Almond Crusted Chicken Breasts

It's crunch time here at Casa Huntington for the next couple of weeks. I leave this afternoon for a few days of schmoozing and general merriment at the Austin Film Festival, only to turn around and head off to New York for a staged reading of Mike's and my pilot. This all sounds very glamorous and exciting--and in fact would be if I were at the point where I was making enough money off the whole situation to do fancy things like pay my mortgage. Hopefully that is soon to come. In the meantime, I'll settle for exciting.

What with my busy week coming up, I very much wanted to squeeze in a blog before I hit the road. So last night I whipped up my cousin Bobbie's Almond-Crusted Chicken Breasts. Bobbie and Paul are officially my dad's first cousins (or specifically, Paul is my dad's first cousin, and Bobbie is his wife). This is how we rock it in my family - as I've said before, everyone is a cousin, and we've got them coming out of the woodwork. Here in LA, in fact, we just had brunch with my cousin's cousins (and a delicious brunch it was). I don't know if this actually makes us even related, but in my family, it qualifies them in the 'family visit several times a year' category. The best part is, all of my cousins are awesome. How lucky am I? Do you even know where your siblings live? I didn't think so.

Anyhow, Bobbie and Paul live in the same town that I grew up in, which means: 1. their kids (i.e., my second cousins? I think?) Debbie and Jeff went to my high school. Debbie and Jeff were a little older than me, which meant that at that age I never got to hang out with them, which I viewed as a tremendous shame because they were cool. 2. Bobbie and Paul are part of heavy family visit rotation, usually involving Thanksgiving and most Jewish holidays.

#2 means that although I have seen Bobbie at family meal-gatherings several times/year for my whole life, I may have never had her Almond-Crusted Chicken Breasts before--because obviously there are set meals at those various holidays, which tend to include things like turkey and brisket, not lovely dinner entree chicken.

Bobbie's Almond-Crusted Chicken Breasts looked pretty easy and blessedly fast to make, which was good because I was trying to get them on the table and in my stomach before I headed out to a lecture at the Writer's Guild. I ran around the kitchen creating a dip in egg, dip in flour, dip in almond assembly line, while also doing Savitri's Oven Roasted Broccoli for a side.

All was going well. Broccoli came out on time, not burned. Chicken in the frying pan. Check. Turn chicken over. Check.

And then it came time to put the chicken to the side and make the sauce. The recipe calls for mixing shallots, wine, and butter in with the small remainder of grease/fat left over from the chicken that cooked in the pan. Sounds like a great idea, right? Absolutely - until you throw the shallots into the pan, and some of the grease evidently leaps over the side of the pan and then CATCHES FIRE.

Within seconds, a flambe-sized conflagration was engulfing my beautiful and still-pretty-new stove. A giant explosion of flames went from the entire pan all the way up to the vent, and I thought, 'Oh, good, this is how my house burns down. Well now I know how that happens.'

I want to make one thing clear: I I know I have a tendency to exaggerate for comedic effect at times. This cannot be exaggerated. This was kind of seriously serious. Just so you know.

I also evidently yelled 'OH SHIT!' with enough alarm to prompt Josh to come tearing up the stairs to see what fresh havoc I had wrought. By the time he got to the kitchen, I was holding the fire extinguisher, debating whether or not I would have enough time to still get to my WGA lecture if I doused the kitchen with it.

This is how Josh found me: staring at the fire with the extinguisher perched in my hands, but not in use. I think he thinks that I was panicking/having no idea what to do with it, but I had noticed by now that the flames were actually abating slightly, so I thought I'd give the fire a second to hopefully burn out before I made that big mess. And ruined the shallots.

Turns out that in the face of an insane emergency, I enter such a state of disbelief that I do not act out of shock. Odd. I actually sit back and think. I'm not sure if this lack of reflex is going to be the death or the success of me, but there it is.

The flames burned out, and Josh put a lid on them for good measure.

The aftermath

Lessons learned?

1. It turns out that I do know that you can't throw water on a grease fire. I never thought for a second to do that. Surprised? Me too. Thank God.

