The Heart of Cooking: Supremes De Volaille A Blanc

(Breast Of Chicken With Cream)
&
Asperges Au Naturel
(Boiled Asparagus)
&
Risotto-Pilaf-Pilau
(Risotto - Braised Rice)

Last night I found another chicken breast recipe!

For the vegetable, I decided on asparagus. The recipe called for me to peel the asparagus with a paring knife to remove the outer skin and scales. This was more difficult than I thought it would be.

"You will find that a vegetable peeler is not useful for this operation because it does not go deep enough. Asparagus is peeled not just to remove the skin, but to shave off enough of the tough outer flesh (particularly around the lower part of the spear) to make just about the whole cooked spear edible. Peeling is therefore economical."

* Asparagus Before Peeling *

* Asparagus After Peeling *

You have to gradually peel less off the closer you get to the tip. With the drawings of the process in front of me and Josh in my ear talking about our trip, I felt a little overwhelmed. I kept cutting too deep near the tip causing the tips to pop off. It was a frustrating process to say the least. (No worries! A bottle of wine was being opened and a glass was poured) I went with the simplest way of cooking asparagus - blanched. I decided to go with a healthy, less buttered, meal.

For the other side, I wanted to try to make risotto. I imagined risotto to be a very creamy dish. However, Julia's version is much different ....Or maybe I just screwed it up? It took me two tries to get the rice cooked without browning. The first round I definitely had the heat up too high.

* Fail *

I did not make that mistake the second time. From what other people have told me, the liquid should be added slowly, and stirred constantly. This recipe called for the boiling liquid (chicken stock/ white wine) to be added all at once, an herb bouquet added, stirred once, covered, and put in the oven for about 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, I let it sit out of the oven for 5 minutes. It turned out to be flavored rice - not creamy and not what I was expecting.

The chicken breasts were simply seasoned with s&p and lemon juice. I melted butter in a glass pyrex dish in the oven. When the butter was melted, I rolled both chicken breasts in the melted butter, covered them with wax paper (one side buttered) butter-side down, covered the pyrex dish with aluminum foil and cooked them in a 400 degree oven for about 7 minutes. Apparently, I subconsciously didn't feel that this meal was difficult or frustrating enough, so this is when the bloody nose started. Awesome! After the chicken was done (tissue inserted and hanging out of my nose ~ appetizing, right?) I poured the juices into a pot, added stock, wine & cream and cooked the sauce down. Adding a little s&p and lemon juice, the sauce was perfection - oh so good! The sauce was most definitely the best part of the meal.