Posts filed under 'kitchen stuff'

Stuffed rib pork chops or ‘costellette di maiale ripiene’

This recipe is just a lovely thing, but I have been having a hard time sitting myself down to write it. It is the meat course from the menu of April 7, 2008. I’ve cooked it four times, photographed it once and still I haven’t typed it up and published it. I’m not sure why.

My suspicions lie with the fact that although it’s easy, it’s also easy to screw up. It depends very much on good meat. The first and third times I made it I used ordinary supermarket meat and it was a fine dish if you hadn’t had it the other way. When I used local hand-reared pork from this area that I bought and had prepared at the butcher shop for euro 13 per kilo, it was fabulous. My local Coop now offers the same service at half the price, and it was good, but not nearly as good as the pampered pork

The recipe here was inspired by a recipe I found in an Italian culinary magazine. I actually made their recipe, but I found the stuffing mixture of sausage meat, two cheeses and three salamis too heavy, although it might be great in January. I wanted something springy, and something in which I could use all the fresh herbs jumping up out of the ground these days.

The stuffing looks, even to me, unnecessarily complicated in terms of ingredients, but I found out the hard way that you really do need two different kinds of breadcrumbs and two different kinds of cheese.

The amount it makes is awkward. A whole one of these double chops is too much meat for one person, especially in an Italian meal. On the other hand, I found it impossible to cook less than one per person, because it thought it looked chintzy not to have one bony piece per person, just in case. On the plus side, the leftovers are terrific either cold or gently heated. Oh, and by the way, there is a reason why these are rib chops and not loin chops. By the time these thick stuffed chops were cooked through, the tenderloin bit of the loin chop would have become sawdust. Use the cheaper rib chop.

So how come if I like this dish so well, well enough to have cooked it four times, have fed it to clients and again to friends, how come I haven’t splashed it out onto this page? Never mind, it’s making it today.

Costellette di Maiale Ripiene or stuffed rib pork chops

Four pieces, which I think should serve six people

4 rib chops one rib wide, or about 2 centimeters thick, with a pocket cut in them to the bone
6 to 12 toothpicks

the stuffing:

soft breadcrumbs from one slice of Italian or other real bread
½ cup of dry bread crumbs (a couple of handfuls or 2 espresso cups full)
one medium onion, minced fine
2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons of minced chives
2 teaspoons of fresh oregano leaves
salt to taste
half of one beaten egg
enough white wine to moisten the mixture
3 ounces of coarsely grated relatively unaged pecorino cheese or another very tasty not very hard cheese

another stuffing:
4 ounces of Rambol herbed cheese in Italy and Boursin in other countries

the cooking:
olive oil for frying
about 2 teaspoons of salt
sprigs of all the herbs used in the stuffing
three or four whole garlic cloves
a couple of espresso cups of white wine

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 165°C

If you have not talked your meat seller into making the pockets for you, then you will need to use a sharp knife and carefully cut pockets from the fatty edge toward the bone, being careful not to let the knife wander and cut through the meat. I recommend using your charm on the meat person of your choice!

Mix up the stuffing. It should be moist and cling together when you gather it in your hand, but not wet.

Using your hands, (I use surgical gloves when cooking professionally and touching raw meat) open the pocket in the chop and stuff in a good spoonful of the herbed cheese. Then gather up a fistful of the stuffing and push it in after the cheese. Add another good spoonful of the cheese and then close the pocket up using one or two toothpicks, depending on how wide the meat person made the pocket opening. You can pretend you are a plastic surgeon when doing this part of the operation.

Heat a quite large frying pan, or two of them, if you don’t have one that fits all four chops. Pour in about 2 tablespoons of oil, and then brown the chops on both sides. Be patient so that you will get a lovely golden brown without chancing a scorching. When they are all nicely browned, toss in the garlic and the herb sprigs, toss the salt over the chops, then pour the wine into the sizzling pan.

Put the pan into the oven and cook about 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 160°F or 72°C. Remove the chops to a board and allow them to rest 10 minutes while you reduce the sauce in the pan over a fairly high heat.

Using a sharp knife, cut 1 cm (fat ¼ inch) slices off the chops until you almost reach the bone. Arrange the chops on a serving dish and garnish with some of the fresh herbs you used in the dish. Drizzle some of the reduced pan juices over the meat.

