The kitchen smells of garlic. Not the sharp, raw kind that catches in the back of your throat, but the softer version, worked into butter with parsley and lemon until the whole bowl smells green and warm and promising. That's the beginning of a Kiev, and honestly, if you never got any further than spreading that butter on toast, you'd still have had a good evening.

Chicken Kiev arrived in Britain sometime around 1979, on the shelves of Marks and Spencer in a cardboard sleeve, and the country fell for it completely. It was exotic. Garlic, in butter, inside chicken. For a nation still getting used to the idea of olive oil, it was a quiet revolution wrapped in breadcrumbs. The supermarket versions got worse over the years, the butter replaced with something that didn't quite taste of anything, the coating going limp and pale. But the idea was always sound. Made at home, with proper butter and real garlic and a coating that actually crisps, a Kiev is a far better thing than its ready-meal reputation suggests.

This is a Tuesday-night recipe. It takes a bit of assembly, twenty minutes of your attention, and then the oven does the rest while you set the table. The moment you cut into it and the garlic butter pools out across the plate is one of the more satisfying things in home cooking. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone and watching them discover what's inside.

Serve it with something simple. A green salad with a sharp dressing. New potatoes if you've got them. Nothing that competes. The Kiev is the event. We're only making dinner, but tonight, dinner is worth sitting down for.