Fried Chicken Philosophy

Recipes do have their place, especially when baking. However, I would rather try to build up a sense, through experimentation and getting things wrong, of how things should be, what might work with what and so on. This usually means that when I cook in someone else's kitchen, everything catches fire and is raw on the inside. I am capable of making mistakes. With the food on this blog, I try to stay away from measurements, and not just because I am too lazy to write them down.

This approach is most apparent in my fried chicken recipe. The batter is never the same. Sometimes it's REALLY spicy and although it's generally crispy, it does vary. This means that when it all comes together it's a unique and special moment when the stars align - a testament to the impermanence of human (and chicken) existence. I like things this way, although if I failed more often than succeeded I might feel different.

So, here are a few things that can go into fried chicken batter, many of them came out of an intensely chicken orientated period of my life when I became obsessed with replicating the colonel's secret recipe without the animal welfare issues.

Possible ingredients:

Corn flour, rice flour and bread flour mixed.
Garlic powder, ginger powder, cayenne pepper, chili powder, mustard powder.
Salt, pepper, baking powder, a small amount of sugar.
Mixed herbs of various types.

I've heard that "the colonel" soaks his chicken overnight in monosodium glutamate enhanced water to lock in moisture and artificial flavour. This most likely libel, however I can't imagine it wouldn't taste good. A soak in water for half an hour may or may not keep the chicken extra moist.

Coat the chicken in corn flour and spices - lots of spices - I find this helps secure the spicy flavour without getting lost in the batter. The corn flour layer seems to seal in the moisture of the chicken. Next comes the batter. I make the batter by mixing together half and half corn flour and normal flour with everything else - enough spices and herbs that you can see they're there. I add water until I get a consistency that is gloopy enough to leave a good layer on the chicken, but still clearly a liquid. The gloopiness factor of the batter determines how thick the batter is when its sitting on the chicken - but go too gloopy and you'll end with with doughy chicken. This requires experimentation.

When I was young, I would add more water, then add more flour then add more water, constantly overshooting the sweet spot, resulting in many kilograms of batter. The key is that when you mix in the flour or water, it takes a while to reach where it's going.

Sugar is a new addition to the recipe. If you like things super crispy bordering on hard, put a bit more sugar in, perhaps up to two teaspoons for 12 pieces of chicken. The sugar seems to caramelise for a very durable crunch that survives even in the fridge.

To cook a million pieces of chicken, which is roughly how many we eat, we get a production line going dipping the battered chicken in a deep fat fryer for a minute or less, just enough to harden the batter so it no longer drips. After that, they all go on a wire rack or two to be cooked in the oven - quite hot, around 200 degrees, for about half an hour usually does it, but it's quite forgiving. Poke with a sharp stick and see what colour the chicken juice is to know that it's cooked.

Smoked meat sandwich from Quebec

There are signs all over French Canada proclaiming smoked meat. They are not inaccurate. This sandwich had two types of meat, I think beef and ham, with mustard on lightly toasted bread. It was cut very thinly, but built up in many layers. I need to become friends with the ham slicing lady in the single remaining unpretentious butchers in London (in Chrisp St market, tower hamlets). In fact, I need to visit her today.

Gnocchi with spinach and mozzarella

Clearly I need to work on my presentation, and I've also got a bit to learn about choosing steak too I think. This one was a bit chewy. However, put some toasted pine nuts, spinach , mozzarella and parsley on some gnocchi and you can't go far wrong.

Fish kettle

It's possible to rent a fish kettle from Morrisons, among other places, in which a whole salmon can be poached. Cut it to size before it's cooked to avoid flicking boiling hot fish sauce everywhere. Just so you know.

Poutine

This is poutine, it's cheese curds on fries covered in gravy. It looks terrible, but it makes death by malnutrition an impressive feat in Canada. The cheese curds are soft but squeaky, like halloumi cheese is squeaky. No one I was travelling with really liked it, apart from me, but we did get served a variation made with spinach and paneer cheese on fries which was very popular. So the take home message is, get some fries, get some cheese that retains its shape when heated, put said cheese on said fries with some sort of gravy out curry like sauce and eat. Sell it on street corners in Shoreditch at 1am and you'll clean up.

Toast, thick cut ham and egg

This blog is partly a catalogue to browse, so I feel I should include the basics. As if I could ever forget...

Beef rolled round spinach and cheese

I can't even remember where I saw this but when I did, I thought, "what a good idea"... I've got a cast iron skillet with grill pan ridges coming in the post from Amazon. My sister recently demonstrated that a cast iron ridged pan is the only way to cook steak, so I'll be interested to find out how my £7.50 offering fares against the ostentatious le creuset. Probably we'll be about even after I've seasoned it over a couple of years. Hmmm.

A Declaration

I like to cook food, but not as much as I like to eat food. When I don't have anything else to do, I cook food and then I eat food, and then I feel better. However, there is a lot of food in the world, so much so that I am unable to hold all that food in my mind at once. So when the ennui of a Sunday mid afternoon knaws at my soul, and the Sunday afternoon panic buying in Tescos reaches fever pitch, I will not need to exercise my imagination to decide what food to cook. I will refer to this blog with its handy labels and Google (TM) powered search function, and I will cast out the hollow ache of the human condition, and replace it with food of the highest calibre.