Category: In the Kitchen

My coworker’s mom quit her job a few weeks ago and started cleaning out the closets, and so he ended up with a fabulous old deepfryer.

Which of course got the two of us thinking… about just what exactly we could fry. And then it spiraled out of control, and we ended up with two deep fryers and a fridge full of beer and a house full of very happy people.
We started with pickles, little tiny dill ones and bread & butter slices, dipped into spiced up egg wash and flour a few times and fried. MMMM, crunchy! Then we made some hushpuppies (from the recipe off the bag of cornmeal) — next time I might put a little sugar into the batter, so they taste more like the amazing ones I had down in North Carolina. (Update a few days later: I just tried this for dinner, and a couple tablespoons of sugar does make a great improvement.)

Deepfrying is a lot easier than I thought. Though some of that certainly is due to the plug-and-go nature of an electric deepfryer. And on that note, the old-skool fryer is way better than the the newer model we also had going, because it has a temperature gauge… a remarkably accurate one, and quick to respond, too. Got to keep my eye peeled for a good old fryer in the thrift stores.
Then my coworker G got rolling on his special recipe for “best chicken fingers ever,” involving flour, egg, and breadcrumbs flavored within an inch of their lives with oregano and garlic powder and chili powder and who knows what else. We did a little tempura broccoli & zucchini while chicken was coming together in the kitchen. Nummy. The chicken came out AWESOME. Crunchy, spicy coating around super moist chicken — because the deep fry cooked them so quickly, they were done in about a minute, and stayed moist & yummy. I could get used to this.
Seriously. The whole point of deep frying is the crunchy, and the whole key is getting the goods to your mouth fast enough to enjoy the full extent of the Golden Crunchy Goodness. And you can only do that if you’re doing the frying yourself. We’re going to have to do this again sometime.


Then N got going on the onion rings. He improvised a little batter recipe out of a cup of flour, a cup of beer, and some spicy indonesian sambal. Yum, yum. Another recipe we need to use again sometime. I shaved a potato down with a vegetable peeler, and made chips — i think the oil was a little too hot, because they got awfully brown awfully fast, but still, not too bad.

And because too much is never enough, I had some chicken drumsticks marinating in buttermilk, which I then rubbed with old bay seasoning and hungarian paprika, dredged in flour, and deep fried. We had to lower the temperature a lot, because the first batch nearly burned but was quite raw inside, and even then we didn’t get them quite cooked enough, though they were still delicious. N was cooking them, and kept crooning over them “Arise, chicken!’ as he pulled the basket out full of golden crunchy chicky-chick. Awesome. Old Bay is what they use on the chicken down in Baltimore, and I’ve been dying to try doing it myself, and it’s all I’d hoped it would be. I do think that pan frying helps moderate the temperature even more, so that the innards get cooked by the time the crust is done. Gonna do that again soon too. 🙂
There were some string cheese sticks that got battered and fried somewhere in there too. By this time I’d relinquished the fryers to my guests, who got well into the spirit of things while I made a closer acquaintance with the 2005 Unibroue getting busted out in the kitchen. Then we did some catfish chunks in the same breading G used on the chicken fingers. Mmmmmm….


Then it was time for dessert. Bananas turned out to be the theme: HH brought a thai banana-in-coconut-batter recipe, and N wrapped bananas in biscuit dough, fried ’em and served ’em with a sauce made from blackberry Manischewitz wine, fancy bourbon-barrel-aged maple syrup, molasses & vanilla. Both yummy, and somehow we managed to find room for them after all the savories (and the belgian beers, mmmm). I tried to deep fry a reese’s peanut butter cup, but it melted and leached out of the batter — the batter showed the pleats of the cup’s shape, but it was empty except for a little sad puddle of sugary brown goop. Then JG got going on the most anticipated treat of the night, the deep fried twinkie. You freeze them, then make a very thick batter, then skewer them, dip them, and let ’em swim in the oil. They puff up right away, which is hilarious. And they really are good — crunchy coating around a meltier, less-fake-tasting cake and gooey center. Buttery and rich. Damn, they’re good.

made some spicy-sweet peanuts for holiday gifts — the convenience store on the corner had only tiny little mini-cartons of peanuts, and since i was making these in a snowstorm, I bought them in sheer desperation. But they turned out to be the greatest, because you can cover the mini-cartons in paper and then you have instant gift boxes! I love the ones covered in grass-print paper, but my proudest achievement is the hibiscus one, since that one’s covered in an ad clipped from a magazine. I *heart* free crafts. The recipe is based on the spiced nut recipe in Gourmet a couple of issues ago, but since i have no corn syrup and wanted them savory-spicy, i used chili powder and cumin and paprika and hot sauce along with the butter and sugar and spoonful of honey.

