Fried Chicken with a Side of Humor

The food writer Laurie Colwin once wrote, “As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry a chicken correctly.  Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong.”

I have eaten more fried chicken than a person should admit to and I ensure you I am not one of those people in a poultry bubble.  Fried chicken may sound like a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  And it is, once you are done.

It requires an acute attention span to the most mundane of tasks.  Mostly you will be plunging thighs and breasts (not yours) in and out of a bath of bubbling oil.  Let your mind wander too far for too long and you will have burnt outsides without surrendering the possibility of raw insides.  The temperature must be fastidiously manned.

It is also hard to pass the time with a cocktail in hand.  At least part of your dexterity will be devoted to dredging and shaking chicken parts.  A straw can help with this.  But if the thought of drinking your Chablis through a tube does not move you, I suggest a tiki drink.

This recipe is adapted from one published in the The Times from 2015 and provides the framework for a crispy, salty crust and juicy meat.  The original instructions were for cold fried chicken from chef Gabrielle Hamilton, of Prune in New York City. But it seemed a shame to go through all that work only to delay enjoyment. 

I prefer it hot anyway. Though it is good as cold leftovers too, as promised.  I also cut the salt way back.  It was edible, but brackish on the first attempt.

It holds up to some of the best fried chicken I have had, which includes the versions found at State Park and Prairie Whale, as well as the kind my friends, David and Justin, brought to a picnic a few years ago. All mentioned parties have a good sense of humor, which I believe is also necessary for great fried chicken.

While fried things have a reputation for being unkind to the body, this chicken is fine to have so long as you do not make it a weekly occurrence.  Besides, many of us may be in need of mediation by way of fried chicken given recent political events.

It is the kind, as Colwin says, that makes you “want to stand up and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”  Which is good because we will likely need all the help we can get this year. 

Superlative Fried Chicken

Adapted from The New York Times and Gabrielle Hamilton, of Prune

Ingredients:

for the soak

• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• ½ tsp ground black pepper
• legs and wings of 2 whole chickens (or 3 pounds of chicken thighs), see notes

for the dredging and frying

• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp plus 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 scant tbsp kosher salt
• 1½ tbsp ground black pepper
• 4 to 6 cups of canola or peanut oil (enough to come 3 inches up a deep bottomed pot)

Instructions:

the day before

Cut up your whole chickens, if using. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients for the soak and add in the chicken pieces, tossing to coat. Refrigerate overnight.

the day of

In a large bowl, mix the flour, turmeric, salt, and pepper.  Set a cooling rack over a sheet pan. (You may also want to prepare another rack set above a sheet pan for later.)

In a large dutch oven or high sided pot, add the oil.  Heat on medium to medium high heat.  If you have a deep fat thermometer (which I highly recommend), attach it to the inside edge of the pot.

Remove the chicken pieces from the buttermilk mixture, allowing the excess liquid to drip off.  Drop each piece into the flour mixture and toss to coat.

Shake off the excess flour and set the dredged chicken on the prepared rack.  Repeat until all chicken is well coated.

Once the oil reaches 325 degrees (specks of flour should sizzle when dropped in), carefully place three or four chicken pieces in the oil.  Fry until just shy of golden. Let rest on a second (clean) cooking rack set over a sheet pan. (During this process, adjust the heat as needed to maintain the temperature.)

Once all the chicken has been fried, skim off any flour bits in the oil and raise the heat to reach 350 degrees. 

Fry the pieces again until they are deep golden brown. (Again, adjusting the heat as needed to maintain the temperature.)

Drain on a rack until all pieces have been fried.

Makes enough for four to six humans

Notes:

1. I have tried using chicken thighs versus cutting up two whole chickens into eight pieces (wings, drumettes, drumsticks, and thighs) and preferred the whole chicken method.  If you prefer this as well, set the breasts aside for another use.
2. You will want to use good quality turmeric here too, or it may impart an off taste.

Soup Trumps Hate (Spicy Lamb Soup with Whole Wheat Dumplings)

Don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do.  My mother—a Republican, teacher, and badass lady told me that.

This election has been brutal and America needs a hug.  It is clear many Americans were hurting and took their anger into the voting booths.  They heard someone say we need to fix Washington, attack Wall Street, protect the working class, make America great again.

It sounded good.

But I am making therapeutic rebuttal.  I am tossing in some documented facts.  Then I am making soup.

Trump has threatened our First Amendment.  Remember that one?  The one that protects freedom of the press?  Defends freedom of religion? Safeguards freedom of speech?  Anyone? 

He has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country and a relaxation of libel laws that help the press safely do their job.  (Trump has sued, and lost, on similar libel suits in the past.)  It is questionable whether he could actually get such laws passed as president.  But it is still scary.

