Buttermilk Fried Chicken

(All pictures in this post were taken by Alex Hsu.)

A few weeks ago, right after my Japanese-Style Strawberry Shortcake post, I got a message from my friend Alex asking if I would cook him delicious food for his birthday. He lives in Jersey City and I live in VA, so my first instinct was to say "Haha...good one...no." But, I'm a sucker for compliments about my cooking, and I like to feed people, so I told him I'd do it. I didn't think to run the idea by Dan until after I had already committed us to a road trip, but to his credit he just rolled his eyes and said "Guess I need to take some time off on Friday..."

When I asked Alex what he wanted for dinner, his response was "Meat. Lots of meat." Well. That's helpful. I knew he was inviting a bunch of people over, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it to Jersey City before 5pm, so my main concern was feeding a lot of people and being done with all the cooking by the time everyone showed up at 7pm. I knew right away that my sides would be chive-garlic mashed potatoes, baked mac n cheese, and roasted carrots -- they're easy to make, very filling, and I can pretty much put them on the stove and forget about them while I cook the main course. With those sides decided, it was pretty clear I was going to have to make fried chicken to accompany all those carbs. Alex was going to get a good ol' Southern-style birthday dinner.

Have I ever made fried chicken before this dinner? Nope. Is it a good idea to cook something totally new and unfamiliar for a lot of people on short notice? Not really. But hey, lets live on the edge a little. Fortunately, Alex's roommate bought all the ingredients a few days ahead of time, and our friend Andy was hanging around the apartment all day, so all I had to do was tell Andy to soak the chicken in buttermilk and we were good to go.  When Dan and I finally made it to the apartment, I got right to work on the chicken. I tossed together large amounts of flour, salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic powder for the breading, threw the buttermilk-soaked chicken directly into the dry mixture to coat, and pan-fried everything in very hot vegetable oil. I honestly didn't have high hopes, but the chicken turned out to be amazingly delicious. At least, the pieces that I didn't flip obsessively and actually cooked all the way through were delicious -- there were definitely some pieces that were kinda sorta really raw near the bone. Oops.

Thankfully, Alex ate the good pieces and was pretty happy with his meal. He had multiple helpings of everything, and that made me happy. But when he told me I should open my own fried chicken joint, I just laughed nervously and casually slid the under-cooked pieces away from his plate. What he doesn't know can't hurt him, right?

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

Ingredients: (I sort of haphazardly threw ingredients into a bowl when I made my chicken, so these measurements are my best guesses for how much of everything I used.)

- 1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces (or, just a whole bunch of wings/legs/whatever)

- 3 cups buttermilk

- 2 cups flour

- 1/4 cup garlic salt

- 1/8 cup paprika

- Lots of salt and pepper (I like my food salty, so I used a lot of salt -- probably about 1/2 cup)

- Lots of vegetable oil (peanut oil would be great too)

Steps:

(1) In a large bowl, pour buttermilk over chicken and soak overnight, or at least a few hours.

(2) In a separate large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients until well-combined.
(3) Fill a wide, heavy-bottomed skillet about half-way full of oil. Heat until very hot -- if you flick flour into the oil, it should immediately sizzle/bubble up.
(4) Throw buttermilk-soaked chicken directly into the bowl containing the flour/seasoning, and toss to coat. Shake off excess breading, then slide the chicken into the bubbling oil.
** The chicken should be mostly covered, but it's fine to have some of it peaking out above the oil. The longer you fry, the less oil you'll have anyway, and you'll be flipping the pieces eventually.
(5) Cook chicken until golden-brown, about 8-10 minutes on each side. Don't overcrowd your skillet -- 3 to 4 pieces at a time is best.
** I would say it's better to over-cook than under-cook in this situation. Do NOT flip your chicken obsessively like I did. Just throw it in there, walk away for a while, then flip once and leave it alone again. The breading will keep the meat nice and juicy, so it's fine to cook the chicken longer. There's nothing grosser than biting into raw/bloody meat near the bone...
(6) Set cooked pieces aside on your serving plate -- don't use paper towels or your chicken will be soggy. Keep frying until all your chicken is done.
(7) Eat immediately with sides of your choice.
** I suggest buttery mashed potatoes, biscuits, greens, and creamy mac n' cheese.


