Chicken Kiev and Peach Cobbler

Yesterday Trevor wanted to play video games, so I decided to try some new stuff in the kitchen. We've been watching a lot of Good Eats lately, and Alton did a special on flat foods. I've always wanted to try Chicken Kiev, and Alton made it look really easy and interesting. So here goes:

It takes an entire stick of butter! Crazy. But you mix it with with parsley, salt and pepper, and tarragon--I did marjoram because WHO keeps tarragon? (one day I will, but I figure if it didn't come in my 20-spice spice rack, it's not CRAZY important that I get it right away) But if you want to be authentic, get some tarragon. Then you roll that up into a tube of butter in some wax paper, and freeze it for a few minutes while you get the rest of the stuff ready. Seriously, this recipe is a LOT of fun :) Making special butter, and rolling stuff up all over the place!

K, then I flattened my chicken by putting it in between some plastic wrap. Alton Brown recommended that I spray some water on the chicken and plastic before flattening so that it will be more slippery and will lessen the amount of damage that happens to the chicken. It really did work! In the past when I've pounded chicken, it went hard sometimes when I cooked it, but this time, my chicken was VERY soft :)

After flattening, you add 1/4 of the butter mix and a tablespoon of Panko Bread Crumbs. I was SO excited to use the bread crumbs! I've never used anything but REGULAR bread crumbs, and these were pretty awesome. They seem lighter but larger than the regular kind, and made our chicken crispier. Next came the fun part of rolling up the chicken. It was actually a little difficult, but totally INTERESTING, to me, anyway. You have to fold in the sides like a taco, and then use the plastic wrap to roll up the chicken around the butter tightly. Then you refridgerate (or freeze for an hour, if you're low on time like me) for a few hours to give it time to stick together and keep its shape.
Fry them up in 1/2" of oil, drain for 10 minutes, and...

POOF! Chicken Kiev :)

When it's finished, and if you did it right, you'll have a really creamy, buttery, awesomely textured mush/sauce inside your chicken when you cut it open. YUM :)

I also tried to make Peach Cobbler with Splenda instead of sugar--but I wouldn't exactly call it "a success" as far as peach cobbler. It was good. And Trevor ate it. But I don't think I was as satisfied as I could have been. It took like a half hour-45 minutes just to get the fresh peaches ready for cooking (peeling, cutting, de-pitting), and for it to turn out NOT exactly perfect, doesn't quite seem worth all the fuss. The peaches were still a little bit sour, and the crust part was...more like a biscuit. I was happy with the flavor the Splenda gave, and obviously that since we didn't use sugar the dessert wasn't really that bad for us. But meh, I think next time I'll just use canned peaches and find a better crust recipe.

We even had sugar-free ice cream to go with it. Dryers makes a really GREAT version using Splenda as well.
Oh, I also tried making sweet potato french fries in the oven... not exactly a success either. They tasted good (REALLY GOOD), but I couldn't get them to crispen up--so I eventually burned them. I'm going to try again sometime...after I look up how to make them work.