On Saturday I went to my first birthday party for 3 year old twin girls. I love party food because I love appetizer and hors d’oeuvre type of stuff. I never order that type of stuff when I go out to eat, but I love to eat it at parties. Half of the party is of Cuban descent, so there were lots of Cuban dishes. But there was certainly one of my favorite classic party foods – deviled eggs! I love me some deviled eggs. And these were delish.

We also had cheese and crackers, some fruit, some 7-layer dip (or 7-ish), guacamole from Whole Foods (surprisingly zesty and good), and a baked brie for the appetizer type stuff. For entrees, we had Cuban goodness – rice and black beans, tortilla (not Mexican tortilla), baked ziti, salad, and tamal en cazuela.

The rice and black beans were great. The hostess said she had messed up the beans, but then the host miraculously salvaged them. I wouldn’t have even noticed. The tortilla is not flat round flour or corn based coverings for tacos or burritos. It’s an egg dish, and this one had potatoes in it. Baked in a round dish, sort of like a fritatta. I didn’t eat it, but I heard it was a bit bland. The ziti were delish, but nothing even came close to the tamal en cazuela. Basically, the tamal is if you took tamale innards, and didn’t put them in the corn husks to physically make tamales. Instead, you cooked it in a pot. Normally, they make it with chunks of pork, but because the hosts were vegetarian, abuela made this version meat free. But it was still great. But I’m sure it would have been heavenly if it had big chunks of pork in it. As Anthony Bourdain says, everything tastes better with pork.

There was cake, of course, and crazy 3 year old girls putting out candles when they wish, not when we were done singing. They also do a great job of eating rice with their hands. I had no idea that this party would have so much food, and such excellent Cuban food. The best 3 year-old twin birthday party ever.

Awhile back while randomly perusing recipes on the foodtv website, I found one that looked interesting. So yesterday, on a particularly lazy and snowy Sunday (alot of it spent watching a marathon of “Living with the Kombai Tribe”), I made it. Behold, Panko Crusted Chicken Legs.

I won’t write down the recipe here. After all, you’re obviously on the internet, so find it yourselves with the link. The ingredients were few and simple, but it definitely involved several steps. I had to remove the skin from the chicken legs. It didn’t tell me to do so, but I’m not that into chicken skin, so i painstakingly removed them. They did not want to come off very easily. And honestly, I really don’t like handling raw chicken parts very much. And then I had to marinade them for 2 hours. Everything smelled great.

After marinading, I put the panko on them and put them in the oven. It said to cook for 15 minutes on each side on 350, but after the 30 minutes, they still weren’t cooked all the way through. So I upped the degrees a bit and cooked them for probably another 20 or so minutes. I even put slits in the chicken to ensure cookedness.

Once ready, I placed over rice and drizzled on the sauce. All in all, very delicious. The chicken was juicy and flavorful. But my stomach did not feel too good afterwards, which I attribute to still possibly underdone chicken. So next time, I think I will either use chicken breast and just flatten them down or use chicken thighs (since I prefer dark meat) and also pound them down more into flatter filets. Then I’ll try the recipe. So it could end up similar to tonkatsu, but using chicken instead of pork and a different sauce. It was also just as tasty without the sauce. Thanks Tyler Florence!

Today was not much of a food day for me. Monday is bagel Mondays so that was breakfast. And I ran errands during lunch and did not end up eating a proper lunch. Instead, I finished off some Girl Scout cookies that my boss gave me on Friday (he just gave me a whole box) and ate January birthday cake. It’s allowed because I actually had a January birthday!