so-so photos, awesome dinner

I made chicken kiev last week. (Wow am I behind on my posts!)

It's an old recipe that I used to make more frequently. And then I sort of forgot about it and stopped making it for a few years. It's a good stand-by dish and something different you can do to chicken breasts which I sort of find boring. I think up in that photo I served it with some sauteed swiss chard and also a side of broiled artichokes.

The chicken's stuffed with prosciutto and steamed broccoli. The original recipe calls for bacon and asparagus but I wanted to use up the prosciutto. I should have blanched the broccoli instead of the full steam. Suckas came out a bit too limp and flavorless. And maybe tuck in a bit of provolone or something too. That would have been nice.

The broiled artichokes are my interpretation of a dish M and I had on our mini-moon. We took an extended weekend to Catalina (our first time there) and our first night had dinner at an Italian restaurant. I just looked it up and realized that it's the hotel restaurant for Villa Portofino. They halved artichokes scooping out the "chokes" and broiled them with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, chopped tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil and shredded parmesan cheese. Afterwards, I tried over and over to recreate this dish and I think I finally figured it out. You steam or boil the artichokes first (the way you'd normally do to eat them with butter or mayo) and then halve and clean them before you broil them and add the tomato stuffs at the very end of the broiling. So delish! You can dip the leaves in the bit of oil and vinegar that's drizzled on the chokes and the hearts are delicious with the tomatoes and herbs. I can't remember the rest of what we ate that night but I do remember leaving the restaurant overly full and very happy.