Southern Comforts

When I woke up this morning the smell of fried chicken was still lingering around, like the happy feeling from having family here on the weekend.

Tony and Alison were up again from Bonn and a weekend routine we have become very fond of enfolded. They arrive on Friday evening for a dinner prepared by Jan (this time couscous and lamb). Saturday develops around some cooking project hosted by Tony. In the evenings we watch the second season of Veronica Mars and miss Rosy.

Cooking with Tony and Alison these past months has broadened my culinary horizons. I especially enjoyed making American pumpkin pie, dashi (Japanese stock) and watching Tony make soy milk and tofu from scratch.

This weekend was great too. A blog inspired us to make southern fried chicken. Another great learning experience – and tasty too. I was amazed by the thick, crispy crust made by dredging the chicken pieces in flour and buttermilk (actually we used Kefir, but didn’t notice the difference). After reading around we decided to soak the chicken first in salt water and then in buttermilk. I would do this again, although I feel the salt water was perhaps more important than the buttermilk soak. Despite the warnings we did end up over cooking the crust in order to get the chicken cooked through. Next time I would finish the chicken in the oven. We all felt that the recipe’s spicing was too mild. Next time we would use more cayenne and add herbs to the batter instead of to the frying oil. Tony and Alison made some pictures.

The southern theme was rounded off with easy to make slaw – Alison says “cole slaw” is a Yankee thing — and home made biscuits.

Jan said it was the best cole slaw he has ever had, so here’s the recipe:

1/3 cup (80 g) mayonnaise
2 tablespoons (30 ml) cider vinegar
1 tablespoon (15 g) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 g) Dijon mustard
3 cups (700 g) finely shredded cabbage
1 large carrot, shredded coarse
1 small red onion, sliced thin

And here’s the buttermilk biscuit recipe Alison pulled from the Joy of Cooking, doubled:

Sift together:
2 ½ cups (600 g) flour
1 teaspoon (5 g) salt
4 teaspoons (20 g) double-acting baking powder
2 teaspoons (10 g) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 g) baking soda
Cut in:
½ cup (120 g) butter
Add and lightly mix:
1 ½ cups (350 ml) buttermilk
Pat the dough to the thickness of ¼ inch, cut out biscuits and bake them 10 – 12 minutes at 450° F (230° C).

The biscuits were great hot, especially when begged for individually.
Leo enjoyed them too.

Leo is now 8 months, 6 days old (more pictures).

Also this weekend, Alison showed Leo how to play a paper roll:

Notice the first video is streamed from YouTube, the second from Google Video (Beta). Right now I like Google Video better, because it doesn’t squash the 16:9 footage. On YouTube you can watch the first video as an unsquashed version (you have to click on “watch in high quality”). But unfortunately the embedded version of the video doesn’t have this option. If you have any preferences, I would enjoy hearing them.