fried chicken night

At least once (and sometimes twice) a year, I make a fried chicken dinner for some friends who love the stuff so much that, as they say, it beats out all other foods for their respective “death row meals.” This year, along with the two birds (for 3 girls), I served: deviled eggs, an avocado and citrus salad, biscuits and last-of-the-season creamed corn.

For a long time I struggled with fried chicken – how to keep the outside crisp and golden but ensure the meat was cooked through? I finally found a method (thank you, Ina Garten) that is pretty fool proof: fry the chicken in hot oil until golden and then finish it off in the oven. But because I cannot leave well enough alone (see below), I have continued to tweak the recipe. Until now. (I’m pretty sure.) I think it’s perfect.

What I have decided is this: good fried chicken is a bit of a potchke, but it’s worth the multiple steps for a final product that is flavorful all the way through, moist, crispy and won’t give you salmonella. Both this recipe and Thanksgiving turkey have made me a believer in the power of brine, and while I know that delicious biscuits don’t require buttermilk, delicious fried chicken does. Enjoy!

Fried Chicken
(2) 4-5lb whole chickens, cut into 10 pieces each (I cut the breasts in quarters so each whole breast yields 4 pieces)
½ cup kosher salt
1 qt buttermilk
3 cups flour
1 cup corn meal (stone ground)
2 tablespoons chicken spice rub of your choice (optional) or 1 tsp black pepper
Canola oil

For the brine:
In a large bowl, combine kosher salt with 2.5 quarts water and stir to dissolve. Add the chicken parts, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Drain the brine and rinse the chicken parts with cold water. Pour buttermilk over the drained chicken parts, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours.

For the fry:
Preheat oven to 350°. Line two rimmed baking sheets with tin foil (for ease of clean-up) and place oven-safe racks on sheets. Fill a large stock pot or Dutch oven with canola oil to a depth of one inch and heat over a medium-high flame to 350° on a deep-fry thermometer. In a large bowl, combine the flour, corn meal and spice rub (if using) or black pepper.

Take chicken pieces from the buttermilk, allow excess liquid to drip off, and dredge in flour mixture, shaking off excess. Carefully place chicken pieces in hot oil and fry until golden, about 3 minutes per side. Remove chicken pieces to racks set over lined baking sheets. Cook chicken in oven for 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool slightly and serve hot or, if you prefer, at room temperature.

Serves 8.

biscuit wanderlust

Last weekend, I made a fried chicken dinner (more about that later) for two friends with October birthdays. And, because they are a natural pair, I made a batch of biscuits to go alongside. Because I am incapable of letting things be, I reached out for a new recipe and made the biscuits from the November/December 2007 Cooks Illustrated – drop biscuits containing a stick of melted butter, 1 cup of buttermilk and a bit each of salt and sugar. Sounds like it should be great, right? The biscuits were fine; we all happily ate them. But I ultimately decided that they weren’t as good as my usual biscuit recipe, a biscuit I have eaten since I was a child and a biscuit I have cheated on, shamelessly and promiscuously, for the last ten years.

I inherited my usual biscuit recipe from my mom; it’s written in her hand on lined paper, and I have no idea where it comes from originally. Everything about it suggests that it should be easily beat: it contains only flour, baking powder, salt, shortening and plain milk. Still, somehow, it is flakier, more tender and more delicious than any of the butter and buttermilk varietals that have lured me away, fleetingly, on many occasions.

Perhaps when it comes to comfort foods, objectivity flies out the window. Could it be that the biscuit you grow up with will always be your favorite just because? Good thing recipes don’t hold grudges.

