Brown-Butter-Basted Chicken

Ready in a flash, and fabulous

The famous story is that Winston Churchill, at a dinner in the United States, was asked what piece of chicken he would like, and replied, "May I have some breast?" His hostess immediately piped in to correct him. "In this country we ask for white meat or dark meat," she quipped. Very well. Next day, Churchill, being a gentleman, sent her an orchid corsage as a thank you gift, with the message: "I would be obliged if you would pin this on your white meat."

If anyone else has a chicken-breast anecdote, I’d be delighted to hear it, because it is surely one of the most difficult foods on Earth to make sound interesting, especially when it’s boneless and skinless. Chicken breast is the meat of ladies’ lunches, the diplomat’s choice, the answer for airlines... In other words, it’s basically a bland, blank canvas that nobody hates, per se, but that few people ever rave about either.

“There is only one thing worth doing with a chicken breast,” a friend of mine recently intoned, after our conversation had somehow ground down to that near halt. Suddenly I sat up and perked my ears. This friend happens to be an excellent cook and a reliable snob when it comes to food, so if she was making such a bold declaration, it would have to be true.