Spices By Scent

I am cooking chicken cutlets, is their official name. You dip marinated boneless and skinless chicken breast into egg, then dip that into panko bread crumbs and spices, usually with salt and poultry seasoning. Poultry seasoning is sage and several other things (sage, savoury herbs, celery salt, pepper, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary) in a nice easy powder format. These cost about a buck at cheap grocery stores, and are totally worth it if you have a nice hen to roast. You can pat it on a chicken's skin, or lift up the skin and spread it underneath that before pressing it back down and mounting the chicken on a wire rack. This one I'm doing is merely from frozen breasts, nice and thin, so the seasoning will be awesome. The country that makes the best of these is Japan, but France is a close second. The french are happier with egg wash, and Japan is really fussy about their ingredients, and tend to avoid seasoning for that reason. This is weird, but this is how they do things.

One of the great things about all the mistakes you make when you start learning to cook at age 4, which I did, is you remember the mistakes and figure out improvements. I learned that regular pumpkin pie is too sweet, and needed more seasoning. So I gradually improved it, and wrote about this on the Internet. The response is that Libby Pumpkin company changed their 50 year old recipe to match mine. I'm SURE this is entirely an accident. Sure. The one they use now still needs the sugar reduced by half, but the spice level is correct. Pumpkin pie NEEDS the spices to taste good. It is supposed to remind you of sailors who took long trips to SE Asia after whaling ended. You may find whaling repugnant, because you were taught this, but your hamburger is worse. So is your chicken nugget. None of these is "humane" meat. Even the Muslims have this right. Humanely killed meat is important, morally and ethically. Alas, cost trumps that for most people.

Anyway, after dipping the chicken into egg and panko, you put it on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes. This is important. The breading absorbs moisture and it sticks to the meat. 40 minutes is okay too. Then you fry it on a thin (3 tbs) sheet of oil, around 8 minutes a side, low heat. It will brown nicely, and the moisture stays inside the meat. It is like fried chicken, only much healthier and cheaper. You aren't wasting a gallon of soybean oil. I use olive oil, the real stuff from California, not the blend from Italy that's mostly Soybean oil from here with a trace of their stuff, then sent back at a markup. This is true btw. Italian olive oil is mostly fake. It is mostly soybean, from here. With a bit of olive from there for taste. And this is legal. This is why I buy domestic, not imported, olive oil. We have standards. We have to apply them.

The thing about having lots of experience with cooking is your nose develops a real sense for seasonings. You have a special part of your memory assigned to smells. This comes from Women. Women have this stronger than men, but there is some in men too. We inherit a bit from our mothers, and the rest is learned. We end up being allowed to play with grills and bbq, but women would beat us there too, if we weren't so silly and territorial about it. Its the X chromosome. There's important stuff there.

Anyway, if you open a spice, and smell it, your brain will tell you if you think this belongs with the dish you are cooking. This "tell" is a short circuit around rational thought or planning. If you cook enough you will understand I am not bullshitting you. This is regular atavism. We should respect this. Atavism drives breeding and territoriality. It also makes men like beef jerky, and women sniff fruits. It is atavism in the modern world.

I like how my breaded chicken turns out when fried in a thinly oiled pan over low heat. It takes around 9 minutes per side, but smell for burning. If it smells burnt, it is too late. I like to serve this with white rice. It comes out moist and tender, and cuts with a butter knife. Crisp on the outside, not too salty, and the sage is delicious, as is the tarragon. The flavors are oil soluble so you have to have fats or it won't season the meat. Quite a few spices are fat soluble. Always notice those. One reason that cinnamon is good in mediocre coffee is cinnamon dissolves into the coffee, which is also an oil and water emulsion, technically, like whipped cream or mayonnaise or the filling inside an Oreo.

I hope all amateur chefs out there, reading this, will appreciate my points on smelling the spice. Sometimes you discover great things, Cinnamon and allspice are fantastic on chicken. And turkey works with them too, as well as mustard. Ground turkey makes a great hamburger seasoned this way. It is a little weird, but it is a good weird. And you can always tell your guests its a rare exotic animal like ostrich.