Ok, this is simply the best fried chicken ever. Mark and Marjorie Fuller offer this dinner of two fried chickens and side dishes on Mondays only. You have to reserve in advance and the wait for a reservation can be long, so give them a call today.
Like I said, the juiciness and texture of the chicken, the seasoning, and the crackly crust are 
the best ever. Still, this mountain of fried chicken will be too much for the recommended four diners (in our case, 6, including a child and a baby who ate a whole drumstick for the very first time!). Which means my husband, Frank, and I have cold fried chicken for dinner tonight! (They call this icebox fried chicken in the South.)
The sides are also sensational, especially the silken mashed potatoes and the caramelized brussels sprouts.
November 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »
I’m excited when my husband, Warren, has a staycation (editor’snote: from his job as TDR Corporate Sous Chef), because then he’s home with us every night and he cooks dinner! One night he made this braised oxtail ramen. Warren flavored the stock with kombu, star anise, and ginger. He bought the oxtail and the fresh noodles at Uwajimaya. He put sliced scallions and honshimeji mushrooms on top of the bowls of ramen. The kids loved it. It was so good!
November 1st, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I decided to make a tomato and goat cheese tart with the last of my home grown tomatoes. My idea of baking is to get the frozen stuff, so I bought a box of puff pastry. I don’t own a rolling pin, so I had to use a jar to smash down one of the sheets of puff. I put tomatoes, salt and pepper, and fresh goat cheese on top of the pastry and baked it- a cheap and easy job but it tasted good to me. But that was the end of my tomatoes.
I’m sad the tomatoes are done for the season. I had a great crop this year. I think this photo of the different varieties is cute.
November 1st, 2010 | No Comments »
What did we eat at the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi? It wasn’t all BBQ. Big Bad Breakfast is a fabulously delicious Southern breakfast joint. The biscuits were fine, but the tomato gravy and the grits were out of this world.
We also had biscuits with sausage and pepper jelly, prepared by Yewande Komolafe, Saturday morning as we stood around and chatted before entering the Nutt Auditorium on the U Miss campus for the day’s presentation. Both yam and sweet potato biscuits were offered so I had to taste one of each. The yam biscuits were made from real African yams which you rarely see in the US. (“Garnet Yams,” etc are really sweet potatoes.) Both biscuit versions were good and both quite different because the sweet potato was sweeter and made a more golden biscuit, and the yam was starchier. (Other attendees told me they had requested both biscuits and were told they could only have one. I think I was given both because I asked if the yam was an African yam.)
Here’s the icebox fried chicken prepared by Miami Chef, Michelle Bernstein, for Saturday’s lunch. This was followed by a shrimp and sweet potato ceviche that had bits of hominy and even popcorn scattered over it (sounds a little crazy, but it was delightful), an oxtail stew with gnocchi, and a banana tres leche tian.
There was a Thursday night dinner prepared by the famous New York Chef, Suvir Saran, at Snackbar. We arrived in Oxford too late to participate in the dinner, but it’s a cool space and we did enjoy a cocktail.
We rode school buses out into the dark countryside for one of the highlights of the Symposium, a fish fry out at Taylor Grocery. (Taylor Grocery’s motto, “Eat or We Both Starve,” here on an old gas pump, made us laugh.) There was plenty of beer on offer, in addition to which half the attendees seemed to be packing flasks of Tennessee whiskey. We lined up for catfish crabcakes by Suvir Saran, spicy catfish stirfry by another New York chef, Eddie Huang, and of course, the best fried catfish and hushpuppies by Taylor Grocery- a memorable, high energy feast and party.
November 1st, 2010 | 2 Comments »
the best ever. Still, this mountain of fried chicken will be too much for the recommended four diners (in our case, 6, including a child and a baby who ate a whole drumstick for the very first time!). Which means my husband, Frank, and I have cold fried chicken for dinner tonight! (They call this icebox fried chicken in the South.)
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