You know what’s really nice about this dish? That soft herby cheese melts and coats the inside of the pocket and the outside of the stuffing, making both things extraordinarily creamy and herbalicious. The meat is tender and gently seasoned. The stuffing is springlike with its herbs. I consider it a four-star meat course.

With it I served a good old American carrot and raisin salad which was new to my guests and they liked it!

5 comments May 7th, 2008

Tartuffi: truffles of the chocolate kind

If there are real truffles around, you can count on me. I can’t sniff them out underground like a dog, and I don’t have any favorite patches where they can be found every year, but I am never at a loss as to what to do with them once they get past that stage and into someone’s pocket.

This is another kind of truffle and one which I rely on when there must be a sweet and I’ve no time or oven space to make one. The chocolate truffle can be made anytime and kept sealed in the refrigerator or the freezer until you need it. No one has ever felt neglected by being given a chocolate truffle.

They are not difficult to make, but you do need patience and a bit of spare time. I wouldn’t start them after dinner on a week night, but might shape them then, after having made up the chocolate earlier. I also recommend thin surgical gloves for shaping. Most say to use a bain marie, or double boiler, for melting the paste. I use a super heavy copper pot, moving it onto and off the heat as needed. I suppose that works best if you’ve done this enough to know when the heat is needed. Use a double boiler!

These are all the same inside, but the beige ones have been rolled in hazelnut meal and the white ones in dried coconut. They need to be rolled in something so they won’t formlessly fall into a big chocolate puddle as they were before you shaped them. I made them from a 75% bittersweet chocolate by Perugina because it was on sale. My usual 65% Valrhona is better, but I am almost out of it.

Ingredients:

Equal weights of heavy cream or panna da cucina and bittersweet chocolate
butter
liqueur (I used coffee liqueur this time, but will try raspberry grappa the next time.)
something to roll the truffles in, which can be finely chopped nuts, superfine ground espresso, cocoa or anything fine, dry and edible.

This batch was about 4 ounces each of the chocolate and cream. I used 2 ounces of sweet butter for that amount, and 2 tablespoons of liqueur.

Chop the chocolate up so that it will melt more readily. A big knife will do this just fine. Put the cream into the warmed double boiler and heat it, then add the chocolate, stirring it while it melts. Just as the last small bits of chocolate are melting away, add the butter and stir in off the heat entirely.

Add the liqueur, stirring it in. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature, stirring once in a while, then refrigerate it. Remember to stir it occasionally while it is chilling. Eventually, it will become a firm, shiny paste and it is ready to shape.

For each thing you want to roll the truffles in, get a soup plate and fill it partway. You will not want to touch things once you begin rolling truffles, so be prepared. Prepare a plate or a platter on which to put the finished truffles after rolling them. Get a teaspoon, the kind you set the table with. Put on your latex surgical gloves. You don’t have to wear them, but it will save you half an hour of cleanup time if you do.

Using the teaspoon, scoop out a small amount of the truffle paste and put it into your palm. Make it about 3/4″ in diameter. Using both hands, roll the paste between your palms, then drop the ball into the soup plate, rolling it around to get it covered, then lift the truffle away and onto a plate. Just keep doing that until you run out of material. Then strip off the gloves and toss them away. Put the pot into the sink with the teaspoon and soap and hot water. Put the plate of truffles into the fridge for a few minutes to firm up well.

When the truffles are thoroughly chilled, put them into a sealable container and keep them either in the refrigerator for up to several weeks, or in the freezer where they will keep almost forever. Take them out and bring them to room temperature to serve them. A small glass of grappa or brandy followed by a cup of espresso, and no guest will ever think you took it easy on dessert.

Buon appetito!

8 comments January 30th, 2008

Shmecking noodles for sickos

Almost everybody here is sick. Most of them have a stomach virus and they can’t eat, but when it starts to go they have the hunger of a roaring lion, but no ability to digest what we usually eat. I was talking to Sognatrice from Bleeding Espresso the other day about what sick people can eat. We both agreed that big, pillowy Mennonite noodles that they call dumplings are one of the things to eat when you are recovering.

I remember fundraising suppers for Meals on Wheels in Hardy County, West Virginia, which were focused on those dumplings. The first time I attended, I was expecting big, fluffy biscuity dumplings, but that’s not at all what I found. One of the two suppers would be a velvet chicken soup loaded with puffy little squares, the other one was ham dumplings. I approached the crock-pot where they kept warm and saw, what? It looked like white sauce. But when it was stirred up for serving, revealed were scraps of country ham and the ubiquitous dumpling noodles. It was really, really good and we ate it with really, really good cole slaw. Hurrah for Meals on Wheels!

