Author: arielleclementine

Lucy’s Fried Chicken

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All photographs courtesy of my talented sister, Helen.  Stop by her blog to see more! http://helenthenanny.blogspot.com/  Thanks, Helen!!

Lucy’s Fried Chicken is the new joint from the spectacular folks at Olivia, nestled on a quiet side street just off South Congress.  The fried chicken munching, négligée-clad pin up girl is just the first indication that these people know what they’re doing- this restaurant is an unadulterated delight.

Gratuitous Henry shot. See? He’s delighted already! It was a perfectly balmy spring night, so we opted to sit on the folksy patio.  There are old wood floors and powerful fans, and just-this-side-of-rickety benches,  which gives the whole place a Grandma’s front porch vibe.  In short, it feels like the perfect place to eat a bucket of fried chicken.

The money shot! A basket of that famous fried chicken, surrounded by 6 of the 8 sides on offer: smashed grilled potatoes, collard greens, cornbread dressing, grilled red cabbage slaw, grilled corn on the cob, and Mexican Coke sweet potatoes.  We like to sample!

The fried chicken is pitch perfect.  Shatteringly-crisp crust hugs tender, perfectly-seasoned chicken.  There are other tempting things on the menu, and loads of fun specials every night, but you have to, have to, order a basket of the chicken.  It’s the best I’ve ever had, and I’d be shocked if you didn’t feel the same way.

The sides play a very quiet second fiddle to the headlining chicken. Our very favorites were easily the collard greens (perfect chicken accompaniment!) and the cornbread dressing.  The smashed potatoes, which don’t look it but are laced with something spicy (tabasco?), corn on the cob, and sweet potatoes were all ok, but nothing special.  The red cabbage slaw was not good.  It was almost as if someone had forgotten to dress it.  Or salt it.  It basically tasted like raw shredded cabbage to us, so I’ll avoid that one next time. Conclusion: If you love sides, stick with the collard greens and dressing- you won’t be disappointed.

Lucy’s also has an exceptionally delightful cocktail menu. So delightful, in fact, that the drinks were profiled in a slideshow on Serious Eats.  My sister classed things up and went for the Red-Headed Step Child, which is a careful blending of rum, fresh lime juice, and Big Red.  She loved it.  Though really, what’s not to love?

Henry held onto that drumstick for almost 30 minutes, slowly and steadily gumming off all the fried chicken-goodness with his seven tiny teeth.

Pickles! A Henry favorite.

Interior shot of that gorgeous bird.

Happy baby!

Chicken lips.

The PIE! My god, the pie.  The pastry chef at Lucy’s is a super genius.  I had heard great things about the pies here, and we decided to try a slice of the S’mores (tough decision- they all sound amazing). This was beyond wonderful.  That chocolate layer was rich, smooth, and fudge-y. That’s topped with a layer of house-made marshmallow, and that’s topped with a cinnamon-flecked whipped cream.  Outrageous! Come hungry and eat lots of chicken and pie. Leave happy.

Naturally, Henry loved it too.  We shall eat kale for the next eight meals.

Dustin’s Molecular Gastronomy Birthday Party!

arielleclementine6 Comments

This is the final post in a series about planning a molecular gastronomy dinner party. These posts are also being featured on food52!

This is it! After weeks of planning, tons of shopping, and two solid days of cooking, it’s finally happening: Dustin’s Science!-themed surprise 30th birthday party!