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Bananas Foster Trifle

I wanted to make trifles out of my strawberry rum pound cake a couple weeks ago, but my stemless wineglasses proved to be less than satisfactory vessels for putting it all together. Nothing layered properly, and my fingers kept smearing stuff. So, I ordered a set of mini trifle bowls, and they arrived a few days ago.

What is trifle, exactly? It's basically a cake-based parfait, with layers of cake (usually pound or sponge), custard, fruit, gelatin, and whipped cream. Yum, right? I didn't have pound cake or sponge cake lying around, but since there was still some banana bread left over, I decided to make a Bananas Foster trifle.

I originally wanted to make the characteristic Bananas Foster rum sauce for my trifle, but that was a total botch. While it was cooking, I took my eye off the skillet and the sugar burned. The sauce, which had been smelling pretty good up to then, turned black, started smoking, and was basically totally ruined. Ugh. So, I scrapped the sauce and made do with banana bread, cooked bananas, and whipped cream. And you know what? Totally delicious. Banana lovers everywhere would go nuts for this sweet and creamy, intensely banana-y treat. Dan, who had already eaten pizza, chips and salsa, and cheesy bread, and insisted that he was too stuffed to eat more than a few bites of trifle, ate the whole bowl. Mini-bowl, but still.

Bananas Foster Trifle

Ingredients: (Makes 2 mini-trifles)

- 4 pieces banana bread, chopped into squares.
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1 dash cinnamon
- 1 dash cloves
- 1 banana, cut in half length-wise
- 1 cup heavy cream, whipped and sweetened.

Steps:

(1) Layer the bottom of each mini-trifle bowl with some of the chopped banana bread, in one even layer. Set aside.

(2) In a skillet, cook butter and brown sugar until simmering. Add spices.

(3) Place both halves of the banana into the skillet and spoon sauce over the top. Cook until a sugary crust forms on the outside of the fruit. Pull out and set aside.
** At this point you can keep cooking the sauce until it is thick and syrupy, then add it as one of your trifle components. Mine burned, so I left it out...
(4) Let bananas cool, then chop them into small pieces.
(5) Layer chopped bananas on top of the banana bread in the trifle bowls.
(6) Layer the remaining banana bread on top of the cooked bananas.
(7) Top with whipped cream. Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve.

One year ago: Chocolate Fudge

Strawberry Rum Pound Cake

The problem with strawberries is that (1) my grocery store never has the the really fresh-looking ones, and (2) they go bad so quickly. I bought a big carton of promising-looking berries last weekend, and three days later they were dark in patches, simultaneously shriveled and mushy, and giving off faintly alcoholic fumes. Mmm, over-ripe strawberries.

I've been valiantly trying to eat my way through the entire carton of ripe berries all week, but it's pretty much a losing battle; I think the strawberries are actually multiplying in the fridge. As far as I'm concerned, the only way for me to avoid wasting the rest of the fruit is to chop it up and bake it into something delicious. 

A lot of the food bloggers I follow have been making pound cake lately, so I was kind of thinking I should hop on the bandwagon. The only reason I haven't made one yet is because I know how much delicious butter and fat is in pound cake, and if I make it I'm going to want to eat all of it by myself in one sitting, and then I'm going to suffer intense inner turmoil as my greed inevitably overcomes my good sense and health consciousness. 

But, you never know what will happen before you try, so...I threw caution to the wind and decided to go with a Paula Deen recipe. Two sticks of butter, 5 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, and sour cream. I couldn't bring myself to make her sweet glaze for drizzling, but the cake was incredibly delicious even without it. Sweet and buttery, with a pleasant tang from the pieces of strawberry studded throughout, and so moist. Yum. Let me tell you, I am in big trouble. I can only hope Dan eats the rest of the cake before it seriously derails my diet...

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of Paula Deen.

