Here is the right place to affirm that cooking doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated or take two hours a night. The industrialized food industry nestled those lies deep within the ethos of their marketing strategy: cooking real food will be too hard for your busy life and skill set . . . we got this for you. But let me assure you that simple, homemade food does not require a culinary degree or half your evening. It is cheaper than processed, prepackaged stuff, and anyone can dice an onion, roast sweet potatoes, grill lamb burgers.
I’ve also learned that kids (and husbands, oh my gosh) will eventually start eating what you cook. If all we ever serve is frozen nuggets and canned corn, obviously they will buck curried fried rice. But if you start incorporating new flavors and new ingredients and new combinations bit by bit, if you slowly introduce sesame green beans or chopped salad or fish tacos and start seasoning your food with zingy flavors, you can indeed broaden your family’s palate. In my opinion, it is worth the aggravation this food odyssey will initially deliver by way of complaining, fussing, overreacting, and full-on lamenting (these poor people having to eat red peppers; THE HUMANITY).
Finally, before I give you a recipe so you, too, can outpace your twentysomething body (I am here for you), let me say this: I cook dinner around three days a week. This feels like a smashing victory. On the other days, we eat leftovers, takeout, random food, or FFY (Fend For Yourself). This bothers me zero percent. I have not batted 1,000 for any single category in the whole of my life. I love food, I love cooking, I love the entire thing, and I still manage less than half a week. So everyone be cool. Gather up all your chill and do the best you can, even if that means one day of homemade and six days of Count Chocula. If these children don’t like it, they can grow up and move out one day and make their own dinners, and may God bless them with kids who only eat processed cheese slices on white bread.
This is a great homemade recipe for your repertoire. I’m going to give you a winner, so your nonadventurous eaters won’t gripe, but you can still push the envelope just a smidge.
FRIED CHICKEN SLIDERS WITH HONEY DIJONNAISE
This is mostly homemade, partly not, but the one processed ingredient involves Hawaiian Rolls, and if we can’t make an exception for those, all of life is meaningless. You have almost all these ingredients already, so a one-bag trip to the store will have you in business.
Honey Dijonnaise Sauce
1 cup mayo
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons honey
Pinch of salt
Fried Chicken:
Peanut oil (about an inch in your skillet)
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tablespoon each: salt, garlic powder, paprika
6 thin-cut chicken breasts, cut in half for 12 sliders (Or as many as you want to make. I literally make 20.)
Sliders:
1 package Hawaiian Slider Rolls, sliced in half lengthwise
1 (8-ounce) package Swiss cheese slices (or provolone, Colby-Jack, Cheddar, whatever)
1 pound bacon, cooked and cut in half
Lettuce
Sliced tomatoes
Make your Honey Dijonnaise: mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl. (There, you’re done). Stick it in the fridge.
Now fry your chicken: pour the oil into a large flat-bottomed skillet, and start heating on medium-high heat. (Your oil has to be super hot, or you get soggy, oil-drowned fried chicken, and your family will cry all the tears in North America.)
In a shallow baking dish, combine the milk, vinegar, and egg, and mix together. This basically becomes homemade buttermilk, because who buys actual buttermilk? I throw in some seasonings here, because a bit of salt and cayenne and black pepper ain’t never hurt nothin’. In a second shallow baking dish, mix the flour, panko, and seasonings.
Salt and pepper both sides of your chicken breast halves. With one hand, dip a breast into the milk mixture. Move it to the flour mixture, and toss with the other hand. (I am not trying to be difficult, good reader. Just keeping your fingers from becoming breaded.) Shake off the excess flour and place carefully into the hot oil. Fry four to five minutes on each side until Brown and Beautiful. Repeat with the rest of the chicken, but don’t crowd your pan. You will probably fry in two batches. Keep your first batch in a 200-degree oven on a pan lined with paper towels.
Build your Hawaiian sliders: bread, Honey Dijonnaise, fried chicken, cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, Honey Dijonnaise, bread.
Listen to what I’m saying to you: This is my family’s tip-top most requested meal. I am not even kidding. It’s just a fried chicken sandwich for the love of Truett Cathy, but the attention to flavor on each layer, plus the dreamy sweet slider rolls, inspired this dinner conversation the last time I made these:
Caleb: Raise your hand if you think these are better than Chick-fil-A.
[All hands up.]
I rest my case.
There is nothing else on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.1
— THOMAS AQUINAS
CHAPTER 20
FANGIRL
I’ve spoken often about our Supper Club, now in our fifth year of feeding one another once a month, devoted in between. There are four couples: two pastors, four authors, three business owners, three native Texans, one hipster who used to be a cowboy, one Jersey girl who used to be Goth, and sixteen kids between us. We rotate houses, the host cooks and cleans, and we never make it home before 1:00 a.m., which means SC is really two days: one for feasting and one for recovery.
In addition to all the work, the host comes up with a table discussion topic. Sometimes it is funny like, What was your most kickass moment as a kid, when you thought you were nailing life? (This resulted in me singing “Blue Jeans” for my compatriots, the award-winning song Christy Doucet and I sang in the sixth-grade talent show, which won first place. Stop asking me about it, you guys! You’re embarrassing me!) Topics are witty, silly, or incredibly poignant and precious. I cried into my charred shrimp and jalape?o Cheddar grits just two weeks ago at Aaron and Jamie’s, so dear was the conversation. Four years ago or so, one of the questions was this:
Would you rather be rich or famous?
The answers were absolutely hilarious, and along with half of SC, I said: “Famous.” I know. Gross. In my defense, my reasoning was that our life was happy as is, and money wasn’t that motivating, so I defaulted to fame, which seemed harmless, intangible, almost like a fake paradigm with no real effect. I guess I pick famous! Tra la la.