“Fry Hard II: The Chicken”

This shouldn’t be too surprising coming from me, but fried chicken is delicious.  Chicken is a very versatile protein, lending itself to many different cooking methods, but fried has several advantages.  It’s fast, and if done well, it’s hard to dry out the meat.  That’s an easy thing to do when roasting, but the batter helps form a barrier to keep the moisture in.  And speaking of the batter, that’s a perfect place to add seasoning to the chicken.  It lends itself to fast food, and while the Colonel’s is iconic, I much prefer the flavor of Popeye’s.  It’s got a bit of heat that’s lacking at KFC.  I think the ubiquity of fast food fried chicken keeps people from making it at home – it’s messy, time consuming, and the clean-up from take-out is as simple as throwing the buckets away.  I think I’ve only had fried chicken once outside a restaurant, when a friend made up some fried chicken legs.  They were certainly tasty, but she complained about the mess.

While most people think of deep-frying their chicken, Alton’s a good Southern boy and gives us a recipe for pan-fried chicken.  I started the night before, cutting up a chicken into its component pieces.  I ended up discarding the wings, but the thighs, legs and breasts got parted out.  They get placed in a plastic bag with a pint of buttermilk to help flavor the meat.  The next day, I got out the most important piece of equipment for making pan-fried chicken: the cast iron skillet.  Only cast iron can hold the heat necessary for perfect pan-frying, so I set it over low heat and melted about an inch of shortening in it.  As it heated, I mixed up the spices for the chicken: salt, smoked paprika, garlic powder, cayenne pepper.  The chicken was dumped into a colander and the buttermilk was drained off, and the spices were liberally applied to the meat.  As the fat got close to temp, I placed the chicken in another plastic bag with some flour, and shook to apply.  As with any fried food, the object was to get just enough flour on the meat to protect it.  Too much, and it’ll slide off into the fat.  The fat was hot now, so the chicken went in skin-side down.  It was flipped once about a dozen minutes into the process, and finished another dozen minutes later.  It cooled for about fifteen minutes before eating.

So, how was it?  Well, let me put it this way: one of the guys at work is a huge fan of fried chicken.  I told him that I’d bring some in for him on Monday.  As I was halfway through the chicken breast, I was trying to think of a lie to tell him on why I couldn’t bring him any.  It was incredibly good.  The crust was crunchy, the spice tasty, and the mess wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.  I’ll definitely be making this one again!

Next: It wasn’t a rock…

Recipe: Fried Chicken

“Tofuworld”

Tofu isn’t in my everyday diet.  It’s not even in my every week diet.  Basically, it only shows up in my diet if I head to the Chinese restaurant down the road (you know, the one with the lucky cat statue and the buffet), and get some hot-and-sour soup.  Like most non-Asian-Americans, that’s more or less the extent of my knowledge of using tofu.  In fact, I used to be weirded out by the stuff.  I mean, it has little to no taste, and is made from pressed soybeans.  It’s not natural!

As time went on, I learned more about the stuff.  Sure, it has no flavor of its own, but that means it’s perfect for adding protein to dishes without adding meat.  It’s perfect in soups, since it will drink up the flavor of the soup.  But that’s only the beginning of what tofu can do.  Softer tofu can stand in for pudding or smoothies, and firm tofu can even be pan-fried.  Oh, and did I mention it’s cheap?  I found an Asian market relatively nearby selling tofu by the pound for about a buck and a half.  Try finding meat on sale that cheap!

So, now that I’ve got the tofu, what do I do with it?  Well, the two recipes in this chapter showcase the two general styles of tofu – firm and soft.  I started with the firm tofu, as it was fairly straightforward to make.  As I said before, tofu is a culinary sponge, and will soak up whatever flavors you give it.  But firm tofu still has quite a bit of water, so we need to wring that sponge out before we let it take liquid back into itself.  I cut it into four equal pieces, wrapped it in paper towels, and pressed it for two hours between two sheet pans weighted with a 28-oz. can of tomatoes, changing the towels once.  After the tofu is pressed, it gets placed into a zip-top bag with some vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and some hot pepper sauce to marinate for two hours.  At that point, the tofu gets dredged in breading and pan-fried in canola oil for a few minutes a side, just long enough to brown the panko breadcrumbs.  After cooling briefly, they’re served.  Having tasted them, I think they either needed more time in the marinade or more marinade, as most of the flavor was lost.  Still, I think I see what Alton was going for in this recipe.  The acidity of the vinegar, the fishiness of the Worcestershire sauce, and the crunchiness of the fry is supposed to make you think of a fish fry.  The heat wasn’t noticable, but I suspect that was his Southern expressing itself.  I need to make this one again in the future, just to see if I can get the flavors stronger.

The second one is called Moo-Less Chocolate Pie, and is nothing short of devious.  A package of semisweet chocolate chips are melted in a metal bowl along with some coffee liqueur and vanilla extract.  This is added to a food processor, along with a pound of soft tofu and some honey, and pulsed until smooth and pudding-like.  That’s all added to a chocolate wafer crust and refrigerated.  It’s incredibly simple to make, and unlike my poaching trials, I didn’t have any issues making this one.  The recipe, though, says that Alton has served this pie to unsuspecting diners, and nobody has ever suspected the secret ingredient.  I had to replicate this experiment, so I made a pie and took it to work the next day.  I informed them that there was a secret ingredient, but made them guess what it was.  True enough, nobody got it.  One person came close, guessing that I used avocado to make the pudding (she’d recently been working with making mousse with avocado), but nobody actually suspected tofu.  Experiment successful!  I’ll definitely be making this one again.

Next: I work with the only vegetable that can be spelled using musical notes.

Recipes:

Filet o’Fu

Moo-Less Chocolate Pie