Category: Advice

So far, I have mostly talked about cooking for one without recipes. I think everyone should have a more involved dinner they can make for date night. But, even a date night dinner doesn’t need a recipe.

Let’s think about what a good date night dinner should be. First, I think it should be something special, something that shows you like your date and want to impress them. By this I mean that it should be a little unexpected and, although it is something that takes more work than normal, it should look effortless. Second, you want to spend time with your date, not cooking. That means it should be something that allows you to do the work ahead of time. I’m going to show you how to make a chicken kiev type dish.

It is much easier than it sounds, it looks impressive and you can do almost all the work and clean up before your guest arrives. A chicken kiev type dish is a pounded chicken breast wrapped around a filling, usually a flavored butter, and then breaded.

First, make the filling. Traditional chicken kiev is filled with butter, garlic and parsley. Chicken cordon bleu uses ham and cheese. You could do sauteed onions and mushrooms. This is yet another canvas for experimentation; you are limited only by your imagination. I’m going to make a pesto type filling.

Pesto is basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, salt and olive oil. When I make pesto, I usually make a lot and freeze some. I put basil, chopped garlic, salt, toasted pine nuts, and parmesan in my food processor (a blender works too) and pulse it until it becomes a paste. At this point, I would normally add olive oil, but today I am going to scoop some out and mix it into softened butter.

 

Then, I put down some plastic wrap and spread the pesto butter on it, roll it up and put it in the freezer.

 

I am making a lot of the butter because I will use it in other recipes later.

You could do just enough for this dinner.

 

Basically, this is a compound butter. You can do this with all kinds of herbs. A pat of butter mixed with red wine and herbs is sometimes used as a topping for steak. I put the butter mix in the freezer because we need it to be frozen when we cook the chicken. That helps prevent it running out of the breast, making a mess, and leaving dry chicken behind.

Next, pound out the chicken breasts. I put two small chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap and pound them thin.

 

I have a meat mallet, but you could also use a small frying pan or sauce pan or even a rolling pin.

 

You want to make the chicken thin with a uniform thickness.

 

Get the frozen butter from the freezer, unwrap, and cut a piece for each breast. Then roll the chicken around it and secure with toothpicks. Use plenty of toothpicks – you don’t want to leave it loose and have all your filling disappear when it cooks. Don’t stick the toothpicks through the filling. That just creates holes for the filling to leak out of. At least one or two toothpicks should be pushed through as if it were a pin in a piece of cloth – or, as if you were making a stitch.

Now we are ready to bread it.

I add salt and pepper to each pan and paprika to the bread crumbs. I roll the breast in flour and shake off the excess. Dip it in a beaten egg, shake off the excess, then roll it in bread crumbs. I used panko, but you could use corn flakes, regular bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, dried potatoes, whatever. This will get messy, which is why I don’t have pictures of this process or wrapping the breasts. I didn’t want to get my phone all icky. When each one is done, I put it in a pan prepared with cooking spray.

The breasts should rest to let the coating set. No matter what cooking method you choose – deep fried, pan fried, or baked – you need to let the breaded food rest for a while. Otherwise the breading will fall off. Maybe everyone else knew this, but when I learned this, it made a huge difference in my results.

The breasts should bake at 375F for 30-40 minutes. I usually turn them about half way through. When done, the breading should be brown and crispy.

As always, use a meat thermometer. Make sure you stick it into meat (the ends) and not the filling. Food poisoning isn’t sexy. I chose to bake this because I am making it for a date night. You could deep fry or pan fry it instead, but that would require you to monitor it while it is cooking, taking time away from your date.

You can do everything but bake the breasts a few hours ahead of your date, leaving you time to clean up the kitchen. It won’t hurt the breasts to spend time in the refrigerator. You could have the oven heated and put the breasts in when your date arrives, leaving time for a glass of wine.

A dinner needs a side dish. You could serve a pretty salad or boiled potatoes. It is a date night, so keep it light. I am making roasted cauliflower because I can bake it in the same pan as the breasts. Then I only have one messy dish. I just chopped it into florets, tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put it in the same pan as the chicken. The side dish you choose should pair well with the filling. In the final picture, you can see the filling, which can be used to help season the cauliflower.

Fancy!

A date night dinner needs one more thing, a dessert. I’ll talk about that another time.