Caraway Chicken: The Good, The Bad, and Expanded Horizons

Ok, I did it.  I made my Caraway Chicken with Sweet-and-Sour Red Cabbage.  I learned a few things, had a lot of fun, and broadened my horizons just a bit.

I realize this blog is ALL about cooking with Stainless Steel.  But stainless has some limitations.  You can't cook at high temperatures (I'll delve in to this in a minute.  Look under The Ugly), you have to warm and cool it gradually so as not to warp the bottom, and some foods just plain stick making clean-up a challenge.  Having said all that in one sentence, sometimes it just makes sense to use a different piece of cookware, like Calphalon non-stick.

First, The Good:  Dinner was great!  The chicken came out a little dry on the very edges, but well-flavored.  The caraway seeds and all-spice gave it an exotic flavor that was not unsuited to my pallet.  By that I mean "damn it was good". The Red Cabbage was phenomenol.  It was sweet, it was a bit sour, it had an excellent smoky flavor lent to it by the Applewood Smoked Bacon.  I ate all of my portion when I expected to just push it around my plate.  Melissa ate all of hers, as well.  So, dinner overall, gets a 7.5.

Now, the Ugly:  I undercooked one of the chicken pieces, had to throw it away.  I scalded and discolored my 9.5" sautee pan.  And it took an hour and a half to make a 35 minute meal.

As for the chicken, It was too thick at the end.  I am now determined to learn how to pound my chicken to an even thickness throughout.  The best way I have seen to do this is on America's Test Kitchen.  Put some EVOO in plastic wrap, place chicken on plastic wrap and fold over, then proceed to whack it into submission.  The oil helps prevent drying out later in cooking. 

I also scalded my pan.  The recipe calls for a medium-high temp to reduce the fluids that you are sauteeing the cabbage in.  At 4.5, nothing was "sauteeing".  It looked more like it was drowning.  I increased the temp finally to 7 to get the fluid to reduce to a glaze. It worked.  This created a wonderful glaze and the cabbage ended up "glazed", not "boiled".  Also, the vinegar did a great job of removing the stuck on parts from the bottom of my pan.  Unfortunatly, after washing it, this discolored my pan.  My 3 day old pan now looked like the blued barrel of a rifle.  BAH!

I received some stainless steel cleaning stuff with my pots and pans and I used it to see if I could repair the discoloration and it worked like magic.  It took some rubbing and buffing, but I got it back to a nice bright shine.  It's nice to know that stuff works.

So, to keep that from happening again, I may have to use my non-stick pans to do any deglazing at high temperatures.  They can take much higher heat than these stainless steel ones can.  Of course, non-stick pans don't really give you the crunchy left-over bits that stainless steel does.  What a conundrum.    Any thoughts on deglazing in stainless steel?

As for the expanded horizons, I had to go shopping to find some of hte ingredients I needed and I found a new wonderful store called World Market.  It has a lot of things I have never seen before and some things that I haven't seen since I was a kid.  Anyone remember Bubble Up?  They have it. 

Finally, I looked at a lot of santoku knives.  I saw one that was $600.00 that came with it's own lucite block to store it in.  Seriously?  $600.00?  For a knife that cuts scallions and chives.  I ended up with a set of 2 made by Martha Stewart that I found at Macy's.  They were on sale and cost me $27.96, with tax.  They even came with a cutting board.

In conclusion, I am more prepared now than I was to cook more exotic foods.  I am practiced at deglazing but not confident in doing so in stainless steel, and I have new knives with which to attack my chopping needs.  Overall, a banner day in the Kurt food world. 

Next project:  Pot Roast.