Yummy thing to do with leftover lamb leg roast (and random contents of kitchen, because you are trying an experiment in which you eat for a month without actually buying any food you didn’t already have):
Cut off all leftover meat you can. Saute a little onion in olive oil, add 2 sliced carrots and a bunch of Penzey’s Turkish seasoning mixed with a bit of smoked paprika and cayenne, and a bit of salt. Add a can of diced tomatoes, a can of beans, a big handful of currants, and the lamb, plus a 1/4 cup or so of water. Cover and simmer till meat falls apart and everything is tender.
Sorry, no photo – i keep forgetting, and it’s almost gone because it’s yummy. Very good with thin slices from stale baguette that went with the roast dinner, toasted till crunchy. Make stock from the denuded lamb bones. I’m planning to put whole wheat rotini, beans and meatballs into mine.

Thinly slice up a celery stalk. Thinly slice up an apple (or half an apple if it’s big; eat the rest for dessert). Shave in a bit of manchego. Grind in pepper, drizzle in a little olive oil and sherry vinegar. Shake it all up. Eat with the ham sandwich, and revel in the tangy savory sweet goodness.

The annual brick oven turkey was freaking awesome this year — we have hit upon the perfect formula. If one pound of bacon was good, two pounds of bacon is better. You get fantastically crunchy mahogany skin, moist smoky well-seasoned meat, and that inner layer of bacon isn’t too burned to eat either, if you let the temp get a bit lower at the start than we have at times in the past. Woo, baby! Yum.
So obviously I’ve been eating the leftovers this week, along with lunches from where else, Perez. Very nice pork chops braised in spicy sauce yesterday — $6 for two hot lunches, can’t beat it.

one bunch broccoli
3 chunky slices blue cheese
half and half
salt, pepper & nutmeg
Boil the broccoli until just tender. Drain, but reserve some of the cooking water. Puree with stick blender, and add half and half gradually to get desired consistency, adding cooking water instead if you think it’s too overwhelmingly creamy. Add blue cheese, crumbled up, and let the residual heat melt it — use a spoon to sort of mush it into the soup. Salt & pepper to taste, dash of nutmeg.
It’ll be a bit tepid, so you might want to reheat a bit, but be careful not to boil or it’ll curdle. You might get around this by using heavy cream and a bit more cooking water, but i had leftover half and half.
Serves two for dinner, 6-8 as a small starter. Yum.
(picture coming)

1. celebrity with fresh garden basil
   
   dressed with oil, freshly ground pepper and salt

2. brandywine and yellow pear with mozzarella
   
   I never did get the caprese salad quite right.

3. The BLTA
   
   Bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado. On toasted bread, slathered with mayo. One of my favorites growing up; but never with such high quality tomatoes, if I do say so myself.

4. The triple-T
   
   Tuna and tomato (supersteaks, in this case, I think) on toast.

5. sauce/soup
   
   What do you do when you don’t check for spaghetti sauce until after you’re halfway through cooking the pasta? Toss the pasta with sliced sausage, a diced tomato from the garden, basil, and a little olive oil. It actually came out like a sort of soup noodle, which is just fine by me.

6. more sauce
   
   made from the beat-to-hell yellow pear brandywine and supersteaks left on the vine. Garlic, onion, basil and a little olive oil. A little on the sweet side, but still alright.
   

1 lb boneless country style ribs (or thick pork chops)
3 small shallots (or 1 giant), sliced
big handful of dried prunes, maybe a cup’s worth
sherry vinegar
sherry
bourbon
2 cups chicken broth &/or water
juniper berries
ground allspice
salt & pepper
flour
olive oil
1 tbsp butter
Salt & pepper the pork. Sprinkle with a bunch of flour and dredge well. Heat olive oil in a large deep skillet or dutch oven and brown the meat well on all sides. Add the butter, and when melted add the shallots. Saute till shallots start to go clear, then sprinkle a bit of the allspice over everything, and keep frying. Add 10 juniper berries, several tablespoons of vinegar, a splash of bourbon, and maybe 1/4 cup of sherry. Put in the prunes, cut up if you like, and the broth. Bring to simmer, and braise for a good long time. I covered mine for a while, but then left it open to reduce. I forgot about mine completely, so it stewed for at least 2 hours and nearly burned, but the meat got all nice and soft and the sauce is thick & velvety.

I have been so busy lately that I was reduced to a bbq-sauce drenched rotisserie chicken from that overpriced hellhole, Jewel — and my roommate bought it since i didn’t have time to go to the store. That’d be why there’s been no posts lately. But fear not, I am going to Italy and Amsterdam, and there be good eatin’ in those parts. Stay tuned next week.

it’s raining in chicago and I’m feeling like I’m coming down sick, so today when the roommate started ordering Thai takeout, I said I wanted some tom yum — spicy sour soup. But he said it was a total ripoff at the local joint, 6 bucks for a cup of soup, so i bagged it — but the craving didn’t go away. Happily, the resulting brainwave combined with two packets of the roommate’s thai ramen (tom yum flavor!) to become some great comfort food.
I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: ANYTHING, particularly a soup, that involves both fish sauce and lime juice is by definition yummy.
Chicken broth and water, boiled with some dried shiitakes thrown in, ramen noodles added along with spice packets, half a can of leftover diced tomatoes, juice of half a lime, and scrambled egg dribbled in as egg-drop. Squeeze more lime in to serve. We ran out of cilantro or there’d be some of that in there too. Sour spicy hot broth goodness.