Chicken fingers

Why is the kid's menu [in restaurants] the same as the bar menu? Have you noticed that? Bbq Jr's favourite restaurant item is the chicken finger. Processed, mealy chicken, breaded in some pasty, gooey mess. Salt. Protein. Fat. But no flavour. Bbq Jr has excellent taste for a five-year old, but he is just five. We're working on expanding that.

For his birthday, we gave him his favourite meal. But with a twist. I whipped up some homemade chicken fingers, but with chicken tenders (the meat next to the breast). And seasoned. And breaded nicely.

chicken tenders (boneless chicken cut adjacent to the breast)
milk
flour
salt
chipotle chile powder
paprika
eggs
panko bread crumbs
giant pot o' peanut oil

Make 4 separate bowls. One contains milk.  Second contains flour, seasoned heavily with salt, chipotle, and paprika. Third, beaten eggs. Fourth, panko bread crumbs.



Soak the chicken tenders in the milk while you start heating the oil. You're gonna want the oil at around 375°F. When the oil is close to hot enough, dredge the chicken tenders in the seasoned flour. Shake off excess flour, then dredge in the beaten egg. Shake off excess egg, then dredge gently through the panko. One of the nice things about panko is the texture. Don't damage the texture.



Repeat with as many tenders as you plan to make (2-3/person is tons).

The trick with deep-frying is to not be afraid of the oil. Lower the chicken tender into the oil so that you don't splash the hot oil on yourself. Your fingers will end up pretty close to the oil surface. Be careful, but *do not be afraid*.



Cook until the chicken tenders are a nice dark brown, and cooked all the way through (I test 1 tender/batch by cutting into them). About four to seven minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the tenders from the oil.



Further season with grey sea salt. Serve with plum sauce and homemade ketchup.



This was a hit with Bbq Jr. "Best chicken fingers, Daddy!" Goes to show, even bar food can be brought up a notch.

Intelligentsia Los Angeles

These days, when we travel, we inform ourselves. Chowhound. Blogs. Friends. This is how we ensure we eat and drink well while traveling.

Take coffee. Steve at Zumbar has pointed us towards several coffee places that will blow you away. Like Intelligentsia in Los Angeles. Their coffee is superb. Not a hint of bitterness. Their latte is rich and foamy made from a perfectly pulled shot of espresso.



They warned us off the hot chocolate for Bbq Jr. "Kids don't like our chocolate. It's too strong." Hah! Bbq Jr. loved it. "This is the best hot chocolate, Daddy. You should make me this hot chocolate next year for my birthday."

Even if coffee isn't your thing, the location in Venice makes for interesting viewing. The coffee hardware looks like something out of an alchemy lab.



Everything is all steel and tattoos. I swear I'm not cool enough to hang out here, but the coffee is so good that I keep sneaking back in. One of these days, they're gonna check me for hipster i.d. and turn me back at the door. But until then...



They get their pastries from Breadbar. Their perfect, buttery, sweet, chocolatey, pain au chocolat.



You need to have a coffee here.

Intelligentsia Silver Lake
3922 W Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323-663-6173
Sun - Wed, 6 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Thur - Sat, 6 a.m. - 11 p.m.


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Intelligentsia Venice
1331 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
310-399-1233
Mon - Wed, 6 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Thur - Fri, 6 a.m. - 11 p.m.
Sat 7 a.m. - 11 p.m.
Sun 7 a.m. - 8 p.m.


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Ginger-plum sauce

In the grand preparations for Bbq Jr's fifth birthday, there were sauces galore. My favourite was the plum sauce that we made to serve with his favourite meat (gonna keep it a surprise for now). This sauce was inspired by a previous sauce Dr. Ricky made for a whole pig that we cooked up in 2009.

I started with 7 each of:

lemon plums
red plumbs

Pit and halve them.

Also, shred finely:

3 tbsp ginger

Fry up the ginger over high heat until it's nice and soft. Throw in as many plums as will hit the bottom of the pan. Place them cut side down so that you get a nice sear on the plums. When they're nicely seared, add the rest of the plums and a tiny bit of water. Lower the heat, and simmer until the plums reach a nice saucy consistency (I like my sauces a tiny bit chunky, but you can simmer longer if you want to break it down further).

Add:

brown sugar

to taste. Cool and serve. Gingery, plummy goodness. Yum.

Ketchup

When our son was a wee tot (think 1 ½ to 2ish), he was always delighted to have french fries and ketchup, a treat we reserved for our relatively infrequent restaurant visits. For the longest time I thought it was the fat and the salt of the french fries. Until one evening I discovered him dipping his french fry into the ketchup, sucking off the ketchup, and dipping it in again. "Moh ketchup pease!"

Turns out he is a ketchup (catsup? katsup?) fanatic. This year, we made him all of his favourite things for his birthday, including a delightful version of ketchup, adapted from a friend's recipe (who in turn pinched it from The River Cottage Cookbook):

6 lb coarsely chopped tomatoes
4 onions sliced
1 dried ancho chile, halved
½ cup brown sugar
¾ cup cider vinegar
¼ tsp dry mustard
one cinnamon stick
1 ½ tsp whole allspice
1 ½ tsp whole cloves
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 ½ tsp celery seeds
1 ½ tsp black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves
pinch paprika
1 tsp cornstarch, mixed into 1 tbsp water
salt to taste

Mix the tomatoes, onions and dried ancho. Simmer all of that material until soft and gooey, about an hour. Push it through a coarse sieve, add in the sugar, vinegar and mustard. Tie the other spices into a nice cheesecloth pouch.

Toss the pouch into the pot of sieved tomato bits and simmer uncovered thirty minutes to an hour. Taste periodically, removing the pouch when it is spicy enough for your tastes. Continue to simmer until thickened. If necessary, use the 1 tsp cornstarch to thicken the ketchup. Cool, and serve with your typical ketchupy items (french fries, burgers, you name it).

The depth of flavour of this ketchup makes it a considerably more interesting condiment than your standard Heinz version. And it was close enough to the standard to delight our five year-old. Tasty.