2. Putting the fire extinguisher in the corner behind the stove is a really bad idea, because I had to reach around the flames to get it. Let's just say I'm lucky I was using the left-hand burner and not the right-hand one, otherwise I would have been screwed. New placement of the kitchen fire extinguisher: anywhere else.

3. As Josh said when I fried the Curry Puffs, you should always have a lid around when you're working with oil/grease in the event of such a fire. I guess the lid is the way to end the pan fire. Never mind the fact that I would have burned my arm putting it out because the first gasp of that fire way WAY bigger than the size of the lid--it's better than burning down the house. Note to self: keep pot lids out!

4. Shallots can survive an explosion.

As you can see from number four, after our little adventure we still managed to eat dinner. I even got to the lecture on time.

As for the chicken, it fared quite well. I mixed the butter and the wine in another pot on another burner, and was happy enough to not use the shallots, but Josh thought most of them looked okay and put them on the chicken. Oddly, they were. I think using I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in lieu of normal butter may have given the sauce a slightly odd flavor. In fact, I think I might put the kibosh on using that as a butter substitute, because I would like to scapegoat it for the fire and believe that were it regular butter or margarine that wouldn't have happened. The chicken itself was nice. Josh of course liked it, and I'm big into almond-crusting things, so I bet I might use this for fish in the future. I just will wear my fire-retardant suit when I do it.

You'd never guess this chicken nearly burned
my house down, would you?

Bobbie's Explosive Almond-Crusted Chicken Breasts

4 skinless, boneless chicken halves
1 egg
slat and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese*
1/2 cup sliced (flaked) almonds, finely chopped
6 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature (or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter - could that be the culprit?)
3 tbsp olive oil
all-purpose (plain) flour for dusting
2 tbsp minced shallots
1/4 cup minced fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley
1/4 cup dry white wine
lemon wedges for garnish

Trim any visible fat from the chicken. Or ignore this because you are lazy.

Place each chicken breast between two sheets of waxed paper and, using a rolling pin, flatten to an even thickness of about 1/2". Or skip that step, because Bobbie amended the recipe to say that if you use thinly sliced chicken breasts or cutlets (which you did), there is no need to flatten them. Do the dance of joy, because as far as you are concerned, beating a chicken breast between wax paper is the equivalent to loading up a water gun with salmonella and squirting it all over your kitchen walls.

Bust out your nut chopper and chop up the almond slivers. Yay kitchen toys!!!

In a shallow bowl, lightly beat the egg and season with salt and pepper. In another shallow bowl, mix the Parmesan (and Romano) and almonds together.

In a frying pan over medium heat, melt 2 tbsp of (I Can't Believe It's Not) butter with the olive oil. Dust the chicken breasts with flour and dip in the egg, then in the Parmesan mixture. Place the breasts in the pan and cook, turning once, until golden brown and opaque throughout, about 3 minutes total. Or way more than that because you are doing other things. Is this why it caught fire?

Transfer to a warmed platter, or, you know, a plate. Season lightly with salt and pepper and keep warm - via the huge flames blowing up next to it.

Pour off all but a light film of fat from the pan. Place over medium heat. Dump in the shallots swiftly and then back away due to the huge explosion. Yell, 'OH SHIT' and debate dousing with fire extinguisher (see above), which you thankfully don't have to do because the fire goes out on its own before it could catch anything else on fire. Have Josh cover it with a lid anyhow. Think, If I weren't going to get in my car in 10 minutes, I would need a BIG drink right about now. Thank God for huge favors.

Put a little olive oil and parsley into another pot on another burner ans saute for 30 seconds. Add the wine and gradually whisk in the remaining 4 tbsp (I Can't Believe It's Not) butter to form a creamy emulsion. Or a weird foamy thing. You don't really like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, except on your corn on the cob in spray form.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon the sauce over the chicken breasts and garnish with the lemon wedges - as well as the surviving shallots. Serve immediately.

That's it for a few days, guys. See you when I get back from Austin/NYC.

*Bobbie note: Use grated Romano cheese instead. It's more flavorful.

Heather Note: I used a mix. Worked nicely.