An excellent recipe for fried chicken

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fried chicken, postaday2014, recipe, Tyler Florence

Both our son and daughter love fried chicken and I can’t remember how we were led to the double dipped fried chicken. I would most probably bet that it was my husband who stumbled upon it, but all I know is that it is a huge hit in this household. We love watching food shows and Tyler Florence is a chef who has hosted many shows over several years and my husband must have watched one of Florence’s Ultimate shows where he finds the best recipe for the show’s featured dish.

I googled Tyler Florence and double dipped fried chicken and it led me directly to his recipe and we have been following it ever since.

It is so easy albeit messy. For our batch, I bought two packages of drum sticks and one package of thighs and buttermilk, all the rest I had in the pantry. All you need to do for at least two hours beforehand, although I let the chicken to marinate over night, is soak the chicken pieces in 2 cups of buttermilk with 2 teaspoons of Tabasco sauce, my husband went off script and added his secret 7 spice to the mix; imagine garlic, onion powder with paprika, cumin and chili powder, I think and you have the idea.

When I was ready to dredge the chicken in the flour, according to Tyler Florence you mix 3 cups of flour, I went off script this time and did 2 cups of flour with 1 cup of whole wheat, with 1 tablespoon of oregano, one tablespoon Kosher salt, one tablespoon granulated garlic and one tablespoon of paprika. Once again the secret 7 spice was added to the mix. The double dipping part comes next and of course the messy part, you take the chicken pieces out of the buttermilk bath and dredge it into the flour mixture, re-dip the chicken into the buttermilk and re-dredge it into the flour mixture, put it aside and repeat with all of the rest.

I use peanut oil for frying and my husband set up the cast iron skillet at the perfect temperature, around 350 to let the chicken cook through without browning the batter too quickly. I find that frying chicken correctly is the most difficult method of cooking chicken because if you don’t get the chicken cooked through nicely, you can’t really refry it and have it taste right. I was lucky and the chicken came out juicy although it was a little on the dark side of crispy. The most important part was that it was very good with a nice kick.

My homemade pumpkin pie, warts and all

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baking, homemade pie crust, postaday2012, pumpkin pie, recipe

 

Here is my homemade pumpkin pie. My hubby took the picture, we switched cell phones plans and I haven’t gotten a cell phone yet, which is fine by me since I dislike them so much, but I haven’t been uploading any photos with my posts and I do miss that aspect of the phone. I am deciding which way to go for a small easy to use camera and the jury is still out.

Back to the pumpkin pie, I don’t know why the small area near the edge got disfigured during the baking process, it didn’t taste any differently than the rest of the pie so I don’t know what happened there. I was disappointed because it does ruin the overall look of the pie, definitely wouldn’t win any blue ribbons, however, if you are only concerned with taste, than it was definitely a winner.

The recipe is very easy; I combined two recipes into one to get the light almost flan like texture to the pie. The pie dough is a flaky pastry dough with butter, Crisco, flour, salt and ice water. The filling is also very simple; 4 eggs, one big can of pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of light brown sugar, one can of evaporated milk, 1 2/3 cups of heavy cream, 1/2 tsp of ground cloves, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ground all spice and 1 tsp ground ginger; mix it all together and you have enough for two pies. Your oven should be pre-heated at 425 and after 15 minutes you put it down to 350 for 30 to 35 minutes more. The kitchen does smell heavenly at this point, the aromas of cinnamon and nutmeg float in the air, it makes you feel warm and cozy.

On another note, I just passed the 2000 mark of posts to this blog. A small milestone and I am very happy about it. Hooray for me!

Food, my blog had forgotten you

Tags

chicken, IPad, postaday2012, recipe, Viking stove

I have been so intent on the garden and taking pictures of it that I have been neglecting my other passion, cooking, for a bit. Not having the children at home as much and my hubby working like a superman, I hadn’t felt the urge to really cook anything exciting. However just last night, I was inspired to do something different with chicken cutlets. We have a commercial size Viking stove, it’s not something that you deep clean everyday because the parts are heavy and they don’t fit easily in the sink, so when it comes time to clean, it is pretty much several hours worth of dismantling, scouring, rinsing and reassembling. Once your Viking stove is all sparkly clean, there is no way that anyone would want to sauté anything on the stovetop for at least one day. This desire to keep the stovetop clean led me to be inspired with the chicken, though they were nice and thick, they were still skinless and boneless, quite capable of coming out dry and chewy if not approached with care. Armed with my trusty iPad, I perused the web on my quest for ideas on how to bake naked chicken cutlets, lacking a backbone, without losing their tenderness. Seek and you shall find. I found the recipe on cooks.com, baked chicken with a mustard, mayonnaise sauce. It could not be easier, preheat the oven at 350, combine 2/3 cup of mayonnaise with a 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese and 2 tbsps of Dijon mustard, slather it onto the chicken breasts and dredge them in Italian flavored breadcrumbs. Your fingers will be messy but you put the cutlets into a baking dish and bake them for, it said 30 minutes, I forgot them and when my nose reminded me that they were in the oven, it was 50 minutes, which with the thickness of the cutlets was the right cooking time after all. The kids loved it, it was tender and juicy and not messy. Thank goodness for my nose, I have to say that with the more experience that I have baking and cooking I have come to realize that cooking times aren’t accurate at all, they are really just guidelines. You really have to trust your nose and your fingers to touch and smell when something is done.