More weekend plus fried chicken!

As I mentioned in my last post, we did some stocking up at Star. Here we have the summer sausage, which was already vacuum sealed, but I separated it out into three separate packages which work better for us in terms of quantity. Summer sausage was one of the first non-Italian sausages I had that I really liked. Grilled in a bun with some grain mustard -- delicious.

It's a Berkshire pork rack! Look at all that gorgeous fat. These are the best damn pork chops. You don't need to put anything on them except salt and pepper. We like to sear em in a cast iron and then roast them in the oven. Yum.

Ever since we got the AeroGarden, we pretty much always have basil in the house which is awesome. I cut off bunches of it at a time and make pesto so that we pretty much always have it in the house. It comes in handy when we need to make a quick meal, whether lunch or dinner. Of course, this came to mind because I threw together a lunch today.

Last week, I made a quick Biba recipe with linguini, Savannah shrimp, and pesto. Delicious.

You start off with a small wedge of brie de meaux, fresh from the fridge, that we picked up from Star over the weekend. Before we went out to play tennis, I took the brie out so that it could come to room temperature.

Ah, and then you can see what deliciousness awaited me when I got home. I sliced up some Granny Smith apple to go with it. You can see that the rind on this is pretty thick, thicker than most common bries. The crust on the edge was definitely dry. When I ate it, I tried to balance it with the cheese from the middle. Normally when I buy a cheaper brie at the store, I heat it up which is tasty, but this was so creamy, I ate it as is.

For dinner, I chose to make fried chicken. We buy the whole chicken and I cut it up myself. It's been a while though so it was a little awkward. I soak the chicken pieces in buttermilk overnight and then sprinkle it with an Alton Brown mixture: hungarian paprika, kosher salt, garlic powder, and ground chili powder. Then dredge it in a Scott Peacock flour, cornstarch, s+p mixture, then fry. I went with deep frying in peanut oil, which I really think is the best method for deep frying. I took the rack off my wok so it seemed like I had more room than I knew what to do with! I left the oil around 350 and let the chicken go until they looked done. Some were close to six minutes, some were closer to eight.

Here are some of the crunchy pieces up close. I got a really nice crust this time. When I use the cast iron, part the chicken always ends up so dark, almost burnt, and the crust almost always cracks which is so sad! But here we have nice, even crust. Delicious.

Here was dinner. I made collards for a dinner party over the weekend, then the fried chicken, and some mashed potatoes. I pulled together a quick chicken gravy, too. Tasty. And now I need a nap.