On Learning to Make Chicken Paprikash

     Page Fifty-One.
     I was living with the Van Myms, 1982. I made dinner for the family every Wednesday and often asked for suggestions. One day, Amanda suggested Chicken Paprikash. I liked it very much but had never made it and wasn't sure where to start. She told me to look it up in "Joy". What a concept. A cookbook? Follow a recipe? You want to cook something so you look it up, figure it out and cook it? I couldn't believe such a thing, but I did it. Today, so many years later, I believe Chicken Paprikash is the first thing that I ever learned to make from a cook book. I was age twenty.
     That vignette is valuable enough. But I'll tell you another interesting detail of that evening. The house was being painted that day. The odor of the cooking chicken was so wonderful that one of the house painters complimented me after exiting the bathroom. I, of course, offered him some which he, in turn, wolfed down. Seems the recipe wasn't quite enough for two children, two parents, one live-in nanny and one house painter. So by the time we sat down, it was definitely down to the last drop for that chicken. Amanda wasn't mad at all though. She'd already learned that eccentric graciousness is one of my characteristics. "Why even bother to try to stop Jeremy if he's offering our dinner to one of the painters?
     Over the years, I've adjusted the recipe somewhat. For me, the tricks to good Paprikash are 1) don't overcook the chicken, overcooked chicken is dry chicken and 2) add way, way, way too much paprika. Trust me on this.