Finger-licking good

Fridays are date night. As of late, we've been cooking a frozen pizza and watching Mad Men (we're almost caught up). I know, what's more romantic than a stereotypical 1960s melodrama that's about cheating, smoking and drinking. Despite all this, it's been our tradition as of late. However, this Friday I wanted to change it up. We still were going to watch Mad Men, but this week I wanted to cook. In fact, I wanted to cook fried chicken.

Now, I found this recipe in one of our Williams-Sonoma Bride and Groom cookbook. It called for two heads of garlic. At first glance, I thought I read it wrong. Surely not a head of garlic. I mean the Italian girl in me wasn't exactly objecting, but still -- that's a lot of garlic. So, David started slivering the garlic. All two HEADS of it. It practically took up the whole cutting board. To be honest, I am rather impressed by my darling husband's knife skills.

Now, I'm sure you are wondering: What on Earth will Blair do with ALL THAT GARLIC. Well, the recipe called for a paring knife and some effort. We cut slits in the chicken and slid the slivers of garlic into the openings. After putting some slices in the chicken, we put some pepper and salt on it. We rotated the chicken and cut more slits and stuffed more garlic. In other words, we had four slivers of garlic per drumstick. That might have been the best decision of all time.

Brandan would fully appreciate this next part. It requires an assembly line. It required some flour, some egg (watered down) and some bread crumbs with parsley and oregano. Flour first, egg then bread crumbs. I was really glad that we had these bowls. I love how colorful they are. Very friendly and encouraging, which was needed with this new culinary adventure. So, I started assembling.

It took twenty minutes. In that short amount of time, I was covered in buttery, floury, eggy, bread crumby goodness. It was caked so thickly on my fingertips that it had to be 1/2 inch deep. After I got done with about five of the drumsticks, I could barely bend my fingers. At the end of the process, I really REALLY wanted to lick them. But, I restrained. And that'll probably be one of the bigger regrets of a lifetime...

After plopping the drumsticks in an extremely buttered dish, we baked them for 45 minutes on one side, carefully rotated them and then baked them for 35 minutes more. At first, because of the altitude and the odd baking times about 4,000 feet, I had to experiment a bit on the timing. Thirty-five minutes at first. Ten more minutes. Rotate. Thirty-five minutes again. Ten more minutes. When we pulled them out of the oven and they were perfectly golden. They were sizzling in the delicious butter that had somehow lasted throughout this baking process. The best part had to be the caramelized garlic slivers. The recipe called for a spooning of those delicious slices over the fried chicken pieces.

I've never been a fan of fried chicken. I know, it's the non-Southerner speaking. However, I think it's because I'm not a big fan of the salty nature of them. In fact, I very rarely salt my food. When I go through recipes, I usually just cut the salt part out. This fried chicken, however, was absolutely delicious. It was crispy. It was garlicky. It was tender. It was absolutely marvelous. Paired with our store-bought potato salad, (yes, I know. Gasp!) I give it a 5 out of 5. Granted, the effort was intense, however it was well worth it. If you want the recipe, let me know. It was awesomeness in a fried dish.