Oven-Fried Chicken Breasts, Food & Wine September 2010
Peppered Corn Bread, Food & Wine September 2010
Gingery Pickled Radishes, Food & Wine September 2010
This was a solid set of recipes. The September issue of Food & Wine is about American classics updated and best recipes from the "New South" (whatever that means). These were from that section.
I made the radish pickles last night, and by today the red had completely leeched from the skin and colored the pickling liquid and permeated deep into the radishes. I learned from past mistakes and greatly reduced the amount of sugar. It calls for 1/2 cup, but I just poured in an unmeasured amount... but probably just a couple of tablespoons. I thought these were very good. G doesn't like pickles, nor does he like radishes. So he was a sport and ate one or two, but that was it. These remind me of the pickled radishes that used to come with the gyro wraps at a Mediterranean place near my college.
The oven-fried chicken breasts were marinated all day in a sweet tea mixture with some spices (I left out the tabasco). Then they're breaded in a flour with more spices before being pan fried just a bit, and then put in the oven. Meanwhile, you caramelize some onions and add in wine, chicken broth, and cornstarch to make a gravy. I accidentally reached for the baking powder instead of the cornstarch and only realized it after wondering why it wasn't thickening. Once I added the cornstarch for real, it just thickened up a small amount, but was still pretty thin.
Luckily the corn bread and the chicken breasts bake at the same temperature. The corn bread is sort of normal except that it has both buttermilk and sour cream (I used yogurt). So the sourish flavor was really strong (and good)! It's baked in a hot cast-iron skillet, so the crust gets nice and crispy. I liked this corn bread more than the one we normally make, but G likes that one better because it's sweeter. I might just make this one with extra sugar and see if he notices (^_^) As is, it only has 1 Tbsp of sugar.
I will keep all three of these recipes, and I think they go well together too, both in flavor and in timing. You can put the cornbread in the oven, start the onions caramelizing for the gravy, bread and sauté the chicken, put the chicken in the oven, finish up with the gravy, and by the time the chicken is cooked through the gravy and bread will be done too.
It sounds like the sweet tea acts as a brine with the spices and the salt but did you notice the flavor at all in the final result? Was it worth wasting the sweet tea flavorwise?
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the flavor was noticeable in the end. It is sweet, but there is some sugar in the onions as well. The recipe says that "the tannins help tenderize the poultry while the sugar gives it a light cure." I have a lot of plain black tea leaves that I never otherwise use (life is too short for plain, black Lipton tea!), so it didn't seem like a waste even if it didn't make a huge impact.
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