patti

Oh. My. God. Perfection! (I had to look at it one more time, myself.)

Yes! Crawfish are in season and you should have no problems finding them. Enjoy!

Thanks for posting the pics. It looks scrumptious, Marlene. Room temp fried chicken is good, as is cold, so your hubby should still get an enjoyable meal out of it.

A swift kick to the cojones? Oh wait, that would be the response to, not a substitute for.

Today Alton Brown's Good Eats is all about buttermilk soaked fried chicken! I wish I'd known ahead of time so I could've taped it. I'm watching it now, and it's very educational.

Heehee. I was tempted to question his intent, but I don't know him well enough (or at all) to do so. I did check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1.

What would be the point? Isn't vanilla all about flavour? ← Yes, exactly. How do you make a recipe that calls for vanilla to not have that vanilla flavor? Beats the hell out of me. ← So make it lemon flavored, or orange flavored, or amaretto flavored, or whichever flavor you choose.

I'm sure the food chemists among us will correct me if I'm wrong, but why not substitute a flavoring you DO like? I don't think vanilla does anything to the food but flavor it. EDIT: Oops, cross posted with carswell.

For a nice breakfast, cut it in half horizontally, butter it (crusty side down), broil it, and top with your favorite syrup.

Fifi and Snowangel, very enjoyable pics and posts. Seeing them made me run to the kitchen and eat a piece of cold leftover chicken (and I must say it was very tasty). It really is nice to be able to peek into people's kitchens to see what and how it gets done in other homes. Peanutgirl, I can't wait to see how your chicken turns out.

Varmint, your kitchen is really taking shape. Those cabinets are gorgeous! Can't wait to see more as it progresses. jphilg, your home is lovely.

I don't recall where I saw it, but I recently saw a recipe for a crab and mozzarella tart that sounded good. The shell was blind baked and topped with arugala, lump crabmeat, tomatoes, and mozzarella.

Mmmwwwaaaa! I love you, Susan! Thanks so much for those tips! Nullo, I look forward to seeing your results! I wasn't trying to duplicate Popeye's strips. I don't care for them nearly as much as the whole pieces (which are still available here). The strips in my picture were battered and fried, which is what my son prefers, while the thighs, bone in and skin on, were not battered. For snowangel, I finally tasted a bit of a chicken strip when I was putting everything away last night. I really, really liked the flavor, which was almost sweet, and very nicely seasoned. I seasoned the tenders with Tony Chachere's before adding the buttermilk, and I also lightly seasoned the flour in which I dredged them. Honestly, I was so disappointed by how dark the skin got before the thighs were fully cooked that I just couldn't enjoy it. I put it in the oven to finish cooking, and by the time I ate a piece, I felt defeated. There was nothing wrong with the flavor of the chicken, but the skin was not even very crispy anymore, or as flavorful as it should've been. The thermometer I was trying to use is a candy thermometer and it was clumsy to try and hold it in the oil to get a measurement. It took it a long while to rise to 350, by which time the oil started smoking. It could've very well been higher than 350, but I didn't hold the thermometer any longer as I needed to turn the oil down a bit. Oh, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I screwed it up. I need a thermometer that reads the temp faster! (Yeah, that's the ticket. It's the thermometer's fault.) Akiko, your method sounds lovely. I will try it in the future, but not this week. Thanks.

Susan, unfortunately for me, one bite leads to more bites, so it was better left untasted. I was hoping for a good response from my son, but he was in a grouchy mood and asking for details about the taste of something was a little too much. Why, when I was a kid, I was very good at making my eyes 'light up' when my mother wanted a good response to her cooking!

Thanks for the support, fifi. I really enjoy Popeye's low carb batterless fried chicken, so I guess I was trying to imitate theirs, though I really have no idea what their recipe is. It's very flavorful and the skin is crispy. My skin was crispy too, just a leeeetle too brown. I had a hard time with my thermometer, so maybe if I'd actually been able to regulate the temp properly, it would've turned out better? I think I'll stick to baked chicken (which I guess should be properly called roasted), 'cause I know I can do that very well.

