The fried chicken and dipping sauce recipes came from the Cradle of Flavor cookbook, but I found the recipe posted on this site.
I contributed to the dinner prep mostly by periodically wandering into the kitchen and raving about how good it smelled, and sitting at the table whining about how hungry I was, until this plate appeared in front of me.
Oh, and here's the dipping sauce:
So we pretty much cannot say enough good things about this recipe. It was so delicious. Our entire dinner conversation was about how tasty the chicken was, and how the dipping sauce complemented it so well, and how it wasn't super-difficult to make, and when should we make it again, plus a little bit of complaining about how insipid Heroes has gotten and what a letdown that was after the very smart first season. But mostly we just talked about the chicken.
Jam Guy is a really talented boy, and I am such a lucky girl.
Did I mention he made five kinds of pizza for a dinner party we threw this weekend while his parents were in town? One was pesto and tomato, one was sausage and pepperoni, one was shiitake mushroom and caramelized onion, one was fig, bleu cheese and bacon, and I can't remember the other one. Ham and gruyere? He served them as courses, one after the other. By the time pizzas four and five came out of the oven, we were all pretty stuffed. but it was so much fun to keep tasting the different pizzas that we kept going. Then he brought out this stellar apple-ginger pie, which I could only manage a bite of from his plate; we also had these delicious apricot bars that his parents' friends had brought over. This was all after our good friends brought flatbreads and pickled green beans from their garden over for appetizers, which we served with a cheese and pate plate and figs and pears that our friends from the orchard (where we got engaged) brought over.
And it was such a lovely group of people. I really enjoyed spending the weekend with his parents--they just seem to like each other so much, and they think the world of Jam Guy, which is nice, since I do too. I finally got to meet the friends of theirs that Jam Guy grew up with but that now live in Oakland, and bringing our friends together with his parents and their friends turned out to be this really smooth, easy, happy gathering, where everyone connected as though they'd totally hung out together before. It was great. There was a lot of wonderful conversation, a lot of wonderful food, a lot of wine and beer flowing and a lot of really full people before the night was out. It was like Thanksgiving, but with pizza. Which is not a bad thing at all. I have a lot to give thanks for.
2 comments:
what you describe is the MYTH of what holidays and family time is supposed to be but all too often is NOT. so my GOD, yes, you have many blessings in your life! :)
And here is to many more of those events for years to come!
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