I decided to make them for Presto Pasta Night and dedicate the effort to all the sickos currently lying around Italy with sore tummies.

I have only made the noodles once in my life, when some of us were trapped by snow at my friend Jane’s house in Chevy Chase. It was soup weather, for sure, so we made chicken soup and homemade noodles. That must have been a decade ago, but a noodle like this is not easily forgot. In casting about the house, it was clear that no soup-worthy hen was hiding out. But there was a scrap of prosciutto crudo, so off we go.

First thing to say is that prosciutto crudo is not the right ham. You need a bit of either smoked country ham, or speck if you are in Italy. This really needs the smoke. Not having the smoke, I had to add this and that to make this good. I finally got something I would eat, but it’s a lot more and very different ingredients than the wonderful Mennonite cooks of my past would have used.

I started with the noodles. I piled 100 grams of flour on the counter top and made a well in it, dropped in an egg and a good pinch of salt and stirred it with a fork until it was dampened. Then I added a fat tablespoon of water, because these are American noodles. Using a dough scraper and two floury hands, I kneaded it a lot more than I do when I make Italian pasta. Once it was smooth, I formed a neat ball and left it on the counter to rest. Why the pasta gets to rest and cook doesn’t, I don’t know, but that’s the way it is.

I then used a rolling pin to roll it out on the floury counter. If you look at the photo below you’ll see it doesn’t resemble my Italian pasta at all. It’s floury, thicker and not stretchy. It’s almost 1/8” thick. I used a pizza wheel to cut it into the squares you see. They are a fat 1 inch. I left it to rest again.

To make the sauce, I decided that sick people need vitamins and vitamins live in vegetables. Voila! A sofritto.

My elaborated Mennonite cream/ham sauce

½ cup finely chopped celery
½ cup finely chopped carrot
¼ cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup finely minced country style ham
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup or more milk
three splashes of Tabasco
a glug of fortified wine, such as sherry or marsala
salt to taste
generous nutmeg to taste
the juice of half a lemon

Begin by heating the butter in a heavy pan and sautéing the first three ingredients until really soft. Don’t brown them. Sick people don’t want crispy vegetables, so check the carrots, because they are the hardest one. Add the bits of ham, and stir in. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture, and cook a minute or so, stirring. Slowly add the milk, stirring it in. With all those lumpy vegetables, this will go smoother than with a plain white sauce. Bring to a simmer and cook over a very low heat for about 15 minutes, adding milk if it is too stiff. You want the liquid part to be a bit like heavy cream. Taste for salt and correct it. Your individual ham will add some, so it’s definitely a thing to taste and work at.

If it isn’t very tasty yet, add the Tabasco, wine, and then the lemon juice. I blame my porky but not smoky ham for these last two ingredients.

Bring a pot of water to a brisk boil, salt it and dump in the noodle squares. Boil them until they are fairly soft, not al dente like Italian pasta. It was hard for me to do this, but I persevered. I feared to end with flour soup, but managed to rescue them at a point where you could still chew a bit.

If your sauce thickens again, you can add a bit of the noodle water to loosen it.

Drain the pasta, then toss it with the sauce. Hmmm, pretty white! Put it on a colored plate, add a small vegetable and a bunch of white grapes (I always eat those when I am sick) and serve it steaming hot. It should feed three sort of sick people, four fairly sick people, and a crowd of really sick people. Those recovering can probably eat half each.

And now I hope everybody gets well and starts being able to eat like royalty again. Or go to Hardy County and eat the original which shmecks like crazy. Those are some very fine cooks.

7 comments December 6th, 2007

Elaborate vegetable: Swiss chard torte

It’s one of my descriptive phrases: elaborate vegetable. When you are serving something good that doesn’t look like much, the plate needs a hit of glamor. I’ve a list of these elaborate vegetables, mostly but not all Italian.

As anyone who will listen knows, I’ve recently lost most of my appetite. That’s really alarming for a cook. I try this and that, and yesterday I thought I’d try someone else’s cooking. I went to a little cafe that on two or three days a week makes a lot of contorni, or vegetable dishes. One of them was a torte di cime di rape, or a torte of turnip greens. It was stodgy and dull. I thought I could do better, so I gave it a try.

