Fried Chicken

Oh man, this did not turn out well.  Well, I didn't think it was that good, but Todd seemed to think it was okay.  Let's start from the beginning.

Ingredients
1 quart of buttermilk or milk
2 Tablespoons Tabasco
1 3-4 pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces (or 2 chicken breasts cut in half like we did.  Advice, pick a cut with a bone in it.)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups peanut oil, vegetable oil, bacon fat, or lard.

Directions
1. In a 9x13 pan, combine milk and hot sauce.
2. Soak your chicken at lease 10 minutes.  We did it overnight.
3. In a plastic bag, combine flour, salt, and peppers.
4. Shake chicken in flour in shifts and shake off excess flour.
5. In a cast iron skillet (or dutch oven since that is all we have), heat 2 inches of oil.
    -Test oil by tossing in a popcorn kernel.  When it pops, it's hot enough.
6. Turn the heat down to medium and fry chicken, leaving 1/2 inch between pieces.  Fry in shifts if you have to.  Leave it undisturbed for 15 minutes, lowering the heat to prevent excessive browning.  Turn the pieces and cook another 15-20 minutes.
7. Remove from oil and drain on rack.  Place in 200 degree oven to keep warm.

Looks okay with the potatoes and green beans, but...meh.

We used 2 chicken breasts cut in half.  Don't do this.  Buy chicken breasts with bones in or other cuts.  Also, this is not spicy, despite the presence of Tabasco and Cayenne pepper. Add more of either if you want it to be spicy.  Lastly, I forgot to turn the oil down for the first side of my first 2 pieces.  They were what she describe as "excessively brown" and tasted like charcoal.  But my second two pieces turned out better.

Overall, it was a let down for my first frying experience and my apartment smelled like butt.  However, maybe my new knowledge will be put to use for a special Christmas morning donut or something.  And maybe, once I recover from the burnt taste, I will try this again.

We're Back!

For real this time, because I have challenged myself with something new.  You want to hear?  Of course, because I'm semi interesting and chances are if you finally got around to checking my blog, you are really bored. So I will assume you have nothing better to do.

So, when Todd and I arrived home from our vacation to Colorado (which was amazing.  Why do I live in such a crappy place?) I had a new motivation to start cooking again.  Larry at Living Hope Covenant mentioned that my now very old food photo album on Facebook was wonderful and he enjoyed seeing how well we learned to cook.  So naturally, I needed to find a new challenge since we have become complacent with our 10 favorite dinner recipes.

The new challenge:

To use one cook book a week to make dinner every night.  The dinners must be as follows.

2 chicken nights

1 beef night

1 soup night

1 pasta or salad night

Saturday is pizza and Sunday is leftovers.

Also a plus, if all the food is around $40/week.

We kicked the challenge off with Mad Hungry by Lucinda Scala Quinn.  This book is all about how Quinn taught her boys to cook and what she cooked them.  Monday's meal was her Pantry Bistro Salad.  Starting easy; it's hard to screw up salads.  

Ingredients

1 head of Romain lettuce

5 strips of bacon

1/2 white onion

2 poached eggs

Olive Oil and Red Wine Vinegar

Directions

1. Cut your bacon into small bits as to fry them faster.

2. Saute your diced onion and bits of bacon in a small lug of olive oil until caramelized and crispy.  Place on paper towel to drain.

3. Cut and wash your lettuce.  Place on paper towels to dry.

4. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and attempt to poach 2 eggs.  I failed massively, so I ended up frying them over easy and over hard.

5. Salad...Assemble!  Lettuce, bacon and onions, egg, and drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar.

I made this because I thought Todd would like it, as I am not a huge egg fan.  But I must say, we both devoured this.  Partially because we were eating dinner at 8:30, and it was delicious.  The only changes we made were fried instead of poached eggs, and a yellow onion (because that's what I started cutting up and I wasn't going to waste half and onion!)

My failed poached egg.  I know when I'm bested.

The final product.  Add salt and pepper and some bread.

Tuesday's Dinner:  Fried Chicken