Posts

Showing posts from October, 2009

Recipe for Lamb Roast with Lemon & Oregano

An easy way to roast a leg of lamb, using just a handful of pantry ingredients. The recipe produces moist and fall-off-the-bone tender meat that collects many compliments! When I was a child, the Macks raised sheep on a farm out by the lake. Why my city-girl mother chose a farm visit the very day Mr. Mack docked the lambs’ tails, who can know? It must have scarred us all. Lamb never – ever? – made it to the family table and has perhaps once – maybe twice? – to my own. That’s changed, however, with the delivery of a lamb raised by Farmgirl herself on a 280-acre, 140-year old Ozark-holler farm in what she calls ‘the middle of nowhere’ Missouri. (Yes, this farm girl has a name, Susan, but I really do think of her as ‘Farmgirl’!) For anyone new to lamb, there’s something quite natural, primal even, about choosing a whole animal over plastic-wrapped cuts from the grocery store; knowing the lamb was raised in grassy fields, protected from weather and predators by people whos

Recipe for Extra-Crispy Apple Crisp

The perfect combination for apple crisp, barely sweet, perfectly soft apples with an extra-crispy and flavor-rich topping. The Fall Classic, Just Extra-Crispy. Budget-Friendly. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special.

Recipe for Rock-Star Fried Chicken

For the longest time, I've yearned to learn how to make fried chicken. My friend Linda's recipe turns out finger-lickin' fried chicken, crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, one skillet after another. The trick to Rock-Star Fried Chicken starts with a thin coating of spicy mustard. After that, the brilliance is in the three-step cooking process: first, for browning and crisping, a fast fry on both sides; second, to cook the chicken, a slower fry at a lower temperature in a covered skillet; third, to recrisp the coating, a last few minutes uncovered at a fast fry at a higher temperature again. “Then I crossed the empty street Caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken ...” - Johnny Cash in the Kris Kristopherson song 'Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down' (sound clip below) In the food world of my childhood, a woman’s no cook, not a real cook anyway, until she masters a tender flaky pie crust, hot-from-the-oven homemade bre

How to Make Great Fried Chicken

Learning how to fry chicken was a breeze, thanks to a friend's favorite recipe that inspired such confidence, even for a beginner, I call it Rock-Star Fried Chicken . But cooking great fried chicken is more than a good recipe, it's technique too. Here are the tips and tricks that I've learned along the way, how I turn 'good' fried chicken into 'great' fried chicken every single time. FRIED CHICKEN COOKING TIPS GOOD FRIED CHICKEN Any one can be a fried-chicken rock star! It’s hard to fry a bad batch of fried chicken – frankly, it’s all good! All these tips make it 'look' like frying chicken is hard. It’s not, it’s really not. I wish I’d started frying chicken many Sundays ago. GREAT FRIED CHICKEN 'Great' fried chicken is a matter of taste. My taste – my ideal, my idea of perfect fried chicken – leans to a 'crispy flavorful crust'. So all these fried chicken cooking tips are geared that direction. CHICKEN P