It was so good that at ten o’clock last night I was wiping up the crumbs. But it was far too late to get decent photos, so I made it again today to get daylight. Unfortunately it went cloudy while I was cooking, but it looks pretty edible anyway, doesn’t it? I had to shoot it sitting on my car to keep the cats off it. Recipe is after the leap into the future.

I varied the recipe by one ingredient on the two trials, and here’s the better recipe. It’s really easy, and you can keep everything but the fresh greens in your pantry or freezer, so you can make it any time you buy greens. Clean up was a snap, too. Hey, it all counts in my kitchen.

The photos show one-half recipe, which is one sheet of puff pastry divided in half. It would make a great picnic or work lunch, at that size. It’s good hot or room temperature, and there’s nothing in it that would spoil before you could eat it. Microwaving would make it soggy, though.

Torta di Bietola

Swiss chard or bietola, cleaned and cut into 1/4″ or 1 cm wide strips. Cooked in only the water from the washing, and only until just done. You will need 2 cups of these steamed greens.

2 tablespoons of good olive oil
2 smallish cloves of garlic, sliced
2 anchovy fillets (yes, use them, you won’t know they are in there!)
3 small chillies (peperoncini) broken in half
salt to taste (qb)
1 tablespoon of vinegar, whichever you like, but not balsamic

2 sheets of frozen puff pastry
1 egg, fork whipped with a teaspoon of cold water

Make sure to read the package instructions on the puff pastry, and thaw it the amount of time needed and not more or less. It’s only hard to handle if you mistake that.

Preheat the oven to 200°C or 400°F.

Sauteing the chardThis was under my 40 watt hood light in my black pan.

In a large frying pan, put the oil, the garlic, the chillies and the anchovy fillets, and sizzle together for a few minutes over moderate heat, mashing the anchovy so it disappears. Remove the visible pieces of the chillies! Add the vinegar and then the cooked greens, and stir them together. Taste and salt as needed.

With filling and glaze

Lay one piece of puff pastry on a piece of baking paper or foil that you have put on a flat baking sheet with low or no sides. Spoon the greens onto it, then spread them out to cover all but about 1/2″ at the edges. Using a finger, brush that naked edge with some of the egg glaze.

Ready for oven

With a sharp knife, cut some slashes or holes in the remaining piece of puff pastry. then lift it onto the filled piece, and lightly tap the edge down onto the egg glaze. Using a brush, brush the entire top with egg glaze. (you’ll have some leftover for the cats — makes them shiny.)

Put it into the heated oven and cook about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Eat hot or at ambient temperature.
I like it so well I see myself experimenting with other fillings, other pastries. Yummmm.

All the small photos are clickable to make them bigger.

11 comments November 29th, 2007

Birthday party with pig

Two in one: Elizabeth, cook and entertainer of many, and Martin, everyone’s favorite local artist and all-around great fellow. How can you celebrate two such exceptional people? Melchiorre knows. You roast a suckling pig in the kitchen fireplace.

The place is Melchiorre’s family home in Umbria. The festive ones are expatriates from many countries, and the chef is said Melchiorre, Sardegnan by birth and Umbrian by rearing. The man has a way with meat.

The first course was raviolone, or big ravioli, stuffed with potato and cheese and sauced with piquant honey from his own bees and chili peppers. There’s no photo of the finished dish, because I decided to be the assistant and waitress.

This capable and generous woman always seems to be the helper, and it seems like it might be time for her to a bit more the guest and a bit less the worker bee.

But what is Melchiorre doing in the kitchen? Why he’s talking the piglet through rehearsal.

Where shall we eat this feast?

Maybe this table set for twenty six will do.

Who is Martin, again? Right over there in the corner among his friends.

After dinner, Brian played the accordion for us as we pretended to know the words to the songs. At the British sea chanties, we gave even the pretense up.

Then I drove home and 2 miles from my house had a flat tire. It was dark, there were 80 kilos of salt in the trunk on top of the tiny spare and I hadn’t so much as a match to light the job, so I took off down the road in my party heels and halfway there I was rescued and given a ride the rest of they way. Did you know your cellphone makes a decent warning signal to approaching cars? Now you do. And who gave me a ride?

The Samaritan was the chef of a local restaurant, and I call that serendipity.

