Oven Fried Chicken

One of my favorite feminist gossip websites Jezebel, keeps posting a photo of Rick Santorum eating fried chicken. My political beliefs aside, this photo has become a substantial problem in my life because it makes me crave fried chicken. I check this website several times a day, and every time I see this photo I crave fried chicken! It is inconvenient. Granted, I did not even have my first glorious bite of fried chicken until two years ago at Hodak's, a famous fried chicken restaurant in St. Louis, MO, and I never have really craved it until this picture, but ghad, I really want fried chicken all the time now. Seriously though, morning, day, and night. Good thing I know how to cook!

Photo from Jezebel.com

Rick Santorum Inspired Fried Chicken:

 

This recipe isn't quite exact, I will update it over time, but hopefully it is enough instruction to give you the gist.

Cooking Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1- 5 pound chicken, skin on and quartered

2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided

2-3 cups butter milk

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon chili pepper, divided

1/2 teaspoon paprika

2-3 cups flour

1+1/2 cups corn flakes, crushed up

1/2-3/4 cup bread crumbs, italian or whatever

olive oil

black pepper to taste

Directions:

1) In a medium bowl mix buttermilk, 1 tablespoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, 1/4 teaspoon chili and pepper together. Add quartered pieces of chicken to mix, preferably submerged, and let sit for 10 - 30 minutes at room temperature.

2) Preheat the oven to 450º F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Oil the foil with light olive oil.

3. In a shallow bowl or large/ medium piece of Tuperwear, mix together flour, 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of salt, a few black pepper shakes, 3/4 teaspoon of red peper flakes, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon of chili pepper.  

4) DO NOT POUR OUT THE BUTTER MILK!  Roll each piece of chicken in the flour mixture. Press the mix firmly into the chicken making sure every bit is covered well. Let sit for ten minute.

5) Thoroughly crush up corn flakes and add to remaining flour mix. Add bread crumbs too. Mix well.

6) Using a cooking brush, dab each piece of chicken with remaining buttermilk mixture and re-roll the chicken in the flour mixture. Try to get the corn flake mix on it. Brush more with buttermilk if the chicken is not wet enough to have more mix stick to it.

7) Put chicken on a baking sheet with the pieces not touching.

8) Cook for 25 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet at halftime (12.5 minutes). After 25 minutes, flip each piece of chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes, again turning the cookie sheet at halftime. Chicken should be a dark golden brown and at least 165ºF. (aka cook for at least 45 minutes)

9) Enjoy with steamed green beans, mashed potatoes, and your fingers!

ps: Just because this chicken inspired by him is delicious, this is by no means an endorsement of Rick Santorum... he makes my insides hurt from head to toe.

New York Times: "I Was a Cookbook Ghost Writer"

"I was a Cookbook Ghost Writer" is is a wee bit of a dark, but it is certainly a good read. Julia Moskin recounts her career as a ghost writer for cookbooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/dining/i-was-a-cookbook-ghostwriter.html

I find this article interesting because I have noticed an exorbitant amount of new cookbooks on shelves these days. I know food is "in" right now-- if a necessity of life can ever be a trend. The article touches upon how "chefs", such as Rachel Ray, have published thousands of recipes. But at what cost? I have been wondering how these busybodies have had time to produce these books and perfect so many recipes.

 It turns out that very few chefs write or test their own recipes. Someone else is hired to do it and receives minimal credit for doing majority of the work! On top of that, many of these recipes lack the attention to detail, accurate measurements, or specific directions that classic cookbooks have, such as Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food or Irma Rombauer's Marion Romauer Becker's, and Ethan Becker's The Joy of Cooking. Just yesterday my former teacher Greg and I were discussing how unreliable recipes in various cookbooks can be. We noted how often they require adjustments in ratios and flavor. He even noted that in one well- reviewed cookbook, a recipe did not include basic ingredients like salt! Reliable and well-tested recipes are depreciating in value.

I think this loss of value is an utter shame and a greater reflection of the general population's dying relationship with food. In an odd combination of new behaviors such as a demand for immediate gratification, a constant flow of new products, and less value placed on quality, our instructive tools for cooking are becoming a mimesis of many American's relationship to food. Our cookbooks are becoming equally poor in quality and detached from their original sources just as much as our food quality has decreased and our removal of knowledge about a food item's origin or production process has increased.

Am I getting too worked up over this? All I know is that after working for a food magazine and trying to test chefs recipes as well as my own, I can tell you that it is a ton of work. It is hard and requires multiple testing.  In fact, there are books on how to test recipes and how to write cookbooks! It is an art for the patient and obsessive.  I remember testing this roasted purple cauliflower recipe over and over again this summer in 90 degree weather in my third story apartment with a poorly insulated oven and without AC. Then, I had to call up all my friends and family and ask to test the recipe and their ovens and using their baking trays! Do you know how much cauliflower a person can eat in one week? (Not that much). Hopefully Moskin's article enlightens the public that ghost writing is not just a weird -lack of credit- process only happening in the world of super celebrities. Let's give the ghosts some more credit!

Purple cauliflower from Rhode Island Nurseries--noms

Second Rise

Hello!

Somewhere in the midst of: studying abroad in Scotland, founding a compost program, becoming president of the Environmentally Conscious & Community Oriented House, getting a kitten, being president of Greenhouse Club, interning for edible Rhody, interning again for Farm Fresh of Rhode Island, and becoming an Italian citizen, I neglected this blog and I apologize.

I want to bring back The Wheaton Tomato and continue to do what it was created for: informing the public about local food and providing recipes that complement locally sourced food. Since I am not working for FFRI anymore, a.k.a it's not the summer, I will introduce some new features to the blog.

Ideas:
-Post and provide links to new and relevant websites, such as sites for jobs, other cool blogs, recipes, news articles, etc.
-More recipes and pictures!
-Maybe change the name of the Blog so that the title still makes sense when I graduate in 70 days!*
-Gardening: photos from the greenhouse, advice, problem solving
-Compost information
-Farm posts from Summer 2011
-Photos of the kitten, Koa, "making" food


*I am thinking about calling it "Jelly" for my middle school nick name, or Gelly, but I had enough trouble getting people to spell it with a "g" then and I don't have the patience to correct people now. Maybe JAM-- the sibling acronym-- did you know a bacteria was named after us? SFMA: the shorthands for the two most influential locations in my life. We shall see what is available and memorable.

My aim is to produce a more casual blog that is equal in quality to the old days.

Until then, here is a photo of Koa writing a philosophy paper. I promise this will not turn into a cat blog.