A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [79]
¾ cup unsifted all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons sweet paprika
1¼ teaspoons salt
¾ teaspoon black pepper
One 3½-to 4-pound broiler-fryer, cut up for frying
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pound medium mushrooms, stemmed, wiped clean, and sliced about ¼ inch thick
1 cup chicken broth
¼ cup dry vermouth or dry white wine or if using canned artichoke hearts, dry sherry or port
Three 4-ounce jars marinated artichoke hearts, well drained, or one 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, well drained and halved if large
2½ cups converted or long-grain rice, cooked by package directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375° F.
2. Shake the flour, paprika, salt, and pepper in a large plastic zipper bag to combine. Now dredge the chicken by shaking a few pieces at a time in the dredging mixture; tap off the excess. Reserve 3 tablespoons of the dredging mixture; you’ll use it to thicken the sauce.
3. Heat the butter and vegetable oil in a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat for about 2 minutes or until ripples appear on the skillet bottom. Add the chicken in batches, placing skin side down. Brown for 3 to 4 minutes on the first side, 2 to 3 on the flip side—you want a crisp golden crust. As the chicken browns, lift to several thicknesses of paper toweling to drain.
4. Pour all drippings from the skillet, then spoon 2 tablespoons of them back in. Reduce the heat under the skillet to moderate, add the mushrooms, and sauté, scraping up the browned bits on the skillet bottom, for 8 to 10 minutes or until the mushrooms release their juices and these evaporate.
5. Sprinkle the 3 tablespoons reserved dredging mixture over the mushrooms and stir well. Add the chicken broth and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 to 3 minutes or until thickened. Add the vermouth and simmer uncovered for 2 minutes or just long enough for flavors to meld.
6. Arrange the browned chicken skin side up in an ungreased shallow 4-quart casserole or baking dish. Tuck the artichokes in here and there, then pour the hot mushroom sauce evenly over all, lifting the occasional piece of chicken so that it runs underneath. Cover the casserole snugly with foil.
7. Slide onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake uncovered for 20 minutes more or until the chicken is done.
8. To serve, bed the rice on a large heated platter, then arrange the chicken and artichokes on top, and pour the mushroom gravy over all. Or do as JTF always did: Serve at table directly from the casserole and spoon the rice alongside. As she said, “Fewer dishes to wash.”
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SOUTHERN WINES
…very sandie and low towards the waters side, but so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the Sea overflowed them…their smell of sweetness filled the air as if they were in the midst of some delicate garden.
—Arthur Barlowe, 1584
Less famous than Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom he was scouting New World sites for the English to colonize, Barlowe had landed on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island. The grapes he described were sweet-as-honey scuppernongs. “Good for wine,” the English noted, though no records exist to prove that the Roanoke colonists actually made it. That original scuppernong vine—the Mother Vine—still grows on Roanoke Island, misshapen now and gnarled with age.
As a little girl, I remember people sipping Virginia Dare Wine (named for the first English child born in Roanoke’s doomed “Lost Colony”). It was a Kool-Aid–sweet scuppernong wine and among our Raleigh friends who imbibed (many didn’t), it was immensely popular. Even then I thought it was awful.
The South didn’t begin making grown-up wines in earnest until after World War Two, and Virginia led the way. “Remember,” the Virginia Wineries Association brags, “we made wine in Virginia in 1608, so while North Carolina may be first in flight, Virginia is first in wine!”
Maybe so. But that first scuppernong wine was so “foxy” the Jamestown colonists who made it declared it undrinkable. Ever after Virginians tried in vain to make good table wines.
A connoisseur of fine wines