Monday, October 31, 2011

October




A fun weekend filled with food and art. On the menu is southern fried chicken, guacamole and apple pie ice cream (yes that's an apple pie, filling crust and all layered with homemade vanilla ice cream) topped with caramelized apples and an apple slice wafer.

Lots of pumpkin seeds from the carved out pumpkins... roasting ideas in the next post as well as more details on the dessert elements.

I've always thought fried chicken was complicated but it is probably the easiest thing to make!
I threw the chicken in a bath of buttermilk (really just watered down yogurt - lots of it!) and spices. Paprika, garlic, onion powder, cajun seasoning, first rubbed all over the chicken then saturated with buttermilk and left to marinade for 24 hours in the fridge.

The following day I set all the chicken in a strainer and let the buttermilk strain off, if it's too thick you can wash them a bit and let them dry.

Now they go into a flour mixture (just seasoned with salt, and more yummy seasonings as mentioned above)

This step is very important, they have to sit for an hour to absorb all the flour and create a "dough" so set them back in the fridge.

Now they get fried up and sprinkled with a bit of salt when they come out, served with fries.


Guacamole appetizer, another one of those easy party dishes, it's a big hit and you can make a huge batch.
Normally I add the cilantro into the mix but it doesn't look so good in pictures so I left it out and sprinkled it over later.

Chop up your guacamole, tomato, red onion, cilantro.

Add some smashed garlic, olive oil, lime juice and season with salt and a touch of cumin.

Some people like to mush up the avocado a bit into a dip but I like mine in cubes and not too "mushy"
Garnished and served with corn chips.
I served with these chipotle flavoured corn disks that were on discount at the supermarket because a few broke in the pack - so I took the opportunity to break the rest of them into chip sided pieces.

6 comments:

Gerlinde in Washington said...

Your pumpkins are beautiful!

Jo said...

Not only an amazing weekend but looks like an amazing feast as well.

peachkins said...

Oh my gosh! it's my first time here and I love your blog!

Anonymous said...

I'm in Australia and I love the owl carving. Do you put a candle inside to light the pumpkin up? I would like to have some outside at Xmas.

Anonymous said...

I'm in Australia and like the owl carving. Do you put a candle inside the pumpkin to light it up? I would like some on my verandah at Xmastime.

Amatullah said...

I'm sorry for not replying earlier, I was away :) Yes I put tea lights, one, two or up to five depending on how big the pumkin is, if you want to put an electric type light bulb in it works too or a glow stick, there are several options :) Best of luck, the owl was very easy to carve.