It was such a relief to find that der Brucer was writing about real chicken. He wouldn't let me look over his shoulder while he was writing his post. (If he had, there wouldn't have been as many typos, but that's something else again.
)
When it comes to fried chicken, I've been having very good luck with
Alton Brown's recipe. I admit, the first time I tried it I didn't have any buttermilk on hand, but I did have some plain yogurt, which I thinned with milk, and it came out fairly good that way, but it works better with buttermilk.
Chicken, it seems, goes with practically everything flavorwise. It would probably even go well with jelly beans, although I haven't tried it yet. But there is one thing chicken does not go well with, and that is der Brucer's daughter, who will not eat chicken under any circumstances. It's a food phobia, impossible to explain and irritating as hell. Once, when der Brucer was cooking dinner for her family (I wasn't there, this is from his report), he was serving something totally innocent like pork chops with Stove Top Stuffing. The store was out of pork flavored stuffing, however, so he bought chicken flavor instead. The conniption fit she threw when she discovered that it was chicken flavor stuffing was frightening, to say the least. "I can't eat that, it has CHICKEN in it!" Has anyone ever explained to this demented lassie that most canned soups have chicken stock in them? That eggs come from chickens? That chicken is used in all sorts of processed foods, and that the only way to avoid chicken entirely is to prepare dinners from scratch, which would be healthier for her to try but she's too lazy?
Sheesh!That's one reason I can't wait to get to the East Coast, so that I can teach her two sons what real food, and real chicken, tastes like. Food is not something to be afraid of, it should be embraced...well, metaphorically speaking, the laundry bills get hefty when the embracing is actual.
