Last night we had a dinner party for six and I thought I would stuff chicken breasts with some cheese, spices and herbs. I thought about it the night before and decided to mix ricotta, goat cheese, egg, garlic, chives, some haricot verde, S&P, roll them up, dust with flour, brown and finish in a 350 oven for 5 minutes. I didn't need no steeekin recipe!

WRONG.

The cheese mixture was so loose that it just smeared over the chicken, leaked everywhere, was impossible to deal with. (of course I didn't drain the ricotta, schmuck that I was) But I only had a few hours to deal with this nonsense.

Hmmmm. Well, the water I had used to blanch the green beans was still hot, may I could put this cheese mixture on it like a water bath and stiffen it up. So 10 minutes later, the egg had set up the cheese, and water exuded from the mess at the bottom which I blotted up.

Now I could stuff the chicken breasts and proceed to dust, saute and bake.

Enough good wine was around so no one noticed nuttin'. I got a good dose of humility (10,000 darn cookbook in the kitchen, God forbid I should read one).

Let that be a lesson to me.

Anyone else have disasters averted in their background?

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