Chicken breast

Eastside Road, March 5, 2014—

WELL, THE BEST plans gang aft aglay, as someone said; we did not fast today. Something about spending four and a half hours in a movie-theater seat watching a problematic (but well sung) production of a Russian opera sparks the appetite.

So we bought a chicken breast — just one is quite enough, given the way they raise chickens these days Chicken breast and some broccolini and a few carrots and cooked a quick dinner. Cook fixed the carrots, slicing a leek into the pot too, and adding a teeny bit of butter. She steamed the broccolini. I had at the chicken.

What I do is bone the thing, then fold it back into the butcher paper it had been wrapped in, set it on the butcher-block counter, and whack it a few times with the bottom a heavy black cast-iron frying pan, in order to flatten it out. Then I cut off the suprème, the little flap. I got some olive oil pretty hot in that iron pan, then added the chicken, dusting it with powdered sage, salt, and pepper; and turned it, reduced the fire a bit, dusted the seared side, and covered the pan to let it cook. You have to cook the suprème a shorter time, of course: I just lift it off the pan and set it on top of the other piece to keep warm. Oh: I sprinkled the chicken with a few drops of brandy after turning it.

When done, you set the cooked chicken on the warmed serving plates along with the vegetables, and deglaze the skillet with a little white wine, boiling it down to a thick syrup to drizzle on top of the meat. Green salad. An apple.

Pinot gris, Churchill Vineyards, 2011