Hell yeah, it's food porn!

One of the advantages, if you can call it that, of being suddenly unemployed is that you have time to cook. That would be the situation I found myself in Wednesday night when I got the email letting me know my project was over. What did I do? Well, I started looking for a job. And, of course, I cooked. Friday night, upon request by Mrs. Wolves, I made chicken Kiev. I've made it before, but it has been a while. Anyway, start with a few boneless, skinless chicken breasts. As is so often the case in life, larger breasts are better, but as you can see, I started with a mix of large, medium and smallish. How many you start with depends on how many you have to feed, and how much you like leftovers. I started with three, which I consider the minimum number necessary to make this labor-intensive dish worth the effort:

Cut those breasts in half, width-wise:

Gather your ingredaments (besides the chicken, of course). You will need a stick of butter, salt and white pepper, tarragon, and chives. Fresh chives are probably better, but who the fuck has fresh chives in April? Dried is fine. At least my dried chives are home-grown:

Cut the butter, which should still be cold and hard, into 1-tablespoon chunks. Try to mold them into ball-ish shapes, taking the corners off:

Now it is time to beat your meat. Put a chicken breast (half) on some wax paper, and fold the paper over it. This will contain the meat-spray that will happen when you beat your meat:

With your mighty hammer, beat your meat until it is about 1/4 inch thick. A little thinner is OK, but thicker will make it difficult to do what must be done later. Trust me, you'll see:

Once all of you meat is beaten, you are ready for the next phase:

Mix about 1/8-tsp of white pepper, salt to taste, 2 tbsp of chopped chives and 2 tbsp of tarragon:

Roll the butter balls in the mixture:

Place a seasoned butter ball in the middle of a beaten breast:

Roll that sumbitch up and seal it up tight with toothpicks:

One all the the breasts have a butter ball interior and are sealed up right, it is time to really get down. Put the sealed-up breasts on a plate with some flour. Beat a couple eggs in a small bowl, and put some plain breadcrumbs in a dish like the one you see, or any other low, flat bowl. Like I fucking care what kind of dish you use:

Roll the chicken breasts in the flour, coating them completely:

Roll the chicken breasts in the beaten egg, once again coating them completely:

Roll the chicken breasts in the bread crumbs, once again coating them -- well, you get the idea:

At the end of this process, you should have a bunch of sealed up chicken breasts covered in bread crumbs:

If you were a mind-reader, you would have heated up some cooking oil -- vegetable, canola, corn, your choice -- in a large skillet. You will now fry your chicken balls :

About 5-8 minutes per side, depending upon thickness:

Naturally, if you are a kitchen professional, you made bread:

You also might have made asparagus and hollandaise sauce. If bread is not enough for you, maybe you made rice or something. We were happy with bread:

Can't lie -- pretty fucking good. Bon appetit.