chicken scaloppini, Brussels sprouts

This is done more cleanly and evenly with chicken breasts but today I am using thighs. I think I'm beginning to prefer dark meat over white meat. The chicken thighs are brined for a few hours; about 1/2 cup kosher salt whirled into half gallon water. Whirling it made a mess of a bowl in the sink. 

The chicken thighs were removed from the brine into a plastic grocery bag, and individually pounded flat to uniform thinness. 

A spice mix was prepared; an abundance of coriander, less cumin than coriander, less salt than cumin, less black pepper than salt. Today that was all. The spice concoction usually includes various chile powders, any variety of curries, garlic powder, turmeric, or whatever else happens to catch my eye as the available spices and herbs are scanned.

The chicken was seasoned directly, the flour dredge was seasoned obscenely heavily, and the milk drench was also seasoned, all three with the same seasoning mixture. So that is a lot of seasoning, more than you might imagine. American chicken is a blank canvas upon which cooks express their creative impulses. I do not hold back, tending to error on the side of extravagance, then I am always surprised at the degree to which flour diluted all of that. 

Have you ever had Kentucky Fried Chicken that proudly proclaims 11 herbs and spices?  I've had it, and it is no secret. The first 10 are salt. 

The flattened chicken is dredged through the seasoned flour. Excess flour is tapped off the flattened chicken pieces. The dusted chicken, now with two thin layers of seasoning is dunked in the seasoned milk drench. Excess seasoned milk is tapped off and the flattened individual pieces of chicken, now with three thin layers of seasoning is returned to the seasoned flour dredge. Excess seasoned flour dredge is tapped off and the individual chicken pieces, now with three thin and one relatively thick layer of flour and seasonings are placed in a hot frying pan prepared with vegetable oil and butter. 

The flattened chicken pieces cook quickly because they are thin and tender and vulnerable. They are removed to a draining towel. 

At this point the cook will have a proper mess; a bowl of seasoned milk with flour from the chicken in it, and a bowl of heavily seasoned flour left over from coating each piece of chicken twice. Wouldn't do to waste these valuable resources. 

Assess the situation of the pan at the end of the frying session. If all the oil is used up then add 2 tablespoons butter to the pan. If the pan contains an excess of 2 tablespoon of oil then discard the extra in excess of 2 tablespoons. Add the amount of seasoned flour from the chicken-coating bowl that corresponds to the amount of oil that is either reserved or augmened, tablespoon of seasoned flour for each tablespoon of oil. The seasoned flour is cooked in the oil for 1 minute. The pan is doused with the extra seasoned milk (which also has flour in it from the chicken). Two things occur immediately. The roux thickens the liquid, and the liquid lifts the fond from the chicken stuck to the pan. It's like magic! It's best done with a whisk and temporarily off the heat unless you happen to be a pro like myself. *Exhales on fingernails, buffs nails on shirt* The liquid is augmented preliminarily to one cup with any number of liquids or combination of liquids, chicken broth or white wine, for example, or plain regular white milk, or even * gasp *  water. Keep the liquids at hand to augment further to two cups. Judge this as proceeding to the desired thickness. In this case, it was 1 tablespoon oil/butter plus 1 tablespoon seasoned flour plus 1 +1/2cup milk with chicken broth. 

So there's the pan gravy.

Brussels sprouts are de-cored to enable them to be torn apart. This is tedious business and I pity da foo who gets stuck with this finicky task. The tight little unpleasant bitter cabbage balls are torn up to loose leaf regular midget cabbage which changes them completely. Olive oil to get the leaves frying, salt to get them sweating, rice vinegar to complete a simple dressing, dried cranberries for tart contrast to all that.  The flavor profile can be easily expanded in any direction, something sweet, something capsaicin, something savory, something spicy. These Brussels sprouts here are simple.

I do not know why I did not use any chile pepper in either of these two things tonight. Sometimes I do not understand myself. 

Previous chicken scaloppini:

Chicken breast, zucchini and tomato with elk ragú

Sliced chicken breast

chicken and Brussels sprouts

I went on an exploratory mission to Marczyk Fine Foods on 17th at Corona, about ten blocks away from where I live. I haven't the vaguest idea how to pronounce that name. The main idea was to pick up some Parmigiano Reggiano and whatever other cheese they would recommend, and whatever else I found that looked interesting, or whatever they might have that is seasonal. I am looking for unpasteurized cheeses. While there I picked up a whole chicken because the one on display looked great. Marczyk has an excellent meat department. The place is extremely pissy. Everybody there is very engaging and eager to talk about food. They're proud of their products. I dare say, I experienced a hard case of sticker shock at checkout. Oh well, it's all an experiment anyway, and I've paid a lot more for education than that. This bird is huge. Nearly the size of a small turkey. It's one of those hoity-toity free-range types that really ranges freely and strutted around pecking at insects, seeds, grubs and worms, has not benefitted from the science of hormones, and is entirely organic, for whatever that's worth.  It's a bit older, judging by the size and weight, and by the resistance of the tendons, but I'll be able to tell more when I crack open the bones. The taste is excellent, but honestly, I can't wait to make stock. After eating that can of Swanson's broth, with its overly salty insufficient body that cannot be fully corrected even with saffron, honey, potato, collard, and miso, I am so Jones'n for good chicken stock of my own making. Is that arrogant or what?

In the photos below, the third picture of the chicken is cast in blue because I had the white balance camera setting on florescent because I reset it previously to take the stovetop photos of the bacon and Brussels sprouts using the stove's overhead light, which is florescent. Those photos were taken on automatic. I neglected to change the white balance when I went off of automatic and turned around to take photos of the finished chicken. I was late in realizing this. In digital photography, white balance is one of the most difficult things for novice photographers to get. Florescent lighting is generally terrible. The florescent white balance setting on cameras attempts to make pictures taken under florescent lighting less terrible. Best to do away with florescent lighting altogether, when it comes to photography. On automatic, the camera didn't even use its own flash. I have several other options available that can work around this situation, overhead tungsten, slave flashes, increasing the ISO. One advantage of this particular camera is the ability to crank up the ISO to ridiculously high levels enabling photography in near darkness without graininess. It's awesome. ISO on digital cameras equates to film speed for film cameras. At any rate, the photo of the chicken that' s finished being baked is taken with tungsten overhead and flash with slaves but with the camera set to florescent. My bad.

I happened to catch Jack Pepin on T.V. making Brussels sprouts and that seemed like a good idea to me. I love him. He brings out the silliness in me. I automatically start imitating him. I'm such a goof ball. He asks rhetorical questions that I answer aloud in his voice using his speech impediments, and his wet inhalations through is teeth. He would punch me in the face if he heard me doing this. I wondered why, since he was already using bacon grease, why he added water instead of wine or vinegar which would have created a complete dressing. Also, he passed on chances to hit other places on the tongue, sweet, hot, etc., and move the whole thing away from the brutal taste of Brussels sprouts which a lot of people simply do not care for. This perplexed me.

Marczyk had bags of fresh Brussels sprouts and I found that I could not resist them. My mum used to make them. Of course we played with them. Asparagus were trees on a plate, and Brussels sprouts were little bushes. Mashed potatoes were a volcano and gravy was lava. The lava erupted from the volcano, spilled out onto the plate and ran over the trees and the bushes. It all ended up in a catastrophe in miniature right there on the plate. "Quit playing with your food!" *winces* Now, Mum is in a nursing home and she eats with her fingers and pushes food around her plate. All that training right down the drain.