If I were smart, I wouldn't show a photo. My husband even suggested I make a Popeye's run and take a picture of theirs and try to pass it off as mine. Anyway, here's a picture of some chicken tenders, which were soaked in buttermilk for a couple of hours, dredged in flour, then set out to dry while I fried chicken thighs in a combination of Crisco and bacon fat. The thighs had been marinated in hot sauce, but I did not dredge them in flour. I was trying to make a delicious low carb fried chicken, like Popeye's Naked Chicken. I guess it's low carb, but it's not delicious. Where I think I went wrong was in the oil temperature. Too hot. The thighs got dark too soon and I ended up taking them out of the fat sooner than I wanted to and finishing them off in the oven. The chicken was edible, but not delicious. I didn't eat any of the chicken tenders, but my son said they were good. He wasn't jumping up doing a happy dance about them, but then he's 17 and doesn't do happy dances about food, anyway.

Here's a shot of some I made tonight. Good thing I made it, because my naked fried chicken experiment was a bust. Edit: Oops, Susan, I don't know how I missed that you'd posted a pic. I read the new posts on page nine but didn't notice that there was a page 10. Your shot is much nicer than mine.

I have 3 iron skillets, none of them large enough for chicken frying, in my opinion, but I do have a black iron dutch oven. I also have a Magnalite pot called a 'chicken fryer' which I have never actually used for frying chicken. I'm torn between the two. Any opinions on which of the two pots will turn out the better chicken? I'm also sort of hoping to see pics of someone else's chicken before I do mine.

When I fry shrimp or crawfish, I always season both the ingredient AND the flour. That way, there's no chance anything will remain unseasoned. I'll probably do it that way when I fry the chicken, which will likely be on Wednesday night.

See post 13 in this thread. Marlene posted Mayhaw Man's recipe under "Dorothy's Chicken."

I've had more lamb in the past two weeks than I have for my whole life. Before I found the right lamb for a curry, I found lamb chops and very small lamb shanks (which I used in a big pot of white beans). I pan grilled the lamb chops: But finally, I made my lamb curry. I used Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for Red Lamb Stew (Rogan Josh) from her book, Indian Cooking. I think Chufi also made this, but the ingredients list and process seem a little different, so maybe the recipes are from different Jaffrey books. The recipe calls for: 2 1 inch cubes fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped (I used ground ginger from Penzeys) 8 cloves of garlic, peeled 1 1/2 to 2 cups water 10 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 lb. boned lamb cut into 1 inch cubes 10 cardamom pods 2 bay leaves 6 cloves (I used ground cloves from Penzeys) 10 peppercorns 1 inch cinnamon stick 2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped 1 tsp. ground coriander 2 tsp ground cumin 4 tsp. bright red paprika mixed with 1/4 to 1 tsp. cayenne pepper 1 1/4 tsp. salt 6 Tbs. plain yogurt 1/4 tsp. garam masala freshly ground black pepper I hate that I had to substitute ground spices for some of the whole, but I didn't want to put off making this any longer, so it was do or die. In the picture the paprika and cayenne are mixed in one bowl, and the coriander and cumin are also sharing a bowl. Missing from the picture are the lamb, salt, and vegetable oil. I didn't do everything perfectly. The paste made from the garlic, ginger, and water was too liquid. I guess if you're substituting ground ginger for fresh, maybe you should use less water? Also, I guessed at how much ground ginger to use when subbing for fresh. While it was cooking, the stew certainly looked red (as per the name): During the last stage, the liquid is reduced, and so, also was the red color of the dish. Here's the final, very tasty, result:

I'll probably get kicked off of this thread, but I'm going to fry it two ways. One batch will be chicken tenders for my son, and the other will be naked chicken for me (skin on, but no batter), and none for my husband, who is the only person I know who doesn't enjoy fried chicken. I really, really, really love fried chicken, but I need to low carb it, which I'm sure will offend, irritate, piss off, and aggravate some posters, but that's what I'm gonna do.

Looks like an excellent gumbo, and we can see the color of the roux on the sides of your pan and mixed in with your vegetables, so all was not lost (photo-wise). It does look like just the perfect color! Congrats!

Fifi, after shopping several stores and phoning a number of butcher shops and finding only lamb chops or pricey legs of lamb, I found two 1 lb. packages of center sliced leg of lamb at Albertson's. The other times I'd checked, I saw no such thing. So, I'm going to give it a go with that. In the meantime, I pan grilled some lamb chops for the first time and they were a pleasant surprise.

I will probably try a lamb curry tomorrow, using Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for Rogan Josh. Sorry to be so late with my attempt, but I had a hard time finding the right lamb. If it all goes right, I'll post my results tomorrow evening or Sunday.