We had two of our more food aware friends over for dinner tonight, so I wanted to put together a meal that was both representative of my cooking, easy-ish to prepare, and was fitting for a summer evening. Of course, average summer evenings this year are cold, rainy, and gloomy, but we'll ignore that for now.
I started out with my fried chicken, which besides my family spaghetti sauce, is probably the dish that I've most amalgamated and personalized in the past few years. The roots for my friend chicken started out with Michael Smith and Tyler Florence, but have now seriously melded with Big Daddy Aaron McCargo Jr. Ultimately I'm doing a Maryland style fried chicken now - I rub the chicken with my spices and let it sit before flouring, unlike more Southern styles that require a buttermilk soak and only add spices to the flour. My spice choices are a little fluid, although the currently revolve around paprika, cayenne pepper, FRESH ground black pepper (very important), kosher salt, and garlic and onion powers. I'm tempted to try either white pepper (good heat, but minimal flavour) or something green in the future though. The current combination provides good flavour and just the right amount of zing/heat in your mouth though, so there's no drive to change things up too much. I also added a quick bake for the chicken for after they've fried in the stove top oil - things ended up a touch dry tonight, but the baking helped with the crispiness of the coating and got rid of some of the oily issues we had last time.
Corn on the Cob is probably the simplest BBQ dish to make. Soak your corn for 20 min, and then throw it (husk and all) onto the grill, rotating for 20 minutes. If you're still cooking other things, wrap it in newspaper and throw it in the microwave or oven until just before you're ready to eat. The corn comes out with a great flavor, good sweetness, and rarely has any char marks. All you need to do is add butter and salt! Now if only I could figure out that lime butter recipe...
One of the easiest and tastiest "salads" I can make is a true Italiano treat - repeating layers of fresh sliced tomato, boccochini (mozzarella balls), and basil, then doused with balsamic vinegar over top. It's a quintessential summer time food - both light and flavourful, and very much a reminder of a hot summer's day. It works just as well in the middle of the winter if you can find the right tomatoes too!
Overall, a good variety of flavours and a balanced meal in terms of different types of dishes too!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment