Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

This was the first recipe I picked out when I bought my first fine cooking magazine, and I had been eager to try it out. I wanted to try it on my own first, but never ended up having the time. So I made it last night.

It specifies Lucques or Picholine green olives, but when I asked the olive expert on duty at Whole Foods at Gateway, the guy barely knew what I was talking about. Picholine was listed on their info sheet about olives, but wasn't labelled on the olive bar below. Also, they didn't have a very good selection of canned olives. All of them were green olives stuffed with something. So I asked said olive expert for advice, and he suggested using Beldi olives. Of course I could have figured it out on my own if I had noticed that those were the only non-stuffed green olives available. I bought a small amount, when I planned on cooking 1 chicken for me, but on Friday I just got nearly a big container full, just so I wouldn't run out. That was a good move, as we were able to eat a few while cooking and have enough for the recipe. I halved the recipe, so I should have only needed about 3/4 cup of olives, but the magazine also said about 1/4 pound (4 ounces), and when I hit 3/4 cup of olives it was only 2 ounces. So I filled it up to 3 ounces worth, which was still below 1 cup, and called it good enough.

I skipped adding any parsley since I am not a parsley fan.

I happily mashed up a garlic clove.

Then I thumbed through the magazine looking for information on toasting almonds. I thought I had read something in the magazine about it. Instead, I found a little tip on what they mean by pounding garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt. I had done it wrong. Oops. Oh well, it was good enough I figured.

I ended up following the instructions for How to blanche Almonds and then How to toast Almonds. said I probably didn't need to blanche them, but then I realized I wasn't sure just how I would get the skins off if I didn't. I will welcome any advice that is better than that given in the links above. "Slip the skins off" my ass!

About 30 minutes later, I had enough whole almonds blanched and skinned to make 1/8 of a cup. I "toasted" them, but as far as I could tell, they only browned where they touched the pan. The whole almond didn't turn a golden brown. Looking back, perhaps I should have been more scientific about it, and kept one almond as a control. However that would have added another 2-3 minutes. Boy was I glad to only be cooking for two!

Good enough, I hope... ? Cooking this meal took so long, Jay got a nice nap in. (and this was after he helped me chop the thyme!)

I woke Jay up to fire up the grill. Somehow he had managed to go back to sleep despite me pounding the chickens. The magazine didn't say what temperature the grill should be, only "a hot grill fire", so I figured 350 degrees was good enough.

In addition to grilling the chicken, Jay made yummy salads (spinach, grape tomatoes, sprouts, red pepper, etc) for the both of us.

This turned out to be soooooooooooooooooooooo good. The almonds were GREAT in the mix of things! I may have added a wee too many olives, and the relish seemed to have a wee bit too much olive oil, but it all just went onto the plate, so it didn't make the food taste more oily. It was perfect! In fact, By the last two pieces of chicken, I had pretty much reached my olive limit. I had no idea I even had an olive limit! It seemed like there was enough relish for three chicken breasts.

The recipe doesn't say it's a make ahead one, but I think the majority of the relish could have been made a day ahead, and then just added in the almonds and prepared the chicken to grill the day of the meal.

We had this with a spinach salad and a bottle of 2004 Indian Wells Chardonnay.

Grilled Chicken Breasts with Green-Olive Relish - Fine Cooking #79