Comfort foods was [Sca-cooks] Ace-K/PowerAde

[Philippa Alderton]

--- Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com> wrote:
 I can only cop to being a Yankee (and a western
> one at that),
> because ya gotta go, oh, about 4 generations back in
> my father's family
> to find anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line, so
> I've never really had
> *real* southern fried chicken.  Do you do anything
> special with it?
> Spices? Buttermilk?

Well, properly fried chicken is one of those things,
kinda like chili, where there a multitude of
variations, most of them good. One of the things I
dislike about most Yankee versions, is that they don't
seem to know how to properly fry foods, so they seem
to substitute a lot of ingredients for good technique.

There are cooks who go for buttermilk, heavy batters,
etc etc, and some of these can be good, but too many
of them don't realize that the fat needs to be hot, so
you don't bog the food down with the fatty frou- frou.
My belief is that any food should be cooked in such a
manner that the food itself stands forth as good food,
with the added ingredients simply highlighting the
basic good flavor of the food itself.

My basic method is simple, with a lot of possible
variants, depending on my mood, and who I'm feeding-
the trick is in the frying technique.

I can and will use any available fat. My personal
favorite is pranut oil, but I can use olive oil, lard,
bacon fat, butter, or even the ever-popular salad
dressing- all it needs to be is a fat, and I've found
that I can adjust my cooking technique to use it.

Panfrying requires a certain level of activity of the
fat- not extremely hot, certainly not cool, but a nice
level of activity on the food, similar to what you
have when you're simmering water. If you catch me at
Pennsic, I'll be happy to show you what I mean- it's
one of those things that needs to be experienced ;-)

So, base technique and recipe as follows:

Soak chicken pieces in salt water for at least half an
hour- overnight can work as well. This removes the
blood and that nasty taste from commercial butchering
methods. Mix up an appropriate amount of what I call
chicken dust ;-) which is a mix of flour, and/or
cornmeal and/or masa harina (my favorite) with a
reasonable blend of spices. I always use ground pepper
and garlic powder, but depending on my mood, I might
use anything else that I'm in the mood for, including
sage, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, sage, or
anything else on my spice rack. This is also one of my
test recipes, btw- when I want to try the
characteristics of a new or unfamiliar spice, I'll try
it in the dust mix, in learning the characteristics of
the spice.

Thoroughly coat the still damp chicken with the dust,
and place in the hot oil in the pan to brown- flip and
brown on the other side.

At this point, you can do two things- either continue
to cook the chicken in the pan, letting it mumble
along at a simmer, or take it out and finish in the
oven. The second method leaves you with less oily
chicken, but if you know how to fry, the first method
isn't that much oilier.

> What about the smashed tatters?

If I cooking them for myself, I'll usually mash them
with skins on, using lots of butter, pepper and cream.
I will remove the skins for guests, or if they're
particularly heavy. When I cook them, I usually slice
them thickly for cooking- they cook a bit faster, and
it helps to break up the skin.

> Do you do cream
> gravy? (*laughs* I'm making myself hungry,
> here....<g>)

I will sometimes, but it's one of those things I need
to be in the mood for. If you nail the taters with
enough cream and butter, gravy isn't really needed ;-)

> I love chocolate, but it's an "indulgence" food, not
> a comfort one.

Yeah. Other than chocolate chip cookies, which I
really like with a glass of milk, just before I go to
sleep, every now and then, about once every couple of
years, I'll go nuts for a Hot Fudge Sundae

> So, Phlip....what's your favorite *period* comfort
> food?

Actually, it's hard to say, because I like so many
foods. Unless a food has a personal association, like
the fried chicken meal, I basicly like any good food,
well prepared. I'm not much for sweets, and my
favorite meat is lamb, poultry is duck, fish are
shellfish, but I also love any other meat, poultry and
fish. Recent faves were the venison and the garlic
sauce Adamantius cooked at 12th Night (recipes, durn
you, A!!!!!) Joking aside, cuskynoles are good- I've
had Adamantius' version- and I suspect I'd have loved
the lobster and rice he made, if he hadn't had the
rice problem. Unless it had something in it I didn't
like, or was badly prepared, I don't think I've ever
found a Medieval dish I didn't like.

> Mine is
> probably blancmange....all that nummy rice and
> chicken....hmmm....I
> think I have chicken and rice _and_
> almonds....hmmmm.....Sunday
> dinner.....
> --Maire

I don't dislike blancmange, but it needs the right
mood. It's usually a bit bland for it to be my
favorite, but it's great as part of a meal.

Phlip


=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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