2 comments November 12th, 2007

Pasta perfect for the autumnal table, Gorgonzola and pecans

Pasta Gorgonzola and pecans

This is a recipe I developed for Slow Travel. It’s a pasta I really love, and thanks to a fine friend from North Carolina, I have the pecans to make it with. It’s rich and crunchy and deeply satisfying to eat on these cold and gray days. Pecans are difficult to find here in Italy other than in my freezer or a big city like Rome, Milan or Torino.

Definitely use a mild blue cheese for this pasta. Experiments during the trial and testing period showed that to be essential. The pasta does moderate the flavor of the blue cheese, but not enough if you use a strong one. It become ammoniac with strong cheese.

Pasta with Gorgonzola and Pecans

* About 280 grams (10 ounces) of penne
* A huge pot of water
* A small handful of salt
* 1 tablespoon/cucchiaio olive oil
* A small onion, chopped somewhat finely
* A couple of handfuls of coarsely chopped pecans
* 250 grams (8 ounces - a typical package) of Gorgonzola dolce or other mild blue cheese, broken or cut into smallish pieces

Start the pasta water to boil. When the water is boiling, add the salt and the pasta and stir.

In a heavy frying pan, heat the oil, and add the onion, cooking it slowly until it is softened. Add the pecans and stir about to toast and crisp them. Add the broken up cheese to the fried onions and pecans, stirring to melt. Ladle a small amount of the pasta cooking water into the pan to make the sauce creamier. At this point, the pasta should be about done. It should be quite firm. Drain the pasta and toss it into the frying pan, stirring to coat the pasta with the sauce. Taste for salt and correct if necessary. Some cheeses are saltier than others, so you can’t tell ahead whether you’ll need it or not. Serve immediately, smoking hot.

Warning: This is a fast sauce. If it is cooked too long or cooked and reheated it will become lumpy and unpleasant. Gorgonzola piccante is very unpleasant in this sauce.

A fruit salad is nice with this if this pasta dish is your main course. And now let’s send it off to Ruth at Presto Pasta Night. Don’t forget to click into her terrific roundups to see what people all over the world are doing with the nicest noodles.

5 comments November 9th, 2007

More great blogging

Three cheers for Smitten Kitchen. Go have a look at her apple tart post, which is absolutely terrific. It’s accessible to amateurs and beginners, and different enough to appeal to veterans.

Add comment November 9th, 2007

Risotto with Vinegared Pork: First trial

I decided to try something different for a change. As I work through developing a recipe, I thought I would post the versions as they happen, as long as they are good to eat. Tonight I started working on this one. The dish as I ate it at a restaurant called Terra Terra in Florence, was brilliant with flavors and spicy and red as a devil. The waiter told me that vinegaring was one of the ways the old timers used to preserve pork before refrigeration.

I loved that risotto. As eg could tell you, I didn’t want to eat anything else, but went back and had to be cajoled into trying other dishes by being given a free sample of it. I love Italian food, but I miss hit-you-in-the-face strong flavors. They’re rare here.

When starting a new recipe, I always try the simplest things first. Unless you are at a four star restaurant with a dozen or more chefs, most kitchens are taking the simplest route to the end they envision. Besides, this was supposed to be a country dish made by housewives, so I figured simple was good.

This one didn’t quite make it for me. It was good and I feel like I ate well, but my face is still in one piece and it wasn’t red enough, either. I need a couple of ingredients I don’t have in the house.

Iit may be that the original dish would be too strong for you. Maybe you prefer a nicely spicy, but not revolutionary flavor? This version might be just right for you. It wasn’t a failure at being good, it was just not what I ate at Terra Terra. So here it is. It’s easy, cheap and yummy. It isn’t stirred endlessly like normal risotto and it only dirties two pots. That counts for something. It can be either a first course or a main dish.

Risotto with Vinegared Pork
Version One

2 servings

2 ounces lean pork, chopped
strong vinegar to moisten well, any kind

Prepare the pork a day ahead, completely mixing in the vinegar and let marinate in the fridge

2 tablespoons butter
½ onion chopped
½ cup arborio or other risotto rice
1 pint boiling broth
boiling water as needed
½ cup of tomato puree (passata)
1 pinch sugar
1 small pinch cloves
2 pinches of cayenne or peperoncino in polvere
about 1 ounce of pecorino, finely grated

Heat the butter in a pan and sauté the onions until transparent. Add the rice and sauté it until it turns opaque and white. Add all of the broth and stir up. Stir once in a while to prevent sticking, but you don’t have to stand there stirring constantly. Cook it to a stiff risotto consistency rather than creamy. You might need a tablespoon or so of the extra water to get the rice to al dente, just to where there is no crunchiness left. Toward the end, it does need stirring or it will stick.

