Timing is everything

Will pulled a package of chicken breasts out of the freezer and asked, "Do you want to find something to do with these, or should I?" Now, he was heading out the door to work and I had planned a very busy day of being a lazy ragamuffin, so thinking about dinner wasn't real high on either of our lists. But I took it as a recipe challenge, and agreed to find something.

Being lazy, I didn't want to flip through clippings and printouts, so I took the challenge as an excuse for messing around on the Internet and went to epicurious.com and my online recipe box. Most of the recipes in here are somewhere in my hard copy test files, so it's a good way to do a fast search for say, chicken dishes.

After a few minutes of perusing, I came across chicken with sun-dried tomato cream sauce. It was an instant winner: it called for sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, shallots and cream, all of which I had on hand and no other use for. I also read through the reviews by other home cooks, who highly recommended cutting up the chicken, doubling the sauce and serving it all over pasta. When it came down to it, that was exactly the sort of thing I was in the mood for. Hurrah for chicken with sun-dried tomato cream sauce!

Or maybe not, I thought several hours later as I cut up the chicken. Because at that point, when I was already committed to the recipe, I started remembering a few things. For one, I hate handling defrosted chicken -- I don't do cold well and while defrosted chicken is only slightly colder than if it had been in the coolest part of the fridge for 24 hours, to me it feels like ice. Why did I decide to make something that involves cutting this up?


And why did I pick something with a cup of heavy cream in it right after the holidays? As I managed my way through slicing the meat, I considered my options with the cream. I didn't have enough half-and-half to substitute, but was going to deglaze the pan with chicken broth anyway so maybe that was the solution. I decided to cut back the cream a bit and add a lot of broth.

And why didn't I check that we had lots of garlic first? Yes, we had four cloves, but they were the skinny inner ones and it was more like I had two cloves. And why did I ignore the shallots on the counter for so long? One was fine, but the other was kinda funky inside so I didn't have quite enough for the sauce. Oh, well...

I started out sauteeing the chicken in batches, in the olive oil drained from the tomatoes. Things smelled good, and I wasn't burning anything, including myself, so I started the pasta. And that's when I got a must-take work-related phone call.

It was about a minute and a half into the call before it occurred to me to turn off the heat under the chicken, so the last batch was well-seared on one side. Not necessarily a bad thing if consistency in presentation isn't so important. But... A mildly bad thing: I forgot to set the timer on the pasta and had no idea how long it had been cooking. A more bad thing: At this point, getting out something green to go on the side flew right out of my head. A very bad thing: Now I was flustered about dinner and that's where I make mistakes.

To wit: The skillet was a little hotter than it should be. So the deglazing broth evaporated in three seconds and the shallot and garlic and tomatoes cooked much more quickly than anticipated. Not a big deal, really, because I poured in the cream and it thickened nicely and I was very proud ... and sort of forgot the part about doubling the sauce until I went to serve it and the sauce coated the chicken nicely, but left the (overcooked) pasta very bland. I also sort of forgot to use the camera, so there are no pictures ...

THE VERDICT: Meh. Will and I were unimpressed, Keith had no comment, and Alex repeatedly told me, "This is DEEE-LISH!!!"
    Now, in defense of this recipe, I think that it could be very good with some changes. Maybe if I had doubled the sauce like I planned, or even tripled it. Maybe if I finely chopped the tomatoes. Maybe if I had more garlic and shallots. Maybe if I used less chicken and cut it into smaller pieces. So while I'm not in a rush to make this again, I'm not jettisoning this recipe quite yet.