used a filling for the chicken breasts, which were wrapped and folded around the cheese like little burritos.

The pounded meat was moist enough that when I folded it on itself, it stuck shut.

Which was useful, because the chicken packets were then dipped in beaten egg, thinned with a touch of buttermilk, and then in panko. Placed seam down on a baking sheet covered in foil. Misted with olive oil and roasted until the panko was golden.

Served with a side of steamed asparagus.

So there it is. MJ sent me his notes, and I re-wrote them into a semblance of a recipe, and submitted it to Ile de France. Two days later, I received an e-mail from the contest person. Was that really the name of my recipe? Or did I want to change it. Why, I asked, what did I call it? And see, that was the one thing that we forgot. When we were cooking, we kept referring to my dish as Miz Shoes’ Chicken Fucking Something. And that’s what MJ had left as a title on the file. When I re-wrote it, and sent it to Ile de France, I had renamed the file, but I hadn’t remembered change the title in the document. My submission was titled “Chicken Fucking Something”. Yeah, I said to the rep. Probably should change that. If you head to the contest page, you’ll find Chicken Chevre. That’s mine, because I just couldn’t come up with a funny pun on Kiev.

Head on over and put some stars on me, it’s a competition here.