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What I Ate: February 27, 2009

Posted 28 February, 2009 at 1:15am by Michael Chu
(Filed under: Food, What I Ate)

I forgot to have lunch today. Ended up having an avocado smoothie at a random Vietnamese smoothie/tea/coffee place. Avocado smoothies are really good (this was my first) and seem to be quite filling.

I had been preparing tonight's dinner since Monday. For the last five days, I've been marinating chicken drumsticks in buttermilk with herbs and spices. I then battered the chicken with some flour and more herbs and shallow fried them in peanut oil until golden brown. Then I transferred them to a wire rack in the oven to finish cooking (and allow excess oil to drain).
Fried Chicken

The chicken was juicy and tender, but I overdid it with the thyme (I'll have to cut down on thyme the next time I do this) and the flesh was a bit too salty. (I forgot to reduce the salt I added to the buttermilk due to the long marinating time.) On the plus side, the flesh had a lot of flavor. I was planning on serving the chicken with the mushroom gravy I had left from Salisbury steak earlier this week, but it was salty enough that I didn't bust out the gravy.
Fried Chicken

I served the chicken with a large bowl of salad.
Salad

Later in the evening, I make a rice pudding but didn't like the final texture. (I used a recipe that had an egg in it which I think thickened up the pudding too much. Tina likes rice puddings that are a little runnier.) Tomorrow, we're having dinner at Manresa, so that should be quite a treat.

4 comments to What I Ate: February 27, 2009

Don, March 2nd, 2009 at 7:40 am:

  • I've always read overnight for buttermilk chicken - what do the extra days impart?

Michael Chu, March 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm:

  • It seemed to have a lot more flavor than the normal buttermilk chicken that I make… but because of the extra days, the chicken came out too salty (forgot to scale back the salt and the extra days really let it penetrate). This was loosely based on a recipe that Charlie Ayers posted a couple years back on the Google Blog. I got a chance to talk to Charlie on Saturday, and now I want to follow the recipe exactly. I'll see if I get a chance to do that before moving to Austin.

Nate, March 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm:

  • Looks great! Was it better than Jollibee?

Michael Chu, March 3rd, 2009 at 1:09 pm:

  • It was too salty and had a little too much thyme. If not for that, it would have been better than Jollibee.

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