Kentucky fried Kartoffel!
Greetings once again True Believers! The mighty Kartoffel is once again on the airwaves and broadcasting from his secret underground lab. It has been a while my friends, but as the evil burning orb once more stays up longer in the heavens, I once again head to my underground lair to avoid it's painful rays. And since I am busy hiding from the sun in my lab it is once again time to begin the madness and let my alchemical skills of culinary mayhem loose upon the world once more!! This time around I have decided to harness the power of oil to create my astounding culinary concoctions. However it is not the ingredient but the medium! Yes people I have gone all deep old southy and been doin some deep fryin! On todays slabs of creative cooking chaos are the following: Chicken, turnips, and cheese. For the first round I still occasionally try to come up with a good French fry substitute since I cannot consume my brethren and it also does not work for the atkins diet. And thus my efforts to find a way to consume the potatoes arch enemy the turnip! To date my turnip based experiments have been of medium results. The last attempt at baked fries was disappointing and rather soggy. Which is better than the time before that where I created a giant turnip based life form of vast strength and great distemper! (Do you have any idea how long it can take to clean your underground lair of exploded turnip monster guts?) My latest attempts while not complete failures were not astounding successes either. I made a variety of passes to crisp these critters with the usual somewhat soggy results. However I learned that even soggy, with a dash of salt it gives me a vague recollection of fries similar to the In-n-Out burgers which I often find to be of a somewhat soggier variety as well. In my additional attempts I tried breading them (not real bread,
more on that to come), spicing them, and coating them in an egg batter, plus another attempt at a baked variety as well. Most of these turned out edible if not amazing, and only one experiment resulted in a small but speedy variety of vicious turnip based mutant. (I am going to need a better aim, lots of holes to patch this time around). So thus I once more retreat to the drawing board to come up with better methods of consuming my turnip foes. Next was my experiment in cheese. These turned out relatively tasty if not quite the gooey popper type concoction I might have dreamed. The main gist of this dairy fried goodness was to bread the little beasties and then have a veritable smorgasboard of cheesy gooey delight and gorge myself on them in a congratulatory celebration. And while they came out decent, mozzarella cheese sticks from the restaurant these are not. I used the egg batter once again to create a sticky medium for my "breading" to stick to. However, while this did provide some coating, it did not provide a nice deep covering layer as I first hoped. The egg batter did provide a second benefit though. In prior attempts at just tossing cheese into the fryer, it ended up a melted glob that floated away. With this coating the egg provided a medium that kept it together and thus ended up being more of a cheese crisp in overall effect. Which was decently tasty. Although for some reason it seemed to concentrate the inherent salt of the item to make it seem saltier than the original cheese was. After several sticks worth of consumption (cheese sticks that is, I cut out eating straight sticks of butter a while ago) I made one last batch that wasn't breaded but still had the egg batter coating which came out fairly similar to the original style. So thus I mark that experiment as a success if not a complete triumph. Nor was there any need to fire up my day old Baguette launcher to subdue any mutant creations. And on to the main course of my evenings experiments! Since I have yet to make any of my buffalo experiments have wings I was reduced to cooking actual chicken instead. So I tread the culinary roads of madness once again in my attempts to simulate things from my pre-atkins days. I had a craving for fried chicken and was going to get it! But what would I do for my breading! I recalled from an earlier time the tool of choice! Pork! Pork you say? Yes PORK! The wonder animal of a thousand flavors! Not other beast seems to achieve as many different varieties of flavors as the porcine family seems to. While we greatly use the cow, beef still tends to have a beefy flavor. And while various cuts of steak might have different flavor profiles they all share that underlying flavor. But pork my friend! Pork is a different beast! We have Bacon, Sausage, ham, chitlins, rinds, even the feet get consumed on
occasion. And each item has a distinct flavor. Bacon and sausage do not taste the same, nor does ham have quite the same flavor as the other 2. And how often have you seen cow rinds at the store? OR pickled cow hooves? The savory pig does much work at our various dinner tables. So for my needs I went and made use of the pork rind as a substitute breading. When ground down, it is very similar to some breadings and frys up well. I choose to use a picante flavored rind this time around (which may have contributed to some lesser results in this case). Once ground down I would coat my intended target in the substance and hurl it with great might and reckless abandon into the bubbling cauldron of consumption! I am very please to say the chicken came out quite well. It quite KFC, but very tasty none the less. (Curse you Colonel Sanders! I shall find the
secret of your seven herbs and spices one of these days!). I didn't even really need to use the egg better to make my rind breading adhere. The chicken bits were damp from the thawing process and thus the "breading" worked fairly well with no other efforts needed. I made several goes at it, some with the batter, one with no "breading" at all, and several with a heavy mesquite spice mix rolled in with the "breading" as well. I have not consumed all the varieties as this time and will report to you later of their results. Well True Believers that is all for now, I go and rest from the night exertions after having feasted well and only battled a small quantity of mutants this evening. Fare well my friends!
Excelsior!!