SURPRISE! Dustin thought he and Molly were coming over to babysit!
Henry didn’t care much for the surprise, but Dustin liked it! And he said he had no idea what we’d been up to! 
A toast! In test tubes, naturally. (They’re hard to fill on account of all the foam!) Now we can eat!
The first course: Petri Dish.  Blood orange gelée with a smear of local chevre, pulverized pistachios, droplets of meyer lemon juice and olive oil, micro peppermint leaves, and sea salt.
It was a hit! Seriously- I’ve never seen Henry lick his plate before. 
The second course: Pipette.  These turned out great! Oui, Chef’s herbed beef skewers are insanely good, and the horseradish cream in the pipette worked perfectly.  I don’t know if people are going to be rushing out to buy pipettes for skewers, but it is a totally fun concept.  You get the perfect amount of sauce without having to worry about people double-dipping in a communal bowl. I kid! But really, I think this is a concept worth repeating.
The third course: Pop Rocks.  Korean Pork Belly Ssäm with pickled radish, short grain rice, and a sprinkling salt made with unflavored pop rocks, Japanese 7 spice, and sea salt. 
You guys! This was amazing.  Probably one of the most delicious and fun things I’ve ever prepared.  That pork belly is brilliant anyway, but the pop rocks were SO. FUN. The spicy-sweet salt on top really complemented the pork, and you could hear the pop rocks popping in everyone’s mouths around the table. It was a multi-sensory delight.  I will definitely make it again- even if it’s just for dinner with Andy and Henry!
Hooray! The first three courses were as good or better than I hoped they would be! Side note- I don’t know what’s happening in this picture, but I like it.
The fourth course: Flea Circus.  Miniature corn dog with spicy mustard, fried pickles with homemade buttermilk ranch, and funnel cake with sage and powdered bacon fat. The pickles and ranch were my favorite, with the cocktail sausage corn dog coming in a close second (I used Helen’s recipe for the batter).  The funnel cake was good- the fried sage and bacon fat were amazing- but it lost its funnel cake-fluffiness during its hold time in the oven.  It was still tasty, just much crispier than I had intended.  I guess funnel cakes are best made à la minute!
The fifth course: Cheese Plate. I had to make the honey spheres (for topping the Iberico) table side, so I decided to make the powdered olive oil, which had been infused with garlic, at the table too.  That way everybody could see the science-y transformation. 
It worked! And it did so in spite of me completely abandoning the rigidly-precise spherification technique.  I just watered down some honey, spooned in some sodium alginate, and mixed it up with a fork. The spheres were perfect orbs of liquid honey, encased in an ultra-thin membrane. So hooray for taking a shortcut and having it work out ok! Sad note about the carbonated grapes, though- they had lost their carbonation :/ I just assumed they would stay effervescent, but they didn’t.  If you’re planning to try out this technique, it should probably be done right before you’re planning to eat them- the grapes look really cool in the foggy bowl of dry ice anyway.
The sixth course: Periodic Table Cake.  Molly made the cake, I decorated it, and we all devoured it.  There’s just nothing like a moist chocolate cake with cream cheese icing.
Cake face!
The final course: Miracle Berry. This course was my attempt to recreate the one Chris Jones created on Top Chef. Slice of meyer lemon, deconstructed cheesecake (no sugar) with graham cracker crumbles and blackberry segments, and Pellegrino with lemon and lime. It had to be the last course because the effects of the miracle berry can last up to two hours.
Oh boy was this fun! When I bought the miracle berry tablets, some of the reviewers said that they didn’t work, so I was a bit worried.  But they were amazing! The lemon was like an intense and very sweet orange.  The cheesecake, which was just cream cheese folded with whipped cream, vanilla, and lemon juice, was also delicious.  And the Pellegrino reminded me of a cherry limeade.  Honestly though, just tasting the lime from the Pellegrino glass might have been the tastiest thing on the plate- it was one of the most delicious pieces of fruit I’ve ever had.  If you’re planning a miracle berry tasting party, make sure you’ve got a big sack of limes on hand!
And that, friends, was the dinner. It was an absolute blast, and the birthday boy seemed to really enjoy it.  Looking back on it, I am sure this is the most involved meal I’ve ever cooked, and definitely one of the very best.  I was really happy that I spent so much time planning and thinking about the timeline.  It was really great to have all the cooking done ahead of time so I could just plate the next course as soon as we had finished the last one.  
Huge, huge thanks to Helen, who is not pictured in any of the photos (sad face) because she tirelessly documented the whole process.   No exaggeration- Helen took close to 1500 pictures over the course of two days! Thanks, Helen!! 
Fun fact: After dinner, we geeked out by solving a series of science-themed puzzles that my husband, Andy, created, which culminated in the creation of an icosahedron that spelled out “Happy Birthday Dustin!”
Hooray for Dustin and Molly! We were so happy to get to celebrate Dustin’s 30th birthday in such a grand fashion! I hope it was as fun for him as it was for me!

