dolseni

yeah, thanks Torrilin. Its Always nice to know what to do in future situations if I get a wrench thrown into what I'm cooking. I ended up just pulling out a screwdriver and removing the handle on the pan and throwing it in the oven like the recipe says. Overall, I am very proud of how everything turned out. The chicken kiev was amazingly good (despite one or two of them that didn't get rolled exactly right.. the butter oozed out during cooking). I think that was the best chicken I have ever made. From now on I'm going to flatten all chicken I cook... it was so moist and juicy and not a single bit overcooked. I'm used to having to overcook the chicken so the outside ends up dry just to get the inside cooked enough that it isn't raw. The pilaf was good. Maybe next time I'll serve it with something that has a little bit more liquid or juice or something. It wasn't amazing, but it was really good. Most rice I've made in the past ends up sorta bland. The green peas were decent as well. I think they would have turned out much much better if I had used a better cheese. I had basically 2 choices of cheese onhand: swiss or an aged chedder. The chedder was, I believe, going to be too sharp and wouldn't have gone well with the red wine, olive oil, shallot, etc. dressing that was tossed in with the peas. The tres leche cake for desert... oh my.. heavenly. It was just.. so good. The chicken kiev was clearly everybody's favourite. Clearly it is something I'm going to have to make again. I might even toy around with seeing how well they freeze... I could make a bunch of them, freeze em, and just pop one out, and fry one up every few days as the main part of a nice meal for myself. I'm not too sure as to how well it would cook from being frozen... might have to cook it a tiny bit longer at a lower temp.? Honestly... I have to start cooking. This was one of the best meals I've had in a long while.

..... so... I just have completely gotten done with preparing the chicken kiev and cleaning up the kitchen... I just have to bread it and cook it tomorrow. Its 4 am now and I think I started at around 1:30ish. What a hellish experience that was. Alton Brown makes things look so deceptively easy. To put it simply, it started off bad and then got much worse. I pull the chicken out of the fridge, pull the compound butter out of the freezer, and the panko out of the pantry and procede to sorta setup my area. I then go to get the meat mallet... I said that I go to get the meat mallet... oh shit we have no meat mallet. Then, remembering the episode of good eats where he says you can use a pie pan with a heavy can of food, I look around and find that we have no pie pans nor any heavy cans of food. By that time I'm running around the house like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to find something, anything I can use to flatten the chicken breasts. Eventually I find a big ol metal hammer out in the garage and a 2x4 (which I cut into a 4 inch square 2 inches thick). Score. Next, I pull out a chicken breast, trim it up a lil bit with an amazingly dull knife. I then flatten the breasts and pull my compound butter back out of the freezer and start putting together the chicken kiev thingies. Noticing that I didn't flatten them enough and it is extremely hard to roll it around the butter, I go back and flatten them all more and roll them all up. After that, I realize that they are really pretty massive and there's no way they are going to cook nicely. So, reluctantly I unroll all of them, cut the flattened breasts in half, and roll them all back up. (ugh, what a pain) Finally, after what seemed like years of work, I end up with 11 chicken kiev things (one was pretty badly torn so i cooked it up and cut a piece for me and gave the rest to the dogs) all nicely wrapped up in plastic wrap and I put em in the fridge and start cleaning up. You guys REALLY weren't kidding when you said that chicken kiev isn't for a novice cook... I blame it all on Alton Brown though... he just made it look SO easy.... Overall, I'm quite happy with the end result though. Rather than going through another game of "Find out you dont have an essential piece of hardware as you are cooking!", I decided to make sure I have everything I need for tomorrow only to discover that I dont have a pan that can go in the oven (they all have plastic handles or some other design flaw). There goes my rice pilaf. Following Alton Brown's advice, I was planning on starting the pilaf on the stovetop and then finishing it in the oven so I get more consistant and even heat. Any advice on how to fix the pilaf now? This is what I was going to do: Oh and MaggieL, I don't mind if you use this thread rather than start a new one... One 'help meeeeeee' thread is plenty, we don't want to annoy the real chefs now do we?

why not just grind the whole spices up? It would seem to me that that would be the best thing to do. More surface area so you get better extraction out of whatever spice you are using and you don't have to worry about chomping down on a whole *insert whatever spice you used*

Ah jeez... I tell people about it and they decide that its not going to be 4 people (me, 2 older brothers, and my mom) and that it is going to be 6 maybe 7 people (me, 2 brothers, one maybe both of my brothers' girlfriends, my mom, and my mother's boyfriend). It looks like the dinner is going to be on Thursday, so I made the tres leche cake today (it has to sit overnight to really soak up the milk before you make the whipped cream frosting) because I figured it would easily last 2 days and I wanted to go ahead and get some of the cooking done. I can make the compound butter and go ahead and put together the chicken kiev tomorrow. That way I only have to make the rice pilaf, the green peas with herbs, and cook the chicken kiev on Thursday. It funny how it has turned into a simple lil family meal into a big dinner so rapidly. At least they offered to pay for all the ingredients so I'm off the hook there... providing I can live through it. Right about now I'm really wishing I had made some of these things before so I would know exactly what I'm going to be doing. Before, if I messed up it wasn't that big of a deal since it was just a small family meal =/ *sigh* at least the tres leche cake appears to have turned out perfectly... I just have to make the whipped cream frosting (also for the first time) but that seems really quite easy. Take the heavy cream, add sugar and vanilla, then whip it untill it is thick (soft/firm peaks or whatever the correct term is) edit: any suggestions on what type of salad and salad dressing I should make? Should I just skip the salad?

