The past three months have been a whirlwind of starting this site, keeping the checkbook balanced and the bank account in the black, not to mention my day job. While talking to my mom on the phone last week, I realized that it had literally been months since I had fixed dinner, and I couldn't honestly remember the last time I cooked something from a recipe.
My husband is definitely much more of a cook than I am, but I had been making progress up until this year. Right before we were married in 2006, I left my job and didn't end up starting at my new one until 11 months later, which left me with LOTS of time to start trying recipes. I perfected a few, got into a rut, and once the holidays hit last year, I had a whirlwind of weddings, family events and various other projects.
Last night was my first night back in the kitchen. With the last wedding of the year two weekends ago, it's like a whole new world of time has opened up. My husband didn't seem all that interested in two of my standby recipes (he's probably still sick of them from late 2006), so I browsed through my "recipes to try" tag in Google Reader, and found one that seemed pretty simple.
Kevin at Closet Cooking covers a wide range of cooking styles, and this recipe looked like an easy alternative to my baked Parmesan chicken. The chicken turned out very tasty, but I had some definite presentation problems. Namely, the breading did NOT stick to the chicken. I almost gave up before eating, standing in front of the stove, glaring at the Parmesan-encrusted mess of a pan. I scraped the breading off the pan and on to the chicken, and was pleasantly surprised with the result. I'll definitely try this one again.
I kept pretty close to the recipe, although I didn't make the salad as a side, as I would have needed to buy additional ingredients, and I wanted to keep it inexpensive. After I pounded the chicken breasts, I brined them in water, salt and half a lemon's juice. I added garlic and onion powder to the bread crumbs. Some reasons why the crumb might not have stuck:
- I patted the breasts dry and seasoned with pepper in between the brine and the flour. I didn't want the coating to be entirely flour, but it may have needed some moisture on the surface at this stage. The flour seemed to stick fine, though.
- I used panko bread crumbs--we've had the package for quite some time now, but it doesn't seem to go bad. Packaging without expiration dates drives me crazy. The relatively larger panko crumbs may have been part of the problem, although I did try to reduce the size before coating the chicken.
- I know the temperature of the egg can make a big difference in baking, but I have no idea if a cold egg can result in a difference in result in pan-frying.
- I used a microplane grater on fresh Parmesan cheese. My grater, depending on how you hold the cheese, often results in much longer pieces of parmesan than you would find in the green Kraft package. (Side note: grating hard cheeses is much easier when the cheese is cold.)
- We don't use non-stick pans, and I used olive oil to fry. My husband has had problems with straight olive oil resulting in food stuck on the pan, so next time I might try adding in a little vegetable oil or maybe some butter.
- Husbands that clean the parmesan-encrusted mess of a pan are super cool.
Any other thoughts?
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