Culinary Experiments

I may not be the best cook in the world but at least I try. I’m the type of person who hates to measure things, always substitutes ingredients (including things that seem essential), and I love trying out NEW recipes. With all that, you’d think I’d have constant disasters at every turn but, actually, I’ve been pretty lucky. Recently I found a Chik-fil-A chicken sandwich recipe online. My mouth instantly watered, excited about the prospects. The recipe required frying the chicken, which I had never done. I learned several new lessons last night: 1) don’t estimate the temperature of oil, 2) oil heats up very quickly, and 3) oil will blacken and shrivel-up your chicken in seconds if it’s hot enough. When I threw the chicken in the pan, smoke almost instantaneously filled our kitchen, the smoke alarm went off, of course, we rushed around like mad hens to open all the windows and doors. It was all very comical, really. I’m glad Kevin had a sense of humor about it! The amazing thing is that we managed to salvage a few pieces of chicken and have dinner at home! And, my word, it was good! (Even though it was charred on the outside, it was quite tender on the inside.) I’m already looking forward to trying to make it again . . . maybe tomorrow?

The moral of the story is: never, never give up. Oh, and, it helps when you follow instructions (even though it’s not very fun to be rigid about it!).