I promise this is the last Ad Hoc at Home post for a while. Well, at least for a week. Now that I’ve covered the Pork Belly Confit appetizer and the Cream of Cauliflower Soup/Garlic Confit, I have two dishes left – the famous Ad Hoc Fried Chicken, and the Potato Pavé, which is a layered potato dish in a paving stone style presentation.
Fried chicken has seen more of a presence in my kitchen lately, and almost every time I make slight variations to the brine ingredients, the length of the brine and buttermilk stage, the spices used for the coating, and even the way I cut up the chicken. I was interested to see what choices Ad Hoc made in these areas.
I created the brine the night before, though the chicken didn’t go into the brine until the next morning as Keller doesn’t recommend brining for longer than 12 hours. I’ve always brined at least 18 hours, so that’s one change right off the bat. Once I cooked this brine, the lemon smell was very prominent, and the mix of the lemon aroma with the fresh herbs was intoxicating.
Keller offers up instructions on both an eight piece and ten piece cut. I went with the ten piece cut, though the step where I’m to remove the breasts from the rib cage didn’t make sense to me and it took more effort to remove them than I expect was intended. Also, I used a very small chicken (as recommended) and the breasts looked small, so I didn’t cut them in half as instructed, so I ended up with eight pieces instead of ten.
As mentioned, Keller recommends a smaller chicken, as he believes this provides a better ratio of chicken to crunchy coating, which is of great importance with fried chicken. I chose a 3lb Poulet Rouge Fermier from Whole Foods. At $3/lb it is relatively expensive compared to mainstream brands, but $9 isn’t an outrageous amount to spend for a NC bred, free-range bird.
For the pavé it is recommended that you use the largest potatoes you can find, though I didn’t read that part until after I returned from the store. I ended up with smaller russet potatoes, and I was having difficulties getting full slices with my cheap mandolin, so many of my sheets of potato ended up being short, or thicker on one end. I only purchased three potatoes and I had to toss a number of partial slices, so I ended up not having enough full slices to fill the baking dish.
The finished layers hung out in cream/salt/pepper as I completed cutting the rest of the potatoes. Once done, I assembled the layers into two rows. I tried to make them fit as evenly as possible, but with my lack of slices, conformity was problematic.
The parchment covered the potatoes, then I covered the whole dish in aluminum foil, and cooked the potatoes for two hours in the oven. Once it was done and cooled, it went into the fridge for six hours. As instructed, I cut a piece of cardboard to fit on top of this dish, then wrapped it in aluminum foil, and placed a bunch of cans evenly on the cardboard to press the potatoes down while in the refrigerator.
When it was time to cook that evening, I removed the potatoes from the parchment, and cut the potatoes into rectangles.
Then the potatoes were seared, cut side down for 2-3 minutes each, then plated with a dollop of butter.
The problem with this dish was that I didn’t layer the potatoes high enough, so the cut side was too thin, and they kept falling over. Also, if the layering had been perfect, the presentation might have been as wonderful as pictured in the Ad Hoc cookbook. Other than that, these were very cool. While the potato was compressed, the very thin layers were still discernible, resulting in a pleasing texture when eaten. I will definitely try this again. I think this is one of those dishes that takes some “touch” and will improve with practice.
I got the chicken ready to fry right before I finished the potatoes. I removed the chicken pieces from the brine, then went with the Ad Hoc method of coating the chicken – spice/flour dip, buttermilk dip, second spice/flour dip. I’ve never gone with an intermediate buttermilk step and was interested in how this thick, sticky coating would hold up. The spice mix was interesting too – it had tons of garlic and onion powder, and a fair amount of cayenne and paprika for spice.
I used a bit too much oil in the frying. The pieces were almost fully covered, I aim for 1/2 to 3/4 chicken coverage.
I cooked the chicken in two batches, then fried some thyme and rosemary in the oil and plated. Frying the herbs had the side benefit of making my used oil smell good, instead of the burnt smell from the chicken coating.
While the coating was vastly different than what I’m used to, the chicken was definitely up there with the best I’ve had. Just like pizza, I think it’s tough to call it “best ever” because it has to do with your preference in style. The chicken meat itself was salty enough, so the twelve hour brine did it’s part, and it remained very juicy and tender. I was glad I spent the money on the quality chicken, each piece could be almost fully eaten without bumping into hardly any fat or tendon.
The crust was almost a like a shell surrounding the chicken, instead of becoming one with the chicken exterior/skin, but oh what a crust it was. The heat was there for sure, but it wasn’t over the top, and I think what I thought was an excessive amount of garlic/onion powder really differentiated this chicken. People were curious what was in the spice mixture because it was so interesting. And crunchy. Really, you could just fry this batter up sans chicken and eat it by itself. Hey, what you do behind closed doors is your business.
Try Keller’s recipe. You can find it online (I don’t like posting recipes from published works). You may go back to your traditional recipe, but you won’t be disappointed.
I wrapped up the leftover wing and thigh and had it for lunch the next day. Look at that grease stain in the paper. You know it’s gonna be good.
Please don’t go.
Once again, thanks to Broderick for the handful of photos in this post (the good ones) that he took.
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