Add the tomato puree and stir it in. Add the pinch of sugar, cayenne and clove. As it heats, taste for salt. You probably won’t need it.

Dump the water out of the pan you were boiling, and dry the pan. Put just a little olive oil in it, then the pork, and sauté it briefly. It foams, rather than browns, but when it loses its color, it is done. It takes only moments. Stir the pork and vinegar into the risotto. Add the grated pecorino and stir it in. Serve immediately, piping hot.

3 comments November 6th, 2007

Shopping alert: digital scale

There’s a really good scale and a really good sale on for US residents at ekitchens.

They are selling at least one high quality scale that tares and switches from metric to ounces. The good price is even better when you enter the word FALL into the checkout coupon area– 5% off in addition.

You need a scale.

6 comments November 4th, 2007

The recipe whose name shall not be spoken

I’ve just had an odd experience in the kitchen. It started in Florence when my friends and I stumbled into a little and not at all posh restaurant for supper a couple of weeks ago. I don’t even know its name, but I could find it if I had to.

The special of the evening was “fried chicken and vegetables.” Two of us ordered it. What arrived resembled in no manner fried chicken as we knew it. Instead there was a platter for the two of us piled high with something pale, fluffy and crunchy. As we munched through the pile we found small bone-in chunks of chicken, redolent of chicken essence and crisp as rice crackers. Among those and sometimes stuck to them were batons of carrot and zucchini with the same light and crispy crust. It was delicious.

After my friends returned to the USA, I started to think about that chicken. How did they do that? Why was that crust so light and crisp and filled with bubbles? How come that chicken was so juicy, when chicken is so usually over cooked in Italy? I went to the store and bought some chicken. I looked through the flours for rice flour, but there was none. Then I saw the potato starch (fecola di patata) and picked that up. I reckoned that an Italian restaurant was most likely using something you could buy in Italian shops, right?

In the kitchen I made the decision to make just a small amount, because I might have to try several approaches before I found the right batter. I used my heavy Chinese cleaver to chunk up a leg into two pieces, a thigh into three. I scattered a mixture of rosemary, salt, pepper and cayenne over it. I made carrot and zucchini sticks.

Ahhhh, the coating. I tossed about a half cup of corn starch/flour (Maizena) into a bowl, then an equal amount of the potato starch. Why did I use those? Because they have no gluten to toughen the batter. I added some of the seasoning to that, too. Then I gradually added Chinese beer that was lying around until the batter was about the consistency of yogurt. I added enough sparkling water to bring it to the consistency of cream. It would be it, or it wouldn’t.

I made up another bowl of plain flour with more of the seasoning to help the batter stick.

I heated sunflower oil in a small but deep pot, enough to deep fry the chicken pieces. One by one I dipped the chicken pieces into the flour, then into the batter, and then laid them into the hot oil. I turned them once. They almost don’t brown at all, so it’s difficult to know when they’re done, but I winged it — ha ha like a chicken — you can hit me now. When they looked done to me, I took them out and laid them on paper towels. On and on, through the chicken bites, then the vegetables, I fried.

Friends, one of those two starches is the right one. I don’t know which. The chicken and the vegetables were both just delicious, but the coating was a little hard on the edges, not perfectly falling away onto the lip in spicy, crackling shards. I thought to try just corn starch next time.

And then I thought again. This was easy. A person could do this any time a chicken happened by the kitchen counter. I liked it. I liked it too much. Perfecting this chicken might be the dumbest thing I would ever do. Does the world really need another fried chicken recipe? Does my world really need me after eating this every week for a while?

For now, the answer is no. All my clothes but one skirt currently fit. If there is one thing I learned from the ‘Chinese dumplings made easy’ episode, it’s that truly delicious and fattening things that are too easy to make are just perilous. I’ve whipped the dumplings into a once a year treat, I don’t have the character to battle this chicken too.

So go for it. It’s either all potato starch or all corn starch, a bit of beer, a bit of sparkling water. But please don’t invite me.

4 comments November 4th, 2007

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