Fresh lemongrass stalks at the farmer’s market inspired this attempt at a classic Asian dish. I used Charles Phan’s recipe on Food and Wine as a springboard for whipping together my own creation, which was scaled up and done more or less by taste rather than with measuring instruments.

The Procedure:

1. Wash 4 lbs of chicken breast in cold water, then pat completely dry. Cut chicken into small bite size pieces. Put peanut oil in the Calphalon Everyday Pan and heat until ready to fry. (Heat Setting: 8 ) Then add enough chicken to cover the bottom-but no more-and season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover the pan for a few minutes to minimize splatter. Use a plastic spatula to scrape the chicken from the bottom, then switch to your slotted spoon and remove the chicken from the pan. Continue frying the rest of the chicken in batches, being sure to add peanut oil as necessary to prevent excessive sticking. Do not clean the pan between batches!
2. While the chicken is cooking, finely dice 2 red onions, 6 stalks of lemongrass (inner bulbs only), about half a head of garlic, and a deseeded, deveined jalapeño. Apply a rough chop to one-third a container of green thai chiles from Freshia.
3. Deglaze the bottom of the pan with Asian cooking wine, fish sauce, and homemade chicken broth. Allow the mixture to come to a boil. When the bottom of the pan is clean, mix in chili paste, sugar, kosher salt, and oyster sauce (to taste) and transfer the mixture to a separate container.
4. Clean the Calphalon pan and heat up some peanut oil in the pan. (Heat Setting: 6) Cook the onions until they become semi-transparent, then reduce heat and add lemongrass, garlic, jalapeno, and thai chiles. (Heat Setting: 4)
5. When the garlic is done, add the reserved deglazing mixture to the pan. Bring to a boil and reduce until a nice thick brown sauce forms. (Heat Setting: 7) Toss in the rest of the chicken, cover, and allow the contents to heat for up to an additional 20 minutes, stirring as needed. Serve.

A very satisfying result, but perhaps worthy of more tinkering. The chicken needs a bigger cut. The taste of the lemongrass was very subtle, except when biting into a piece; I may add more lemongrass in the future or adjust the proportion of other sauce ingredients. (The fish sauce and oyster sauce were perhaps a tad too strong.) Also the thai chiles were too tough, indicating the need for a finer dicing or a different chile of similar heat. Finally, I may deglaze the pan between frying batches as the use was a bit tough on the pan and some undesirable (removable) charring did occur.