Lesser Pleasures

Last night, the cure for my ravening loneliness was two-fold… First off, reading some Laurell K. Hamilton, writer of the seedy but rather well-written late-20th-century-hard-boiled-detective-fairy-porn in the Merry Gentry series. Secondly, I cooked a little improvisation for dinner, using my new LeCreuset skillet. It was very simple. Thin-sliced sweet onion and finely minced garlic were thrown into the pre-heated pan with a thin spray of grape seed oil for lubrication. When they became a little translucent, and the smell began to be good, I added finely minced ginger, some dried cranberries, and then a salted and peppered chicken breast. A couple minutes into cooking, I added a spray of oil to wet the pan again, then a bit of orange juice squeezed right into the pan. After more browning, and careful regulation of the temperature no higher than medium, the chicken was flipped, and the process repeated. At some point, the onions weren’t going to cook anymore, so I removed all extra vegetable matter from the pan, and just kept at browning the chicken, reserving all that good stuff on a bed of mixed greens. When the chicken was done, I emptied the orange onto it, then deglazed the pan with the orange juice and an ounce of vermouth. It boiled the goo from the bottom of the pan (the chicken stuck less than it ever had on a true non-stick pan, in the first place), and quickly reduced the liquid. I poured it over the salad as a dressing. The greens were nicely wilted, and the whole was lovely. I threw in a few shelled pistachios, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. It wasn’t O. between my thighs, but the burn marks that scared me so yesterday were tidily deglazed along with everything else by the vermouth. Nice enough, I can tell you.