He has bullied throughout his campaign—calling people dummies, dopes, losers, grubby, stupid, and boring.  In fact, there is a list of over 280 people, places, and things he has insulted ranging from Fox News to a podium in the Oval Office to Samuel L. Jackson. (He did not like the actor’s golf swing—“not athletic” enough for the fast food-eating golf course owner.)

He has vowed to decrease the Environmental Protection Agency (proposed by Nixon) and dismantle laws intended to ensure clean water and air.  He wants to give more regulatory power to the states, because it worked so well in Flint, Michigan, presumably.

Yet, he has already started to include the special interests he campaigned against into his White House transition team.  Lobbyists from the oil and gas industry.  Economists from Wall Street—remember Bear Stearns?

He has threatened the foundation on which our country was built. He has said things you would scold your seven-year-old from repeating.  He has bragged about sexually assaulting women. He does not represent the workingman.

He was given a million dollars from his father to help start his empire and admits this, but records from the eighties show additional loans from him totaling 14 million.  Then again, he also managed to go bankrupt and not pay his taxes—which should raise eyebrows.  A self-touted entrepreneurial billionaire who has not given back to his country and now vows to make it great again? This is the stuff snake oil is made of.

But, like it or not, he will be our president. So what can we do?

As Garrison Keillor advises, we liberals can go drink craft beers, grow heirloom tomatoes, and meditate. That all sounds pretty good.

But we can also try to smile more walking down the street. Hold elevator doors open. Bake cookies for neighbors. Be better role models.  Continue to read newspapers. We can support local businesses. We can increase our NPR donations. We can make soup.

The soup I am discussing today comes from watching an ex-boyfriend—a hunter and The New York Times reader—make a soup he learned from some Buddhists he once cooked with on the Cape. I hope I am remembering the story correctly. I never really understood why Buddhists would include a pound of ruminant flesh in their recipe, but, if I am being honest, I think the addition is important.

The soup is spicy and flavorful—owing its depth, in part, to an aromatic dose of garlic, ginger, and hot pepper.  The mushrooms are just as important as the meat.  Plus the homemade whole wheat pasta dumplings are laid-back in preparation and therapeutic to make in times like these.  It has remained one of my favorite recipes, despite its peculiar origins. And it seems particularly consequential to share a few days after an election that has deeply divided the country.

We cannot change that we elected a con man.  But as Bill Maher said Friday night, in reference to the half of the country that did not support Trump, “we’re still here.”

And we are bringing soup.

Spicy Lamb Soup with Whole Wheat Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 2 to 4 tbsp olive oil
• salt, throughout the cooking process
• 1 pound stew meat (I prefer lamb), cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 onion, diced
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 habanero, minced (see notes)
• 8 to 10 cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1 to 2 cups peeled and chopped daikon (about 1 large)
• 1 bunch bok choy, stems and leaves, diced
• ¾ cup whole wheat or spelt flour
• ½ bunch (about 2 handfuls) fresh greens (e.g. baby spinach or kale, arugula, escarole)

Instructions:

Heat a large dutch oven (or sauce pot with a lid) on medium high heat, add a few generous glugs of olive oil. Salt and add the stew meat and let sit for a few minutes without disturbing it (like you are searing it). Once the meat has a nice brown crust on the underside, stir it briefly and cook another minute or so; take it out of the pan and place in a small bowl.

To the pot, add the onion and cook about two minutes or until it starts to soften; add the ginger, garlic, and pepper, season with salt, and cook until softened (another minute or two).  Add the mushrooms and cook a minute more; add the tomato and stir.

Add nine cups of water and the meat, plus any juices left in the bowl.  Season again with salt and cook on medium to medium high heat. When the liquid starts to simmer, add the daikon.  When it comes to rolling boil, add the bok choy; reduce the heat to a simmer and cover mostly with a lid (leave a little space to let some steam escape); cook for about 45 minutes .

After letting the soup cook, in a small bowl combine the flour with a small amount of water (add about a tablespoon or two at a time).  You want just enough water to form a stiff, somewhat dry pasta dumpling dough (it should be the texture of dry silly putty). Knead the dough with your hands like you would Play-Doh to help it come together; ultimately, it should hold together and not crumble.

Pinch off a piece of dough a little smaller than a golf ball and roll the piece into a log about ½ inch thick.  Then pinch off a piece of the log about the size of a fingernail.  Place the piece on the palm of your hand and press down and away from you and slightly up, so it spreads and curls into a shell shape.  Do this over the soup and let the piece fall directly into the cooking pot.  Proceed shaping the dough in this manner moving down the log as you go.  Repeat with the remaining dough.  (Throughout the process the soup should remain at a low simmer.)

Once all the dough is in the pot, simmer uncovered for 45 minutes more or until the pasta is fully cooked (it will expand), the meat softens, and the broth turns rich in color.  (You may need to turn the heat up a bit if it seems to be taking too long.)

In the soup’s final moments, toss in the greens to wilt them (though if I have escarole I like to add it a bit sooner). Taste and aggressively season.

