The Cooking Critic

Tim McKeon likes potlucks. He likes potlucks so much that he decided to throw one for his 29th birthday.

I like potlucks too, and I especially like it when somebody else hosts one. That way I can completely trash my kitchen attempting to make something new and complicated and won’t have to worry about trying to clean the place up before company arrives.

Of course, wonderful, easily transported dishes aren’t the easiest things to come by, but I’ve been eyeing the Greek Chicken Strudel recipe in my Williams-Sonoma Complete Entertaining Cookbook for a while—especially appealing is it can be either an appetizer or a light dinner. I told Tim I was thinking about making a fruit salsa, mushroom blintzes or the above strudel. He said, “Ooohhh strudel,” or something to that effect (people like food wrapped in flaky crusts), and the decision was made. And here’s the birthday boy.

My afternoon in the kitchen started out happily enough. It was a nice day, so I opened the windows, turned on the music and sang loudly along (much to my napping neighbor’s dismay, who yelled out, “I’m trying to sleep here!”) while I poached chicken in chicken broth. But I accidentally overpoached the chicken, determined I would use it anyways, then fifteen seconds later decided I absolutely could not use it and went about poaching more chicken.

Then I got to the chopping. There’s lots of chopping involved in this dish: spinach, dill, parsley, green onions. I mixed those ingredients together with the now shredded chicken, seasonings and cheeses (feta and Monterey Jack). Then I tried the mixture. It tasted . . . weird. There was no other way to describe it. I looked at the recipe to see if I left out any ingredients. I had left out the cayenne! So I added the cayenne, certain that this would turn everything around. I tasted the mixture again. Now it tasted like cayenne. I was convinced my dish would bomb, and the only solution was to bring a second dish I knew would succeed in order to redeem myself. You can’t call yourself The Cooking Critic and bring crappy dishes to potlucks. Everybody knows it.

To break up the text, I will now show you a picture of one of the dishes at the potluck.

Jell-o shots.

Back to our show . . .

Halfway hopeful that the Greek Chicken Strudel would convert itself into something amazing when it cooked, I begin to work with the filo pastry. Man, filo is a pain, though quite beautiful in its way. I like how the thin sheets drape over each other when you take them out of the box. I began buttering filo sheets and layering them, trying my best not to tear them (though I did, often) and determined I would taste the strudel once cooked, and then make fool-proof Butterscotch Brownies if my strudel was a dismal failure and guaranteed to invite the ridicule of my friends.

Eventually, the strudel was cooked, I tasted it and was thoroughly pleased with my strudel and myself–it tasted more of fresh herbs than cheese, and the cayenne had morphed into just a hint of spiciness. I’d like to thank eggs for strudel’s transformation, which mellowed the filling when cooked and brought all the ingredients together in the spirit that is strudel. Still, despite the pleasant flavor, I was surprised, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been, to realize that what I made was essentially spanakopita, a Greek pastry stuffed with a spinach blend. I adore spanakopita, but I’ve never tasted a bad version of it. There’s really no need to make it at all. You buy spanakopita. You don’t labor over lining up filo pastry to create your own.

So the party came, and I brought the spanakopita and no brownies. To give you a sense of the party, here are some of the characters that peopled it.

Makes you wish you were there, doesn’t it?

As for my food, I actually considered using a mediocre picture of myself with my strudel, where my strudel looked better than I did and certainly better than it does below—that’s how dedicated I am to my food—but decided that the world should know the crust flaked all over the place and marred the presentation. See for yourself.

I should say here that I didn’t let the strudel rest for 10 minutes like I was told to (the crowd was hungry!), and this might have made the crust break apart more than usual. Also that’s a Post-it note folded over on a toothpick to alert people to a no-nuts version (for people with allergies and people who hate nuts—I think there are more of the latter than the former), a vegetarian version and the full-on version with chicken and nuts.

Assessment: The only way I would make this dish again is: a) If someone requested it, and I really, really liked that person, or b) If there was Mediterranean-themed potluck dinner at someone else’s house, and I couldn’t figure out what else to bring. While Greek Chicken Strudel was certainly tasty, and some people were proclaiming its tastiness throughout the evening, it just doesn’t make the cut on the “worth the effort” scale, especially when you can purchase nearly-as-good spanakopita without any effort at all.

Photos courtesy of Tim and Danielle McKeon.

The End.