All American meal: Fried chicken and Baked Alaska

I hosted a few friends for dinner last night, and I used the gathering as another opportunity to cook something new as well as eat something for the first time. Fried chicken is not an entirely new experience since almost every meat eating American has had fried chicken either homemade or in the form of chicken nuggets or chicken tenders. However, I have never fried my own chicken, and I wanted to make the type of fried chicken with a thick and crispy coating, similar to the coating on chicken fried steak. I turned again to Mark Bittman, who had a fried chicken recipe called Fried Chicken that Reaps Superlatives; who could refuse to try a recipe with a title like that?
Indeed this fried chicken recipe is genius. I'm a fried chicken amateur, (so this might be common knowledge to experienced southern/fry cooks) but making a thick paste of onions, parsley, tahini, and olive oil and then dredging the chicken in flour is the trick to a thick crispy coating. Double dredging the chicken is not enough. The usual egg and milk mixture that I use to fry okra is too wimpy to keep the flour glued to the chicken while it fries in hot oil. The paste creates the thick coating and thus delectable fried chicken.

After dredging the chicken in the paste and then the flour, and repeating these steps, the chicken is fried in about 1/2 inch of hot oil. My best advice is to use chicken thighs because the meat stays more moist during the frying process. In the case of this fried chicken, the best directions are to follow the Mark Bittman recipe and watch the Minimalist video to get an idea of how think the paste should be and how long to cook the chicken so it still retains its tenderness and moisture.



The second part of the meal that was totally foreign and new to me was Baked Alaska. I originally thought Baked Alaska was a savory dish involving salmon and heaps mayonnaise; the type of recipe published in woman's magazines in the 1960's, aimed at Betty Friedan's target audience whose main concern was feeding the men of the greatest generation. Apparently Baked Alaska is actually a mountain of sugar encased in a layer of meringue. My friend who came to dinner brought the components of the dessert: brownie, butter pecan ice cream, and eggs.
The dinner guests worked in shifts beating the the egg whites by hand until they peaked, and then the Baked Alaska was assembled. As one dinner guest commented, "Ice cream. Alaska. I get it. That's stupid." I can't think of a reason that this dish is called Baked Alaska except for the presence of ice cream and and the finished product is a large white mass.

The final verdict: Baked Alaska is a pretty good dinner trick--pure Americana and tasty in the right combination of cake, ice cream, and meringue. However, I don't know if I'll be making this on my own. I'd much rather my friends come over again and make it for me.

(Valentine's Day?) Chai Truffles

At the end of January I said I would spend February blogging Mark Bittman Minimalist recipes. Though my original intention remains, the opportunity to make my own chocolate presented itself and I could not ignore such an occassion. Really, the spirit of the Minimalist is making cooking easier than you think it is and then pushing yourself to cook things you would not usually cook. Hence homemade the pasta, the truffles in this post, and the next blog post, fried chicken.

I have a killer sweet tooth...one that will probably kill me through either diabetes or choking on a piece of hazelnut in a chocolate bar when I'm seventy. As I have stated earlier, I am not a great baker and as I learned last night, I'm also not a great confectioner, but I did have fun making the truffles. The truffle making process was too sticky, too messy, and did not yield (in my opinion) a very aesthetically pleasing product. Though, I have to give a shout out to my boyfriend, he is an excellent truffle maker and ended up rolling up most of the truffles and certainly made all the pretty ones.

The idea to make these truffles came from my boss who wanted to make them herself but didn't have the time. She kindly provided me with the spices required for this recipe, so I could make these truffles as a Valentine's day treat for my lab. I was intrigued by this recipe, because I only recently learned how to make authentic chai tea. Chai tea, for those who have only ordered it at Starbucks, is black tea simmered with a combination of aromatic spices that usually includes cinnamon, fennel seed, ginger, cardamom pods, and cloves. Using the same spice and tea mixture with a base of chocolate appealed to my taste buds.

Chai Truffles (adapted from the Washington Post)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons loose black tea leaves (I accidentally used green tea; it tasted fine)
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
10 whole cloves
10 whole green cardamom pods
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
1 pound dark chocolate, if you can't find dark just buy unsweetened
about 1/2 cup cocoa powder, mixed with a few tablespoons of cinnamon for rolling the truffles

1. Coarsely chop the pound of chocolate. Then run the knife through it a few times so it has a shaved consistency. Place all the chocolate in a large mixing bowl.

2. In a small sauce pan combine the heavy cream, tea, cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom pods, fennel seeds, and salt. Break open the cardamom pods (I wrap them in a paper towel and then hit them with a ladle a few times) and break the cinnamon sticks in half before adding them; this allows the spices to release more of their flavor.

