Kitchen on Fire Class #6 Let's Fry!!

Impressionistic Beatnik Blog Entry about Pan and Deep Frying Class

(read aloud to bongo drums)

woks filled with boiling oil
candy thermometers attached to side
don't go over 380 farenheit or you'll taste burning

won ton wrappers filled with nutella
Panko bread crumbs

fried food is nirvana
i slice a zuchini and take it through the three stages:
flour (shake it off)
egg (let it drip)
then the bread crumbs

drop...sizzle..whoooossshhhhhh.... Boiling
not the oil
oil can't boil
only the water inside your food being released makes the bubbles
in forty seconds it's brown and crispy

"oooh yes! make more" they love them
fried food is nirvana because it is crisp on the outside
but pure and steamed on the inside
a fried mushroom is contrast, paradox -

a fatty slick exterior, candy like crunch- guilty pleasure
but inside the locked and protected essence of the food, watery and pure
untouched by the grease if your breading holds

mike divulges his recipe for Rochester NY buffalo wings
"you gotta shake them up with the sauce, don't stir,
the shaking cracks the skin a bit so the sauce can permeate"

we gather around the plate of wings, almost glowing red with their
coat of sauce (Frank's Hot, KC Masterpiece and because brown sugar was not on hand, maple syrup)

we dip the hot wings in the blue cheese sauce (tonight it has feta, there was no blue)
and the combination in the mouth, the hot and acidic with the tang and cream of the dip, sucking the steamed up meat between the tight bones of the wing....

there is silence...

mike's face still red from getting popped with ferocious oil bursts
(who didn't dry this pan!!! there was water in it and it just forced it's way out!)

....but now all is calm

my fingers are sticky as i eat one after another, chasing these tastes as they pop and vanish in my mouth.


I have wasted my life.