A Little Comfort Food

Kris and I have both been sick for about two weeks now, some sort of cold I guess, with lots of coughing, painful sneezing and waking up at night often. About half of our conversations this week have been in the kitchen in the middle of the night searching for some sort of medicinal relief. I haven't been able to taste anything for several days... in fact, a few days ago for lunch I had an Italian Beef Sandwich and put an Aioli made from Mayo and Tabasco Sauce (I almost never use Tabasco because it lacks subtlety to me) and then sprinkled pepper flakes on top just so I could taste something.

Yesterday we were talking and realised that really neither of us had eaten anything of substance in at least two days (no wonder we hadn't been able to shake this) and decided to make a meal of basic comfort food. You know the kind of food that just makes you want to curl up and enjoy the warm glow of the dish. The perfect meal for us that day was Breaded Chicken, Mashed Potatoes with Gravy and Creamed Corn (yes from a can just, like mom made it).

A Couple of months ago I started doing a "double breading" on my chicken for two reasons it makes it look bigger and the kids seem to like the fried bread better than the meat. The set up goes like this:

Flour Mixture

3/4 cup Flour

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Pepper

1 tsp Chili Powder

sprinkle Onion Powder

Egg Wash

2 Eggs

1/4 cup Milk

Breading

1 cup of Toasted Bread Crumbs

1 TBL Minced Garlic

1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese

Pre heat the oven to 350 then heat up enough oil in a Saute pan to cook the chicken (about 1/2 cup in this case) to make sure that it is hot enough splash a little water in and listen for that metallic sizzling sound that it makes in hot oil. Take the Chicken Breast and coat it in Flour, dredge through egg wash then coat with breadcrumbs. At this point you can drop it in the oil to cook, I double breaded these so they went back into the eggwash and the breadcrumbs again before I started cooking. I put them in the Saute pan to brown them for a couple of minutes then onto a cookie sheet to finish in the oven.

While this is all going on I cook the potatoes to make mashed (I am assuming that y'all can make those) and Kris put the creamed corn on the stove top. This meal kind of times its self, if I turn on the cold water with the potatoes at the same time I start breading the chicken it all finishes at the same time. The meal turns out to be exactly what it should be, nothing fancy or surprising, just the kind of dish that warms you up from the inside. It doesn't take a lot of work or thinking to enjoy, the chicken, potatoes and corn work well together to comfort you for the evening.