** Her recipe just uses strawberries -- I threw in a tbsp of rum-flavored extract because I thought the flavor would compliment the strawberry pretty well. In the end the rum flavor wasn't as strong as I would have liked...next time I think I'll use actual rum.

One year ago: Pad Thai

New Orleans-Style Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce

Happy belated Mardi Gras, everyone! I was planning to make New Orleans-themed foods for Fat Tuesday  this year -- gumbo, jambalaya, king cake, beignets, etc. -- but work this week has been all kinds of hectic, and I was too tired to cook anything but leftovers in the microwave. Now that Mardi Gras is over, and St. Patty's Day is around the corner, I was sort of thinking that this recipe could kind of represent both occasions, since bread pudding and whiskey are traditional Irish foods, and Emeril Lagasse tells me this pudding is "New Orleans-style," whatever that means. 

Bread pudding is one of those wonderful, mysterious foods that  I didn't discover until fairly recently. I'd seen it on menus and in display cases at various cafes, but nothing about the name or appearance enticed me to try it. Then Karen and I decided to have dinner at the Circle Bistro before our annual date to see the Nutcracker, and chocolate bread pudding was the dessert offering for the prix fixe meal we both ordered. One bite, and I was in love. The pudding was dense and rich and succulent, like an extra moist chocolate cake. From that day on, I was sold on bread pudding because I figured if chocolate bread pudding tasted this good, how bad could the other variations be?

Bread pudding really doesn't look very appetizing when it's being made, does it? After all, it's just soggy bread sitting in a pool of cream. But it smells fantastic, even before going in the oven. Sweet and cinnamon-y, with the heady scent of French bread. And after it's baked? Then drizzled with boozy cream sauce? We've got the makings of a nose-gasm, folks.

I didn't use as much brown sugar in the pudding as the recipe called for, and I wish I had. The bread pudding is good, but it would be even better if were just a little sweeter. Dan thought it tasted fine and polished off two bowlfuls, but I've got more of a sweet tooth than he does, and I'm the one doing the baking so next time...more sugar! 

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse and the Food Network.

Chicken Fried Steak

I haven't eaten (or thought about) chicken fried steak since I moved out of Texas, where everything is bigger, beefier, and more fried. I'm not a health nut or anything, but I generally try not to eat too many fried foods if I can help it. And chicken fried steak is...a slab of steak that is breaded, fried, and then smothered in gravy. Red meat AND fried? That's a heart attack on a plate if I've ever seen one. Still, the Pioneer Woman had a post on chicken fried steak last week and it just looked so yummy that I had to try it.

Chicken fried steak is so different from the way I usually eat steak. I like my steak to be thick and juicy, attached to a bone, and still bleeding. Chicken fried steak is...none of those things. The meat is pounded thin for tenderness, there's no bone, and it's cooked all the way through with no sign of blood. But you know what? It's absolutely delicious. The meat is not at all tough or dry despite being thoroughly cooked, and the combination of breading, meat and gravy is amazingly flavorful and melt-in-my-mouth delicious.

I want to say that I'll be good, and that this will just be a one-time treat, but...there are probably going to be a lot of chicken fried steaks in my life from now on. Damn you, Pioneer Woman!

Recipe can be food here, courtesy of the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.

Slow Cooked Pulled Pork

Thanks to Southern night with the Summer Supper Club, I'm getting my second guest blog. This post is courtesy of my good friend Karen, who made slow-cooked pulled pork for our feast. I'm writing the post on her behalf, because she is too busy with bar review class to type it all out (technically, I am too, but...whatever!), but all pictures were taken with her camera.

*****************************************************************

Karen and I met in our first year of law school. In the three years that I've known her, she has repeatedly insisted that she can't cook. She swears up and down that all she is capable of making is chili and jello, and given the choice between chopping some vegetables to make a sandwich at home or trekking to Safeway for one of their pre-made American subs, she'll go to Safeway every time. Yet somehow, when Southern night rolled around, she showed up with a pot of delicious, juicy, home-made, slow cooked pulled pork. Interesting.

Apparently she doesn't consider rubbing meat with spices, wrapping it up for a couple hours, then leaving it in a slow cooker for 8 hours to be cooking. It is, Karen...it is. 