Greetings once again True Believers! The mighty Kartoffel is once again on the airwaves and broadcasting from his secret underground lab. It has been a while my friends, but as the evil burning orb once more stays up longer in the heavens, I once again head to my underground lair to avoid it's painful rays. And since I am busy hiding from the sun in my lab it is once again time to begin the madness and let my alchemical skills of culinary mayhem loose upon the world once more!! This time around I have decided to harness the power of oil to create my astounding culinary concoctions. However it is not the ingredient but the medium! Yes people I have gone all deep old southy and been doin some deep fryin! On todays slabs of creative cooking chaos are the following: Chicken, turnips, and cheese. For the first round I still occasionally try to come up with a good French fry substitute since I cannot consume my brethren and it also does not work for the atkins diet. And thus my efforts to find a way to consume the potatoes arch enemy the turnip! To date my turnip based experiments have been of medium results. The last attempt at baked fries was disappointing and rather soggy. Which is better than the time before that where I created a giant turnip based life form of vast strength and great distemper! (Do you have any idea how long it can take to clean your underground lair of exploded turnip monster guts?) My latest attempts while not complete failures were not astounding successes either. I made a variety of passes to crisp these critters with the usual somewhat soggy results. However I learned that even soggy, with a dash of salt it gives me a vague recollection of fries similar to the In-n-Out burgers which I often find to be of a somewhat soggier variety as well. In my additional attempts I tried breading them (not real bread,
more on that to come), spicing them, and coating them in an egg batter, plus another attempt at a baked variety as well. Most of these turned out edible if not amazing, and only one experiment resulted in a small but speedy variety of vicious turnip based mutant. (I am going to need a better aim, lots of holes to patch this time around). So thus I once more retreat to the drawing board to come up with better methods of consuming my turnip foes. Next was my experiment in cheese. These turned out relatively tasty if not quite the gooey popper type concoction I might have dreamed. The main gist of this dairy fried goodness was to bread the little beasties and then have a veritable smorgasboard of cheesy gooey delight and gorge myself on them in a congratulatory celebration. And while they came out decent, mozzarella cheese sticks from the restaurant these are not. I used the egg batter once again to create a sticky medium for my "breading" to stick to. However, while this did provide some coating, it did not provide a nice deep covering layer as I first hoped. The egg batter did provide a second benefit though. In prior attempts at just tossing cheese into the fryer, it ended up a melted glob that floated away. With this coating the egg provided a medium that kept it together and thus ended up being more of a cheese crisp in overall effect. Which was decently tasty. Although for some reason it seemed to concentrate the inherent salt of the item to make it seem saltier than the original cheese was. After several sticks worth of consumption (cheese sticks that is, I cut out eating straight sticks of butter a while ago) I made one last batch that wasn't breaded but still had the egg batter coating which came out fairly similar to the original style. So thus I mark that experiment as a success if not a complete triumph. Nor was there any need to fire up my day old Baguette launcher to subdue any mutant creations. And on to the main course of my evenings experiments! Since I have yet to make any of my buffalo experiments have wings I was reduced to cooking actual chicken instead. So I tread the culinary roads of madness once again in my attempts to simulate things from my pre-atkins days. I had a craving for fried chicken and was going to get it! But what would I do for my breading! I recalled from an earlier time the tool of choice! Pork! Pork you say? Yes PORK! The wonder animal of a thousand flavors! Not other beast seems to achieve as many different varieties of flavors as the porcine family seems to. While we greatly use the cow, beef still tends to have a beefy flavor. And while various cuts of steak might have different flavor profiles they all share that underlying flavor. But pork my friend! Pork is a different beast! We have Bacon, Sausage, ham, chitlins, rinds, even the feet get consumed on
occasion. And each item has a distinct flavor. Bacon and sausage do not taste the same, nor does ham have quite the same flavor as the other 2. And how often have you seen cow rinds at the store? OR pickled cow hooves? The savory pig does much work at our various dinner tables. So for my needs I went and made use of the pork rind as a substitute breading. When ground down, it is very similar to some breadings and frys up well. I choose to use a picante flavored rind this time around (which may have contributed to some lesser results in this case). Once ground down I would coat my intended target in the substance and hurl it with great might and reckless abandon into the bubbling cauldron of consumption! I am very please to say the chicken came out quite well. It quite KFC, but very tasty none the less. (Curse you Colonel Sanders! I shall find the
secret of your seven herbs and spices one of these days!). I didn't even really need to use the egg better to make my rind breading adhere. The chicken bits were damp from the thawing process and thus the "breading" worked fairly well with no other efforts needed. I made several goes at it, some with the batter, one with no "breading" at all, and several with a heavy mesquite spice mix rolled in with the "breading" as well. I have not consumed all the varieties as this time and will report to you later of their results. Well True Believers that is all for now, I go and rest from the night exertions after having feasted well and only battled a small quantity of mutants this evening. Fare well my friends!
Excelsior!!
xoxo
Bettina