Fried Food with 20-Inch Rims

Dan from Madison has reminded me to post my chicken-fried steak video.

I used Everglades Seasoning in this one, because Mike recommended it for fried chicken. Says it tastes like KFC. Ordinarily, I just use salt, lots of pepper, and maybe a little garlic. But the Everglades was good. Maybe because those are its main ingredients.

I use a fat rib eye for shock and awe purposes, but it might be better if you split your rib eye into half-inch-thick pieces. Also, there is no reason why you can't have a dozen small biscuits instead of one huge one.

Someone tried to tell me I should use a New York strip and pound it with a hammer. Good God. You don't pound good meat. Pounding is for meat that's too tough to eat otherwise. Like veal cutlets and churrasco. If you pound meat that's already tender, you get jelly. And rib eyes have more flavor than strips.

I still can't believe that while making this, I came up with the idea of chicken-fried chicken. It's so stupid. But there is some validity to it. Usually fried chicken has bones in it. What I was talking about is a slab of boneless chicken breast, which is somewhat unusual. I'm sure it's on menus all over the US already. I've just never seen it.

Here's an interesting idea. How about wienerschnitzel? No one in the US eats this stuff. It's really good. I think it's just a piece of pork fried like chicken-fried steak. Not sure if it would work with biscuits and gravy, but I suppose it would. I should look up recipes.

From Wikipedia:

Wiener schnitzel is traditionally prepared from a thinly-sliced piece of veal, which is further tenderized by pounding with a meat mallet and then successively dipped into wheat flour, eggs and breadcrumbs before being fried in clarified butter or lard. Sometimes the breadcrumbs are seasoned with freshly ground black pepper. It is now more often made with thin pork escalopes

I'll bet you could make a great version with center-cut chops split into thin halves. Maybe that's an escalope.

I wonder if "escalope" means anything similar to "scallop." In which case, why not say "scallop"? Wasn't it a Douglas Adams character who said, "It's not an afterlife. It's more of an apres-vie"?

Even though the cookbook is done, I can't stop fooling with pizza. I made one yesterday with a fourth of the flour replaced with self-rising. I stole the idea from the King Arthur flour people. Seemed like it was better than my usual crust. Also, I'm starting to think that I should keep the screen off the stone. In other words, four minutes on a screen on an upper rack, followed by three minutes on the bare stone.

Of course, this is all a Rube Goldberg scheme to avoid messing the oven up with semolina. If you don't mind the mess, semolina is great. You may have a harder time creating a round pizza, though, because you have to lay the pizza crust on the peel and slide it off, and if you didn't roll it out round, it may not be round when it lands on the stone. With a screen, you can push the corners in and fix it so it bakes up circular.

I also think I need to work more salt into the pie. Commercial pies are LOADED with it. I think most of it is in the cheese, but I'm not sure. You can only put so much in the crust without stunning the yeast.

It's still the biggest nightmare I've faced as a cook. Even when you get it right, you have to be careful not to slide into error and start making bad pies again.

Remember, I eat all these pizzas for you. So show some gratitude.