Makes about 4 quarts

Notes:

1. A hallmark of this stew is its spiciness, but you can tone it down by switching to a serrano pepper and removing its seeds.
2. Aggressively season throughout the cooking process and again at the end.  (It will taste like dishwater unless you add enough salt.)
3. You can fish the meat out at the end, shred it into little pieces, and then return it to the soup, but I am usually lazy when it comes to this sort of thing.

Mapo Minus the Tofu

Brett and I went to Mission Chinese on East Broadway in New York City last January, just after it opened.  I suspect they have worked out the kinks since then because people seem to love it, but we had a terrible meal that night.

I had heard their mapo tofu was not to be missed.  Even after a ropy lamb shank and weird coconut cocktail that was on its way to becoming pudding, the tofu was the biggest let down.  Brett was skeptical on pressed soy to begin with—and still is. But I had the misplaced confidence that with enough pork and beef fat we could change all that.

Ours came so salty that it was barely edible and laced with enough Sichuan pepper that to this day it still elicits numb tongue jokes.  For two people who will eat pretty much anything you put in front of them, the mapo went unfinished. 

After that, I was inspired to make the dish myself.  Though it took some months to revisit.  It was enough time for Lucky Peach to publish a few recipes on mapo—including the Mission Chinese version with a suspiciously miniscule amount of Sichuan pepper.

I suspect their recipe is actually quite good and the kitchen was likely still finding its groove that night.  But I settled on another recipe from Han Dynasty in Philly, which ended up being incredibly delicious.  

It has been adapted and tailored a great deal since then, mostly due to my low energy search for doubanjiang.  And my contempt for chili oil made using cheap soybeans.  And my habit of keeping chicken stock frozen, so it cannot lend itself to impulse or whim.  And our coupled indifference towards tofu, which I am ashamed to admit as a healthcare professional, was phased out altogether.

Turns out, the dish is quite good solely with beef—I often use ground veal because I can get a quasi-local source—or pork. I may try adding back some soy in the form of edamame.  But in the meantime, the recipe remains heretically tofu free.

It still feels like a fairly wholesome dish—and a fairly fast one to recreate, perfect for a Friday night supper. The healthy dose of aromatics in the form of ginger, garlic, and leek is crucial, as is the Sichuan pepper. But the amount of oil originally called for in the recipe is not.  I jettisoned a half cup so we could eat it more regularly as a lighter meal.

I doubt the cooks at Han Dynasty would recognize the recipe.  But to quote Lucky Peach, “the mapo tofu galaxy is one of infinite possibilities, spiraling outward from an originally spicy, oily, numbing, meaty sauce/stew of Sichuan origin.”

This is one meaty mission I can get behind, with just the right level of numb tongue.

Mapo Veal

Inspired by Han Dynasty courtesy of Lucky Peach #15: The Plant Kingdom

Ingredients:

• 3 to 4 large cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp minced fresh peeled ginger
• 1 leek, white and light green parts well cleaned, split lengthwise, and thinly sliced
• 1½ to 2 cups uncooked white rice (see notes)
• ¼ cup canola oil
• 2 tbsp chili garlic sauce (such as Huy Fong)
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• ½ pound ground veal (or regular beef or pork or lamb)
• 1 tbsp fermented black bean paste
• 1 tbsp gochujang (Korean chili sauce)
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp ground Sichuan pepper
• Optional garnish: chopped cilantro

Instructions:

Make sure your garlic, ginger, and leeks are prepped and ready to go. 

In a medium saucepan, add the rice and 1½ times the quantity of rice of water.  (For instance, add 3 cups of water to 2 cups of rice.) Stir and bring to a boil uncovered, then reduce the heat to low and cover.  Cook for about 15 minutes or until the water is absorbed and the rice is fully cooked.  (Turn off the burner and keep the lid on for 5 to 10 minutes after the rice has finished cooking—the rice can sit longer, if necessary, while the sauce comes together.)

While the rice is cooking, heat a large saucepan on medium high heat, add the oil and the garlic and ginger; sauté until softened, about 2 minutes.  Stir in the chili sauce and then the hoisin.

Add in the ground meat, breaking it up with a spoon.  Cook for about 30 to 60 seconds, stirring occasionally, and then add in the leeks and cook another 60 seconds or so.  Stir in the black bean paste and gochujang. Add in 2 cups of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. 

In a small bowl, make a cornstarch slurry with 3 tablespoons of cold water. Add in the slurry and let the mixture simmer about 5 minutes, or until it thickens slightly.  (It should look like a thick chili.)

Stir in the Sichuan pepper.  Serve on top of rice with cilantro, if desired.

Makes enough for 4 to 5 humans

Notes:

1. I typically prefer basmati rice and this case is no exception.  The rice to water ratio may vary slightly depending on the type of rice you use. (I left a range for the rice, the resultant portion should be just enough for the sauce.)
2. This would also be great with noodles instead of rice.