Fried Chicken...third times the charm!

"Ever thought about losing it
When your money's all gone and you lose your whip
You might lose your grip when the landlord tell ya that you're due for rent
And the grass so green on the other side
Make you wanna run straight through the fence
Open up the fridge 'bout twenty times
But still can't find no food in it
That's foolishness"

B.O.B. ft. T. Swift "Both of Us"

Maybe I've watched Soul Food one or one hundred times too many, but frying chicken seems a staple act for anyone hoping to hold their own around the kitchen.  And cooking good fried chicken! that elevates you to kitchen goddess status.  Now, I never said that you have to like fried chicken or eat it (for us dieters out there! - just kidding, just earlier today I read an article about why no person should ever eat fried food ever again, a lot of good use that was.) But really, frying edible chicken without lighting the house on fire is a serious goal of mine, which I achieved today! Well kind of. 

Now if you account for my living in Massachusetts and being a wicked New Englander of sorts, I can cook a hearty potato-based meal and maybe even whip up a pie if I'm feeling lucky that day (probably only apple or blueberry). But fried foods of a delicious home-cooked nature just don't make it to the menu for the most part. You can call it calorie counting, but somehow I doubt that is it. If I could only admit to you the number of times per week we eat take-out, you would know what I mean. 

I've been trying to get better about cooking the things that we buy. It seems like a really difficult concept, I know. BUT WERE ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE ABOUT IT! No matter how many groceries I buy I find that one of us is always running to the store for something - milk, cookies, ben&jerry's (understandably). It absolutely has to stop. I am pretty sure they are starting to know us by name at the BigY. So what is a cheap solution to getting some protein and satisfying your carnivore boyfriend? Chicken. And the best thing about chicken is that if you slather it in enough of whatever you have on hand, it almost always covers up whatever botched effort you've exerted. 

So this week I've attempted chicken three ways: 

1. chicken with garlic and herb spice rub

2. chicken with peach pomegranate jam

3. extra-crispy fried chicken

See! Its all chicken but I've added some variety! However I bet there is already a blog called apoorpersonsguidetothekitchen. I wish I had thought of that sooner. If I don't ever find a real job and have to convert to full-time blog writing and homemaking or whatever you call it these days, I'll be sure to start that blog. Don't steal it! dibs. 

1. chicken with garlic and herb spice rub: seemingly straightforward enough. First I read about this in one of my kitchen bibles: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. And it sounds easy enough! But early on I made a fatal mistake - I used my cast iron. Now I love my cast iron pans but WARNING: know your pots and pans. I mean really get to know them. And not over a bottle of wine because that always seems to go wrong for me. I can't ever get the heating right with the cast iron, so like many times before I turn the burner on and the whole thing becomes a roaring inferno of chicken killing madness. But it is too late because by the time I notice I've already sent my poor garlic and herb spice rub covered chicken breasts into the fire. And they cook! they do cook. Just not evenly, or without filling my entire apartment with enough smoke to ensure someone in the neighborhood could call the fire department. 

2. chicken with peach pomegranate jam: we had such good intentions for this particular dish. The chicken was actually Ethan's job on this particular night. And he, like myself only a few days earlier, foolishly chose the cast iron. I didn't even warn him! Evil of me really... However he chose our cast iron grill-pan, the one with the little grates at the bottom so you can have grill marks and cook inside? So he slathers the chicken breasts in this jam (a good start, for sure), heats up the pan with oil and throws them in... and then he works on his computer while I've gone to the store to pick up cookies. When I get home there is smoke coming through the windows and we are now having blackened chicken with peach pomegranate jam. We both ate it but after I ruined the potatoes and spilled my glass of milk on the carpet, I cried a little.

3. extra-crispy fried chicken: and now for our success story! I followed the recipe exactly and used our regular-non-stick-eco-friendly-handy-dandy frying pan. Dredge in flour, dredge in egg, dredge in breadcrumbs (seasoned). Fry in heated pan with 1 TBS oil, 1 TBS butter (don't skimp). I even did a test run, turned up the heat and then fried the rest. Serve with honey mustard whipped with extra honey. Yay!

Unemployment Bread

My whole week is unemployment themed, as August sets in and I've yet again been been turned down for full-time work. So I've been participating in unemployment-baking, unemployment-crafts and unemployment-spackling the holes we've accidentally put in the walls since we've moved in to our apartment. This isn't to say that I'm not working, exactly. I fill in hours here and there at the college where I am temporarily employed as extra help and hire myself out as a lifeguard wherever there is need this week or that week. And these things are great, they pay the bills and that's about all I can really ask. But they can vary week to week and that leaves me, at home, a lot.

So my take on unemployment bread is that you can't use any ingredients you don't already have in the house (or that you can't borrow from your super-great neighbor). This whole thing was spurred by my wonderfully oblivious-to-the-fantastic-world-of-flours boyfriend, who brought me home unbleached bread flour instead of unbleached all-purpose. Worse things have happened, and in this case, it couldn't have worked out better. And although it is still summer, and bread-making seems so much more appropriate during the cool days and nights of early fall, this is New England and it was really fricken cold last night.

I could have made some simple white or wheat bread (not to suggest any part of bread making is really simple, it is much more of an art) but I have a hard time prompting Ethan to eat a whole loaf of something that is essentially... just bread. So in my pre-baking research I stumble across this beauty: Dill Bread (via smittenkitchen.com) and adapted from my other kitchen-must-have, Joy of Cooking. And although it sounds really delicious, I made it mostly since I knew there was a half-eaten container of cottage cheese in the back of the fridge. And really any bread recipe that calls for cottage cheese is okay in my book.

The best part of this bread is that it looks and smells absolutely wonderful. The dill+red onion combination is really a thing of beauty. The addition of honey and wheat germ gives it a sweet/nutty undertone. And aside from that, its a pretty standard yeast-bread: knead, wait, deflate, wait, bake.