I've just ordered 1/4 a pound of grade a vanilla planifolia (madagascar bourbon) beans which should get here in 2-5 days and I think I'm going to scale it down so I can make some vanilla extract with only 3 or so beans. I know essentially nothing about alcohol but I've managed to procure some vodka I can use. Its funny... a guy under 21 going through hoops to illegally get alcohol and then using it to make vanilla extract (and I'm wanting to make some coconut extract as well.. i'm wanting to make a homemade coconut cake sometime) instead of drinking it.... edit: woo, now I've managed to get ahold of some Bacardi Superior Rum, some Smirnoff Vodka, and some Everclear grain alcohol. Not too shabby for an underaged guy... and yet I'm interested in actually drinking any of it. Still waiting on my grade A madagascar bourbon vanilla beans to get here so I can start the process. I know, I know, it is probobly a waste to use Grade A beans when I could have gotten extract grade, but I wanted them mostly for cooking with and I didn't want to order too many.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not too worried about the food being too hard or complex to cook since i've got Good Eats on my side. That show is amazing... its really the best cooking show I have ever seen and one of the only shows I find to be actually entertaining. My brother got here late last night and doesn't have to leave for a couple of weeks so I have time to make a number of new things. I always want to try to make something that I haven't done before or something thats a little hard or complicated because that is the best way to get better. Sure, it may not be absolutely perfect the first time, but it isn't like this is going to be a major meal like Thanksgiving or the like. I would have gone with steak since I mean, come on... who doesn't love a big ol juicy steak cooked to medium rare... but 5 good steaks are a bit more expensive than 5 chicken breats for the chicken kiev I'm planning. I was wanting to put green peas in both the pilaf and as a seperate vegetable for 2 reasons. First, it will brighten up the pilaf a big and make it a look a lil bit better (plus it is in the original recipe) and second, we have frozen peas and if you have something, you might as well cook it before going out and buying something else. deltadoc, that sounds good, I'll have to try that sometime. I should be getting some vanilla planifolia beans in the mail in 2-5 days and I'm wanting to make some really good vanilla ice cream. What do you guys suggest I go with? Either an egg based ice cream like most 'premium' ice creams are, or a Philadelphia style ice cream that doesn't need eggs? The vanilla ice creams that have the tiny vanilla specs in them, is that just the innards of the bean or is that the actual bean that has been ground up finely? I've never used (or even seen in person for that matter) whole vanilla beans and I don't know what the bean's exterior texture is like and such. What are some dishes that you guys would recommend I use real vanilla beans in? edit: hongda, haha I love Good Eats, Thats what really made me want to start cooking. All the recipes that I'd originally planned were from Good Eats =) Yep yep, thats a mise en place. I know a little bit about cooking just from watching good eats but I've never really cooked a whole meal or anything substantial. I've seen every single episode of good eats and I have most of them on my harddrive. Gotta love torrents =). If they actually decided to make DVDs with full seasons of Good Eats on them, I'd buy 'em in a heartbeat... but they don't...

Long story short, my older brother is coming back to town for a little bit before he goes off to start basic training and I figured it would be nice to make a good meal while he is here. To put it simply, I'm just starting to get into cooking and I don't really know what to cook and what would go well together. I haven't made any of this before, but thats part of the fun. I think I've subconciously chosen things mostly because they sound interesting to make and I haven't had them before. Here is what I think sounds good so far for the main meal: Chicken Kiev with tarragon and parsley Rice Pilaf with onion, red bell pepper, green peas, and saffron. Garnished with golden raisins and/or pistacios Green peas with minced shallot, fresh mint, fresh parsley, and either ricotta salata, fontina, or swiss cheese And for the desert I was wanting to make some tres leche cake with a whipped cream frosting. Is there anything you would suggest that would go better with the chicken kiev? I basically just picked things that sounded good, not really knowing how they would go together. I started with the chicken kiev and figured I would make some sort of a pasta or rice to soak up the butter and then added a vegetable. I suppose I should also start it off with a salad (romaine lettuce) but I don't particularly like store bought salad dressings and I don't know how to make a good homemade dressing either. I've never really made a whole meal before, I've cooked various desserts now and then (because they are fun to make and good to eat ) but nothing substantial. Do you 'real' cooks have any suggestions and/or comments? Thanks.