cooked through. During last 10 minutes of baking, place
reserved pecan halves on top of chicken.

CHICKEN AVOCADO MELT Serves 4
For years I made it a kind of hobby to ask cookbook authors
and recipe contest winners how they came up with their
recipes. Since I don't invent recipes myself, the people
who create the real winners seem to me as mysterious and
impressive as someone who composes a hit song or writes a
best selling novel.
My favorite example of this is Marge Fortier, who won the
$10,000 Grand Prize at the National Chicken Cooking
Contest. She didn't do any tinkering, tasting, and
adjusting the way most of us would. No, the complete idea
for her recipe for Chicken Avocado Melt came to her
seemingly out of nowhere. "I was vacuuming the living
room," she told me, "when all of a sudden, I don't know
how, the complete idea for the finished recipe just came to
me. She grabbed a pencil and jotted down the entire recipe
on the notepad that she always keeps handy$and won $10,000.
Her recipe calls for chicken breast halves, but you can
simplify things a little if you use
thin sliced boneless roaster breast pieces instead.
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves or 1 thin sliced
boneless roaster breast
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, slightly beaten