Biscuits
1 ¾ cups AP flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoons salt
1/3 cup shortening
¾ cup milk

Preheat oven to 450°. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Using a fork or two knives, cut shortening into flour mixture. With a fork, stir in milk until a dough begins to form. Dump mixture out on a floured surface and knead lightly 3-4 times. Roll mixture out to about ¾” thick. Using a 2” cutter or a juice glass, cut biscuits out and place on an un-greased cookie sheet. Bake about 12 minutes or until golden brown.

a chill in the air

As soon as I saw the forecast for last weekend, with the sinking temperatures on Sunday, I knew I wanted to bake a pie. And when I saw Northern Spies at the Cambridgeport farmers’ market on Saturday, that sealed the deal. In my memory, apple pies were practically a weekly event during the falls of my childhood, but that cannot possibly be true. Still, my loyalty to apple pie runs deep, the recipe long ago memorized (even though flashier pie varieties – cherry, nectarine, chocolate cream – steal my attention most of the time).

Why isn’t there a place to get a decent slice of pie in downtown Boston? Could you imagine anything nicer on a dreary work day than sitting at a counter at 3:30 with a slice of fresh pie and the caffeinated beverage of your choice? Am I the only one who has this fantasy?

Apple Pie
Besides making the whole house smell great, this pie is really apple-y, owing to a minimal use of spices and an outrageous quantity of apples. My mom’s crusts were always made with shortening as the only fat, which does make a flaky crust. But after experimenting on my own, I prefer a crust made with a mixture of shortening (for the flake) and butter (for the flavor). It’s a little more difficult to work with, but I think it’s worth it for the taste. I like the pie dough recipe from Baking With Julia; it makes four rounds, so you can stash two in the freezer for another day.

For the Dough:
5 ¼ cups AP flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
6 oz. (1 ½ sticks) cold, unsalted butter cut into pieces
11 oz. (1 ¼ cups) solid vegetable shortening, cold
1 cup ice water

In a large bowl, mix the flour and the salt. Using your hands, two knives, or a pastry blender, cut butter into the flour until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. A little at a time, add shortening to the mixture (again, using your hands or the pastry blender) until the mixture resembles curds. Add the cold water, and stir with a fork. Once the dough has mostly come together, pour it out onto a lightly floured surface and pull it together with your hands, being careful not to work it too much. Divide into four equal discs, wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate 2 hours (or up to 3 days – wrap extra in foil and freeze).

For the Filling:
7 large apples, peeled, cored and cut into 8 slices each (If you can get Northern Spies, they are great; or I like to use about half Granny Smith and half Macintosh)
¾ — 1 cup sugar, depending upon tartness of the apples
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons cornstarch
juice from up to half a lemon, depending upon flavor of apples
pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients for the filling in a large bowl. Roll out one disc of dough and carefully fit it into a 10” pie dish; trim so about 1” of dough hangs over the sides. Fill the shell with the apple mixture. You may have to do this in stages, fitting the pieces in so that the dish can accommodate all the apples. Roll out the second disc of dough and carefully lay it over the apples. Trim excess dough so 1” overhang remains. Seal the top and bottom crusts by taking them together and folding them under around the perimeter. Then, crimp the edges with floured fingers.

Cut a few vents in the top crust to allow steam to escape. Brush pie with an egg wash (one egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water). Bake the pie, on a rimmed baking sheet, at 425° for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350° for about an hour. Allow the pie to cool to room temperature before cutting in.

the source

I was born into a family of devoted eaters. This devotion to eating led my mother to cooking – cooking dinner when she got home from work, making huge breakfasts on the weekends, laboring into the night to create French pastry just for fun. My mom’s appetite inspired her to leave the ‘50s convenience cooking of her youth behind, and transform herself into the queen of from-scratch, home made meals for us, her grateful family.

When I was a kid, I would make up excuses to get out of invitations to friends’ houses for dinner because I knew whatever my mom was making would taste better. I was well into my teens before I discovered potato buds, cookies from a tube or frosting in a can; and it wasn’t because my mom was a food snob – it was just because she wanted everything we ate to be as delicious as possible.

As she studied her double volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and served us Caesar salad, raspberry vinaigrette and flourless chocolate cake long before we saw them on restaurant menus, my mom taught us that eating well was a kind of luxury that anyone could experience with the proper combination of hunger, love and time. She was an intuitive cook, who frequently strayed from the written recipe, and when she died, she took the specifics with her. But she left us a passion for all things culinary, and a commitment to making everyone around us feel rich with the gift of good food.