There’s a particular scene in Precious which doesn’t do a whole lot for comfort food, or nose to tail eating.
It involves a pigs foot, and a lack of collared greens.
I’d tried to go with a more interpretive slant for Precious food- thinking I could bust out some of Tetsuya’s truffle salsa with butter, to go with the Inglorious Basterds meat platter. Truffles are precious, right?
To which The Hungry One just raised an eyebrow and said ‘no’. ‘That doesn’t count. If we’re doing Precious,you know we’re going to have to do some kind of fried pig product’.
So that’s how we ended up eating Southern fried chicken (bring on the Blind Side) and fried speck; thanks to some manual labour of The Hungry One, and his valiant willingness to be outside frying, while we were inside sipping Pandoras and mildly berating James Cameron’s current wife for looking like she needed to eat a pie.
The Hungry One’s Blind Side/Precious fried things;
Take two chicken thighs and two chicken breasts. Cut them up into bite size chunks. Do the same with a slab of speck the size of a VCR cassette. You can cut the top layer of fat off, if you’re feeling squeamish.
Marinate them for an hour or so in two cups of milk, a tablespoon of yogurt and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Add to that The Hungry One’s special combination of ten herbs and spices; pinch of ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, smoked paprika, sweet paprika, clove, dried oregano, dried chilli, salt and pepper. Add to that a clove of crushed garlic.
Then make a mixture of three parts breadcrumbs, to one part smashed corn chips, to one part of ground rice (optional, but does add a little bit of extra crunch).
Take the chicken and the pork cubes out of the soaking liquid and roll it around in the breadcrumb rubble until it’s coated.
Put it in the fridge for an hour or so so the crust can set.
Then fry in very hot oil until golden.
Serve after you’ve blotted on paper towel; eat, and then vow to go for a run in the morning.
