Eighty degrees Monday, tornadoes on Tuesday, and snow on Friday is a regular weather cycle around here lately. That's Iowa weather for you. When the weather, and just life in general, feels all jumbled and out of sorts, comfort food is the best medicine. The calm familiarity of putting the pieces together of a dish that has happy feelings tied up in it is such good therapy. If I'm down, making stirred custard from the recipe that my mom would make for me as a kid, just like her mom made for her as a kid, is like getting a warm hug from them both. If you've never had still-hot homemade custard fresh from the stove, you. are. missing. out. Oh, crap. And now I will have to make a post for that recipe to legitimize the fact that I will absolutely make and eat an entire batch of said custard tonight. Update: amazing stirred custard recipe post coming as soon as I roll myself to the computer and type it out with my sticky fingers.
Where was I? Comfort food! Stirred custard, casseroles, gravy on everything, and... the King of all Comfort Food: Fried Chicken. I don't claim that this is the best recipe for it, but it's pretty good. You can change things around all you'd like as far as spices go, but I think that you absolutely need the buttermilk marinade. It's a bit of a combination recipe from all of the researching I did on making good fried chicken. Vodka helps the crust to crisp, buttermilk and salt marinade for juicy chicken, corn meal for a little crunch, etc.
Happy Fried Chicken-ing! Swimsuit weather is really far away, right? So I'm good...maybe... I think. Probably just eat more pudding and it will all be okay.