The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I decided to repost a recipe from my archives while I finish up a few new posts. This was originally posted a few years back and is still one of my favorite recipes. It’s so great for a party or even just a very indulgent weekend snack. It’s a bit of a time commitment but very much worth the effort. If you’re entertaining it’s unexpected and will even appeal to the most picky eaters. These chicken rillettes are fabulous with a good glass of chardonnay, throw a few cheeses on a board with some great bread and you’ve got an instant party. 

OK guys, after more than 6 months with my new camera and several BlogHer Food panels about food photography I decided to get proactive and actually start to read my camera manual in the hope that one day I may actually understand at least 2 of its functions. I haven’t started yet but the decision has been made, which is more than I could say for myself a few weeks ago.

My dear friend in San Francisco was kind enough to spend an hour or so with me on the weekend going over some of it’s basic functions. I’m proud to announce that I now know what shutter speed is and took my first pictures on the manual setting. Where are some examples you ask? Well lets just say they were taken while watching a band I enjoy perform at the Folsom Street Fair on Sunday and though I tried I just couldn’t find a way to work all that leather and nakedness into this site. Also, I didn’t want the people who organize leather pride week to hold me accountable. This event is definitely not the ideal place for a newbie behind a camera on manual setting for the first time. Overexposure just got taken to the next level. Not funny, I’ll stop.

I think Chicken Paillard might be the only chicken recipe where I can support using boneless skinless chicken breast. It’s inadequacies are well documented, but to put it in a nutshell, boneless skinless chicken breast has the power to turn even the most ardent meat lover into a vegetarian. You know that staunch type that would sooner do something incredibly barbaric like open up a can of spam than eat something completely vegetarian? Or maybe like me you have some experience with someone in your life who repeatedly proclaims the unpalatable piece of petrified leather on his plate (in the name of cutting back on fat or something equally obnoxious) to be the best tasting piece of meat they’ve eaten in ages. Seriously, if boneless skinless chicken breast was the only available meat it would have even these people begging for a tofu turkey before you know it.

I’m not going to pretend there aren’t those out there who actually do like such things because experience has taught me that there are. Experience has also taught me that these aren’t the kind of people I want to cook for me. I have a tendency to think that they are members of that paradoxical group who view food solely as fuel (shudder). Or that other group that have some major psychological issues with a little thing called fat. Ok I know there are people who for serious health reasons limit their fat, but they are not the ones I come across in my life, so to be clear those aren’t the people I’m talking about.

There really is nothing that pleases my hubby more than some open face sandwich action. It’s among his top 5 favorite things to eat and I would bet that it might actually be in his top 2. It doesn’t really matter what you put on the bread, as long as it’s piled high, it could be almost anything that you fish out of the fridge and it would still be “the best thing he’s ever tasted.” Men are funny.

Because of this we tend to eat bruschetta a lot or some other variety of sandwich fare. More often than not these also end up to be quite simple, as they are usually the result of random items left at the end of the week. After being away for a few weeks on vacation with my girlfriends, I was feeling generous and decided to plan his favorite and perhaps more lunch appropriate meal into our dinners for the week.