And when you decide to tweak a recipe by substituting 1/2 cup apple juice + 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar for water, because you remembered that's how your dad always made it back in the day? Definitely cooking. And lets face it: you're good at it. Say it with me, Karen: "I am a good cook."

Karen's pork was, of course, delicious. Juicy, tender, and flavorful. A little sweeter than I'm used to, probably because she cut back on the salt and cooked the meat in apple juice. Still, very tasty and thoroughly enjoyed by the other members of the Summer Supper Club. 

Recipe courtesy of Bridget at the Crumbly Cookie.

Oven-Fried Pickles

In lieu of the southern-themed dinner with the Summer Supper Club, I decided to make some fried pickles to snack on throughout the meal. I've only ever had fried pickles once before, but I found them to be absolutely delicious -- crispy, salty, sour -- and totally addictive. Like pistachios, they are impossible to stop eating once you taste one.

The problem with making fried pickles is that I don't have a fryer. I don't even have a deep pot that I can substitute for a fryer. Plus, I'm trying to watch my girlish figure, so eating deep fried food probably isn't a great idea anyway. Fortunately, baking is always an acceptable alternative, and Google presented me with bazillions of different oven-fried pickles recipes to choose from.

The last time I fried something, it was jalapeno poppers. For the breading, I dipped them in milk, then rolled them with bread crumbs. Pretty standard stuff. Fried pickles, on the other hand, aren't breaded quite the same way. They're not dipped in anything, since they're already moist from floating in their own juices, and they're rolled around in a combination of cornmeal, grated cheese, and spices. Interesting.

Lesson learned from this cooking exercise: oven-fried is not the same thing as deep fried. Not even close, in fact. After sticking the tray of breaded pickles into the oven for 12 minutes like the recipe said, I expected them to come out nice and crispy like baked potato chips. Nope. They were still soggy. Soggy! I ended up sticking them back into the oven for about 15 minutes longer than the recipe asked for, and I had to flip every pickle in order to get them to crisp up on both sides. Talk about time-consuming! And they still weren't as crisp as I wanted them to be. Next time I'm just going to buy a fryer.

Even though these suckers weren't as crispy as they should have been, they were still pretty tasty, and every last one of them got eaten. They were salty and sour as pickles should be, but slightly zesty from the breading, and were delicious dipped in ranch dressing. The recipe definitely needs tweaking, but these are a great snack anyway.

Recipe courtesy of recipe4living.com.

Shrimp & Grits

In an effort to make post-graduation-bar-exam-studying less painful, my friends and I have decided to start a dinner club and take turns hosting potluck dinners once a week. We call it the "Summer Supper Club," and each dinner will have a different theme. Today's inaugural dinner theme: Southern Comfort. So we feasted on pulled pork (which will be featured in a guest blog post soon), shrimp & grits, fried pickles (which I will blog about tomorrow), green bean casserole, biscuits, salad, and pecan pie. Mmm.

I've never made grits. I've never eaten grits. I've never actually worked with cornmeal. But, all the recipes online looked fairly straightforward, so I wasn't too worried. Just boil some water/stock and stir in cornmeal. Easy-peasy, right? Not exactly! Apparently when the recipe says "gradually add cornmeal to the boiling liquid," it means it. I started out by dumping in half the cornmeal in one go and panicked when it immediately began to form unappealing lumps instead of mixing smoothly into the liquid. Yikes! Fortunately, frantic whisking and less hasty incorporation of the remaining cornmeal solved the problem, and suddenly I had grits in a pot.

Now, grits by itself would be pretty boring right? I mean, it's just cornmeal and water - corn mush, really. So, lets add some cheese to kick it up a notch. Then, lets top the whole thing with shrimp! Shrimp cooked in bacon fat, of course. De-lish!

Overall, the first gathering of The Summer Supper Club was a huge success. Everything was delicious, and even my shit-why-won't-these-lumps-go-away grits turned out really well. Keep your eyes peeled for posts on fried pickles and pulled pork later this week.

Recipe for Shrimp & Grits courtesy of Bobby Flay.