Wednesday morning stuff

* First "hump day" of the new work-year for me, I guess.

* Knitted item of the day: this is a pair of fingerless mitts (the pattern is simply called "Lace Mitts," it's from the Holiday 2012 KnitSimple magazine:)



The yarn is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sportweight. The colorway is named "The White Witch's Lure," which, the only White Witch I'm familiar with is the one in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," so I don't know if these are supposed to be the colors of Turkish Delight or something. (The only thing like Turkish Delight I've ever had was the loucoum that Liberty Orchards makes, and they don't put coloring in most of their products, so it was just the natural color of the fruit pulp, not bright candy colors like this).

The lace pattern doesn't show up all that well in these, but the colors are nice:



* The new blood-pressure cuff came, after the company selling it had to call me to tell me the Reliamed brand had been discontinued but the Omron "should" work with my base unit. (I was doubtful). But it does work, and it's actually easier to put on (less flexible and less likely to fold over on itself) than the old cuff.

* Also, the new Cook's Country came. This is probably my favorite cooking magazine. (My only complaint: they don't include nutritional information. But at this point I can mostly guess how much sodium and stuff something has by considering the ingredients, and also, I don't put salt in things and I use, for example, low-sodium canned tomatoes).

I like Cook's Country because most of the recipes come with a backstory - if there's a history to the recipe (like Joe Frogger cookies), they discuss it. And then they also describe the thought and experimentation process used to come up with the recipe or improve an existing recipe (I think Cook's Illustrated - and any of the America's Test Kitchen publications are the same way).

Anyway, this month had a recipe for "homemade version of fried chicken cutlet sandwiches." It looked interesting, and I had some chicken cutlets in the fridge I needed to cook. I didn't follow the recipe to the letter - I rarely do, and also a lot of the America's Test Kitchen recipes go to a lot of trouble (for example, letting the coated chicken "rest" an hour in the fridge before frying, to firm up the coating) that I probably would never do. But it turned out really good. (Yes, I know I said I was eating fewer carbohydrates and the chicken is breaded with flour, but I didn't eat it on a bun as a sandwich - usually if I have a good cutlet of something, I want it JUST as a cutlet, not a sandwich).

Anyway, what they had you do was make up a spice mix. The one I used differed slightly from theirs; I used Florida Seasoned Pepper (which has become my go-to seasoning from Penzey's; it's really good), smoked paprika, garlic powder, and thyme. (Their recipe also called for salt and for cayenne. Next time I might dig out the cayenne and put just a bit in).

Some of the spice mix gets rubbed on the chicken first (but I did not do that), the rest gets mixed in the flour for breading.

And you also add baking powder to the flour. I had seen this before in other breading recipes and I always wondered if it made any difference (it does. It makes a lot of difference). And then you add a little water (I think the ratio was 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 3 tablespoons water) so the batter gets a little clumpy (they described it as "shaggy"). You don't want a liquidy batter but you want the flour to clump up in little bits.

You pound the cutlets flat (And I got to use one of my Christmas presents - a good, professional-grade, meat mallet), dip them in an egg wash (they recommended just egg white, I used the whole egg and it was fine), cover them with the flour mixture, and pan fry in shallow fat.

They were VERY good. The baking powder, or perhaps the combination of powder and water, makes the coating kind of "puff up" and instead of having a slimy, flabby flour coating like I've sometimes got when panfrying chicken, it crisps up nicely and seems much lighter. Easily as good as restaurant fried chicken, and also you can put whatever flavoring you wanted in it - you could do chicken parmesan by using Italian spices and then using tomato sauce on top, or you could go extra-spicy with more peppers, or you could go milder and do something like chicken-and-waffles to be served with syrup or honey....And now I have a couple cutlets left over to heat up later in the week.

You could probably also use the same technique for frying fish or pork cutlets....(Or making chicken-fried steak, which I confess I am not at all fond of. I know it's considered the state food of Oklahoma, but sorry Oklahoma, I just don't like it....)