Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

This recipe looked good, had familiar ingredients and it was in the quick & delicious section, so II planned on making this for dinner. While everyone at the table said it was good, I didn't think it really lived up to what it could have been. There were two problems that I can see that could be improved.

I had a hard time finding plain green olives at Whole Foods. So many people love olives stuffed or in exciting liquids rather than plain boring green olives. While I did find some at the olive bar, they had their pits in them and I didn't want to deal with figuring out how to get the pits out. I finally found a can of plain green olives and just bought those. When I opened the can, some of them had really dark black spots that just weren't very appealing. I skipped those olives or cut around them. This only required a half cup of olives, so it wasn't a large amount. I tried one of the olives, and it just didn't have a very strong or yummy flavor at all. I briefly considered using some garlic stuffed olives and taking out the garlic for this dish, but then decided against it. Looking back, I should have used those olives. I've only had one case where a not too exciting ingredient worked well in a dish, and that's because it was a tomato that absorbed a lot of flavorful juices. This is not something that's going to happen with an olive.

The other thing that I did was was not chop the onions fine enough. It just says "finely chopped", but when I compared my finished product with the magazine photo, my onion pieces seemed huge in comparision. In this case, I think smaller would have been better. Here's a nice little guide on chopping onions. Mine should have been more like the minced instead of looking more like chopped. I also think I used too much onion. "small onion" is just not a precise enough measurement for me. How small is small?

Also what is a chicken breast cutlet? I just bought chicken breasts by weight and then sliced them in half to get 8 thin pieces. It seemed to work for cooking, although the four chicken breasts sure varied in thickness to begin with.

Buying bulk pre-slivered almonds is surely the way to go!!! This worked out great.

I think this recipe has potential to be good, but I think in the future, I'd rather just make the Grilled chicken breasts with Green-Olive Relish. It has far more olives in it, and when you use the right ones, oh it's soooo tasty!! (Plus a chicken breast is a good meal size. Half a chicken breast means going back for seconds which somewhat interrupts dinner.)

• Sauteed Chicken with Sherry & Olive Pan Sauce & Toasted Almonds (Fine Cooking 92, p. 90a)
• Garden salad