Sunday, February 14, 2016.
A New Approach To Fried Chicken.
It's Valentine's Day, but Mary Ann feels that we have feasted enough in the eight days that began with my birthday, ran through Mardi Gras and our anniversary, and ended today. Even before the cycle began, a mysterious elf visited the Cool Water Ranch every night for three weeks. He left a little box holding two Baci chocolates--Mary Ann's favorite--on top of the newel post on the stairs leading to the upstairs bedrooms. It was the first thing she saw every morning. I wish I were as clever as that elf. Who also fills our kids' stockings every December night. Or used to, before they grew up and left home.
I have captured MA's interest in my cooking Sunday dinner every week. That program has been slow getting started--we simply have too many competing activities. But tonight's the night.
If there is any theme in my plan, it is that I will create the weekly menu according to what I find of interest at the markets. Last week, I bought a three-pound chicken at Rouse's. That's a happy find. For some twenty years now, chickens have weighed in at four or five pounds--way too big for almost anything other than cooking Asian dishes or stocks destined for gumbo. Three to three and a half pounds on the hoof delivers better flavor in the bird itself, and lets the seasonings percolate through the flesh.
First step: brine the chicken. I did that with a mixture of three-quarters of a cup of salt and half a cup of sugar dissolved in three-quarters of a gallon of cold water. It is cool enough outside--and the chicken cold enough inside--that I can leave the brining bucket outside for the eight-hour brining. (No room in the refrigerator.)
The coating I have in mind is cracker meal, with seasonings. But when I get to the store to buy some unsalted crackers, I see many intriguing flavors of Triscuit. I get the one with sun-dried tomatoes and herbs. I grind it up in the food processor into the texture of bread crumbs.
After thoroughly rinsing off the brine, I cut the chicken in half from stem to stern. I wet it down with a little buttermilk, and then I sprinkle it generously with the Triscuit meal.
Next-Time Improvement #1: For the second chicken half (I fried them separately) I add a beaten egg to a third of a cup of the buttermilk, before wetting the chicken down with the mixture. Reason: the Triscuit meal doesn't stick uniformly all over the chicken without the adhesive qualities of the egg.
I heated a quart and a half of canola oil in a big saucepan to 360 degrees. I lowere one half-chicken into the pan, and am immediately glad that I didn't use the first saucepan I grabbed. The hot oil might have overflowed if I had. Deep-frying is among the riskiest of home cooking methods. And the messiest. Especially if the house catches fire.
While the chicken fried, I sliced two small russet potatoes into disks about three nickels thick. (After I got change for a quarter.) I left the skins on, and slipped the potato disks around the sides of the frying pan. In this I was following a procedure I employed on my very first cooking job, when I was thirteen. It was at the Time Saver in River Ridge, where we had a Broaster--a big unit that fries a whole chicken under pressure in six minutes. The potatoes--which we cut by hand back then--cooked right in there with the chicken.
Since I don't have a Broaster, the cooking process lasted about twenty minutes. In the meantime, Mary Ann chopped half a bunch of parsley with two small heads of garlic. I now have all the elements of chicken bonne femme in the style of Tujague's. One big difference--their chickens have no coating at all except for the seasonings. Chicken, garlic, parsley, and fried potatoes--that's about Tujague's recipe.
I also have time to cook up something I saw en route to the Triscuit. Zararain's has a combination of wild rice and long-grain rice in a pre-measured box. The rice is par-boiled and seasoned. I don't like using mixes like this, but something about the stuff sounded good to me. I just followed the instructions on the box: all the rice cooked in two and a half cups of water, with a tablespoon of butter. Bring to boil. Lower to simmer, cover, simmer for 25 minutes, take the lid off, and let it just sit there for another five minutes. Fluff the rice with a fork.
It may have been the best part of the dinner!
[caption id="attachment_50653" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A three-pound chicken fried with cracker-meal coating, with fried potatoes, garlic-parsley butter, and wild rice mix.[/caption]
The rice was ready just in time for us to dive into the first chicken half. We shingled the potatoes up the sides of the chicken, and drizzled the parsley-garlic butter over the potatoes and chicken. In the areas where the coating broke loose, the chicken was pretty good. The spots where the coating stayed, it was delicious. In the second half, the coating was nearly intact. That, surrounded by the special wild-rice mix, made for a marvelous meal.
We will keep this Sunday dinner idea going. . . but not until two weeks from now. Next weekend is my long-delayed first meeting with my new and first grandson, which requires a weekend in Los Angeles. The videos show Jackson as thrilled by life, and this I gotta see.
A three-pound chicken fried with cracker-meal coating, with fried potatoes, garlic-parsley butter, and wild rice mix.[/caption]
The rice was ready just in time for us to dive into the first chicken half. We shingled the potatoes up the sides of the chicken, and drizzled the parsley-garlic butter over the potatoes and chicken. In the areas where the coating broke loose, the chicken was pretty good. The spots where the coating stayed, it was delicious. In the second half, the coating was nearly intact. That, surrounded by the special wild-rice mix, made for a marvelous meal.
We will keep this Sunday dinner idea going. . . but not until two weeks from now. Next weekend is my long-delayed first meeting with my new and first grandson, which requires a weekend in Los Angeles. The videos show Jackson as thrilled by life, and this I gotta see.