Preparations for a Molecular Gastronomy Dinner Party

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This is the fourth post in a series about planning a molecular gastronomy dinner party. Click here to read the first post about the blueprint for the big feast. These posts are also being featured on food52!

Me, in the thick of party preparations, the night before the big feast. 
A week or so before the party, I made a to-do list of everything that would need to be done in the 48 hours leading up to the party.  Absolutely everything that could be done in advance was scheduled for Friday, and the last minute stuff was listed in the order it should be done on the day of.  But now that it was actually time to start cooking, I was nervous.  My normal MO for dinner parties is to serve dishes that I’ve made before- many times if possible- to make sure that I really like what I’m about to serve, and to help me feel more confident that I won’t mess it up.  For this party, I had only made two of the seven courses before- the herbed beef skewers, and the chocolate cake.  (Hey- even if things go horribly, we’ll be able to eat steak skewers and a lot of cake!) I just had to keep reminding myself that, for this party especially, the whole point was to serve new and surprising dishes, and if they weren’t quite what I was expecting, than we had at least had a fun time trying them.  I adopted this as my mantra.

As we actually began to cook, there was so much to do that I sort of forgot my nerves.  I kept my head down, tackling one task at a time, and using the strikethrough command on my to-do list when I had finished a job (so satisfying!).  Helen, Molly, and Andy (my husband) were all instrumental in the process.  Molly helped cook and took care of all of the decorations (and had to tell Dustin an increasingly elaborate lie to explain her near two-day absence), Helen took hundreds of pictures of the preparations, and Andy was left to entertain baby Henry.  But after many hours, we got it done! Here’s how it played out:

Friday (The Night Before the Party)
Henry samples the Japanese 7 Spice/Pop Rock salt that will be sprinkled on the pork belly ssäm. Thanks to mrslarkin for the tip!
The marinade for the sliced pork belly from Richardson Farms. 
Filling the petri dishes with the blood orange gelée
Molly baked the cake while I worked on the decorations. We had originally planned to make a complete periodic table cake, but that’s 118 tiles, folks.  Instead, and to make it more birthday-y, we spelled out 
H Ar P Y      B I Rf Dy       Ds Sn
(Sn = Tin!, perfect for Dustin!)
Molly makes approximately one million platonic solids from folded cardstock for decorations. 

Saturday (The Day of the Party!)
Eeee! Henry and I ate unseemly amounts of cream cheese frosting after decorating Dustin’s birthday cake. 
Then we carbonated some grapes! Here’s a video of me laying waste to some dry ice for this:

Preparing the marinade and slicing the beef for the herbed beef skewers.  We didn’t combine the sliced beef with the marinade just then- it only needs an hour to marinate.
Skewering cocktail sausages for our miniature corn dogs.  Texas represent!
An hour and a half before the party- time to fry! First up: miniature sage funnel cakes, inspired by a dish at Barley Swine, a fantastic Austin restaurant. 
Next in line for the fryer: mini corn dogs. 
Last but not least, fried pickles. Fun fact: these are Dustin’s favorite, and earned him the nickname “The Pickler.”
We need something green. 

Checking the to-do list.  We have time for a break!
Molly, back at home with Dustin, sent a surreptitious text to let us know they were on their way- time to grill the pork belly and beef skewers! Have you ever grilled pork belly? Crazy, crazy flare ups.  I somehow managed not to completely incinerate it.

Helen lined up all the plates we would be using for the dinner, along with all of the components that didn’t need to be kept hot or cold.  The just-cooked meat and fried stuff was kept in the oven at 170 degrees- the lowest it would go. 
The last to-do! Putting together the petri dish course. 
Here we go!