3. Cook mixture over medium heat until bubbles from at the edges where the cream meets with the pot. Remove from heat, cover the pot, and let the mixture steep for 30 minutes.
4. The simple directions are to return the saucepan to medium heat, add the butter and stir until it has melted. Only cook the cream mixture until it is heated through and bubbles have formed around the edge of of the sauce pan. Strain the cream and spice mixture through a fine mesh strainer into the bowl with chocolate. Discard the spices in the strainer and use a spatula to stir the chocolate until it is smooth.

(While those are the general directions, I found that the tea leaves had actually absorbed about 1/8 cup of cream. First, I strained the cream mixture into a measuring cup so I could ascertain how much liquid I had lost and also get rid of the bulk of the spice debris. I then added more cream to bring the total liquid volume back to 1 1/2 cups, poured it back into the sauce pan, added the butter to melt, heated the cream through, and then strained the cream again when I poured it over the chopped chocolate.)

5. Add all of the cream at once and the chocolate will start to melt immediately. Use a spatula to fold the cream and chocolate together, and stir the cream and chocolate until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

6. Place the bowl in the refrigerator; stir the chocolate every twenty minutes until the chocolate stiffens enough to roll into truffles. The hardening process should take about an hour or a bit longer.
7. To prepare for the truffles: Line a baking sheet with wax paper. Mix together the cocoa powder and cinnamon and spread it on a plate.
8. The mixture is ready when it is hard enough that a spoon stands up independently, but still soft enough to mold into a shapes. With a tablespoon, scoop out a chunk of chocolate and use your hands to roll it into a ball. When you're satisfied with the shape, roll the ball in the plate of cocoa powder. Place the truffle on the baking sheet to set. Repeat until all the chocolate is used.

Fresh Pasta for everyone!

Before January 7^th, I never had any inclination to make my own pasta. My exposure to fresh pasta was limited to visiting Filomena's Ristorante in Georgetown and watching the ladies in the entrance window roll out fresh pasta dough into noodles and then later buying freshly made pasta from Vace, the Italian deli in Cleveland Park. But Mark Bittman did it again. His column nudged me toward another new and exciting cooking adventure that I probably would not have tried without his video guidance. Just like I fell in love with Brussels sprouts one cold winter night in 2009, this winter I have fallen for fresh pasta made in the food processor. Based on my successful pasta making experiences of Friday and Monday night, I pledge to (hopefully) never buy dried lasagna noodles again.

I used to avoid making my own dough by telling myself I wasn’t a baker. I am not a baker: I lack the patience and attention to detail required to be an exceptional baker. I do, however, make excellent pizza dough and now pasta dough and whose success is solely due to The Food Processor. For me the hardest part of making dough is sufficiently incorporating the butter or water into the flour to create the small doughy particles that eventually get kneaded together to make the dough ball. Yet with the food processor fresh pasta from flour to noodle in about an hour...I promise I wouldn't lie to you.

Pasta in the Rough: Fresh Pasta from Mark Bittman

Ingredients:

2 cups flour, plus more for coating the dough and rolling it out

1 teaspoon of salt

3 egg yolks

2 eggs

2 tablespoons water

1. Add the flour and salt to the food processor bowl. Pulse a few times to combine.

2. Add the egg yolks and eggs. Pulse a few times at 10 seconds intervals.

The dough should be a light yellow color and beginning to form tiny, dry dough particles.

3. With the blade spinning, slowly add the 2 tablespoons of water through the plunger hole.

At this point, the dough should start to stick together with a slightly darker yellow appearance.

4. If much of the dough is sticking to the walls of the food processor, add a few tablespoons of flour and pulse again.

5. Remove the dough from the bowl and form a ball. Coat the the ball in flour so it doesn't stick to all surfaces.

6. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. It can rest in the refrigerator up to 24 hours.

7. Place a pot of water to boil while you wait. (It doesn't have to be large. Because the pasta cooks so quickly, I found it easier to cook the pasta in small batches.)

8. After the 30 minutes have passed, with a knife cut the dough ball into four parts.

9. Using a rolling pin (or a wine bottle works in a pinch) roll out one of the dough quarters into a thin sheet.

For pasta that will be sauced and served, try to roll the dough out to one eighth of an inch. For lasagna noodles, roll out the dough to one fourth of an inch. Keep in mind the pasta expands a bit while it cooks.

10. Use a knife to cut the pasta sheet into either squares, rectangles, or large sheets. Drop the pasta a few pieces at a time into boiling water, and remove it as soon as the pasta floats back to the top of the pot--about 1 to 2 minutes.

The cooked product.

The final product, one topped with red sauce and meatballs, the with basil pesto.