MISCHIEF IN THE KITCHEN

September 18th, 2008

Liz: This week was by far our best yet. Fried chicken, braised red cabbage with bacon, creamy polenta with cheese, and wild mushroom gravy, and chocolate truffles. Now my grandmother taught me how to fry chicken when I was barely tall enough to reach the top of the stove, and since her fried chicken was, hands down, the best chicken that has ever been fried, I tend not to mess with that. Nonetheless, we decided, in the spirit of trying new things, to try a chicken recipe out of a cookbook. The recipe called for soaking the chicken in buttermilk, then breading it in flour with salt and pepper. Try as we do to keep to the recipe, this just seemed blander than even Texas Pete might be able to fix. So, I added a healthy dose of cayenne to the flour. Now that might have been fine, if Scott had not also, without mentioning it, done the same. We did not realize this until we were eating, and Laura started drinking a lot of water and AJ's eyes started watering. I will say though, that the chicken was GOOD. Not my grandmother's, but GOOD. But the real story from last week was the mushroom sauce. The mushroom sauce didn't sound like much- mushrooms, sherry, cream, shallots, and some other stuff that I don't remember because I have had a Magic Hat while I am writing this. Probably we shouldn't ponder the mushroom sauce too much, since most things are better if they retain a certain degree of mystery. Suffice it to say that the sauce ended up velvety (after some not-called-for in the recipe cornstarch), earthy (wild mushrooms), and tasting vaguely of the inside of a barrel of really good liquor (the sherry, improbably). It was amazing and we suggest you go make a batch of it and pour it over top of whatever you have handy. Chicken, grits, cardboard, whatever.
Lastly, just a few words about the truffles- made first, eaten last. The truffles consisted of bittersweet chocolate, cream, and cognac. It is impossible to go wrong with an ingredient list like that. Like the key lime pie of a few weeks ago, the truffles can be consumed at any stage in their preparation. We decided to buy cheap sherry and expensive cognac. I don't know how much of a difference this made, but AJ ended up drinking everyone's cognac 'cause it was a little on the strong side and when Scott and I drink things like that we tend to fall down. Of course, if we didn't drink shots out of votive candle holders we might have less trouble with that...




September 25th, 2008

Liz: So Laura and I were on vacation this week, which meant that instead of cooking, Scott ORDERED PIZZA. Apparently it was the Domino's meat lover's. I ABSOLUTELY consider anything involving pepperoni to be a nasty mess, so it is no wonder that this happened in my absence. We all missed the kitchen chaos though, so next week we are going to do a huge number of breakfast items...for dinner.