Chicken fingers, Asparagus, and Chipotle Dip

A few weeks ago, I got a new cook book. As I've said previously, I absolutely love to read cook books and use them for inspiration, but I typically do not love to use them when it comes time to cook. One recipe I found, though, changed my mind. There was something about the warning of "if you skip anything or do not follow all of these steps exactly your dish will not turn out" on a baked chicken finger recipe that caught my eye. Could these possibly be so complicated that they warrant that warning? I just had to know. So, I filled in Tim on my meal plan and he requested a dipping sauce for the chicken, and I decided to make some asparagus spears too. With a few tweaks, this meal could be absolutely great! The chicken was really tasty, but we found that dipping it in barbecue sauce was much tastier than the chipotle sauce. Next time I will either do barbecue or buffalo, but I will definitely make these chicken fingers again!

 Chicken Fingers

• 1 pound chicken breast tenders (I bought mine pre-cut, but it would be very simple to just cut up chicken breasts... or leave them whole for that matter).
• about a cup of buttermilk in a shallow dish
• about a cup of panko breadcrumbs in a shallow dish
• salt and pepper
• cooking spray 

First, preheat the oven to 425 with your baking sheet in it. While it's preheating, season the chicken tenders really well with S&P, and then dip in buttermilk. Allow excess to drip off and dip in Panko bread crumbs-- press them on so they stick and then put tenders on a wire rack to sit for a minimum of ten minutes. This is where, in the book, they had a big warning: DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP IF YOU WANT TO LIVE (okay maybe not that severe). After ten minutes, spray tenders all over with cooking spray. Take hot pan from oven and spray it with cooking spray too, and then bake tenders for 22 minutes. Yes, exactly 22. Weird, I know. Anyway, when you take it out, you will have golden brown, crunchy, amazing "fried" chicken tenders.

my go-to asparagus dish

Grilled Asparagus

• Asparagus
• Olive oil
• salt and pepper

Toss asparagus in oil and shake on seasonings. Grill or broil for 6 to 8 minutes depending on thickness of stalks. 

too-spicy chipotle dip

Chipotle Dipping Sauce

•  1 chipotle pepper from a can (I rinsed of the Adobo sauce b/c I don't love that added flavor)
• 3 TBSP mayo 
• zest from 1 orange
• 1/4 cup (? I didn't pay attention) plain yogurt (mine is local AND organic cuz I'm cool like that)
• a couple chopped chives (both in the mix and then for garnish

Put all ingredients into a food processor-- pulse til smooth. Taste and add more yogurt or pepper to achieve desired spicy level and add any other seasonings you see fit. Remember, the longer the dip sits, the spicier it will get. I forgot this little fact and thought "it hardly tastes like pepper" and stupidly added a second one. Three hours later when it was time for dinner, the sauce was so spicy I could barely stand it.