Mamaw's Chicken
Mar. 1st, 2024 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsPaige asks Sam to teach her how to make their grandmother's fried chicken and mac n cheese.
Sam stared at Paige, brows furrowed. "You want me to teach you to cook? You? You've spent the last ten years tellin' me you didn't need ta learn how to cook. What changed?"
Paige crossed her arms. “I can change my mind if I want to. Are you gonna help or should I ask someone else?” She could always look up some tutorials on YouTube.
"Did I or did I not buy the ingredients to teach ya?" Sam asked, rolling his eyes fondly. "I still think ya shouldn't start with Mamaw's fried chicken and macaroni but I hope you listen better to my directions than my suggestions."
“How hard can chicken and macaroni be? They’re basically staples back home. And I can already make macaroni, I do it all the time!” Paige smiled. Sam may say she couldn’t cook, but making things from a box still counted. Right?
“You…. You do know that this took me five years to get right and I already knew how to cook when I started learnin’ right? And please tell me you know that boxed macaroni ain’t what Mamaw serves?” Sam said, brow furrowed anxiously.
Now it was Paige’s turn to roll her eyes. “Yes, Samuel. I know Mamaw didn’t make boxed macaroni, she made everythin’ from scratch. Similar process, though, right? And you started trying to make her chicken when you were 8. I’m 24, I’m not still learning fine motor skills.”
“Right…… so….the first thing we’re gonna do is prep all our ingredients and get the crisco hot in the pan. And preheat the oven but that’s kinda an obvious step.” Sam said, rolling up his sleeves and starting to pull out everything they needed, organizing it on the counter around the cutting board and bowls they’d grabbed to make life easier. “Do you think you can shred the cheese?”
Paige took a moment to write down Sam’s directions. “Yes, I can shred cheese.” Putting her pen down, Paige reached for the block of cheese and grater. She placed the grater in a bowl and started scraping the cheese against the side.
“I wrote down the recipes for ya already.” Sam said, using his elbow to gesture towards some papers he’d put on the counter while he started removing the chicken from the package. “Or bout as close as I could figure on the spices- Mamaw just likes to grab n pour and you just gotta know her system and copy her exact or fail.”
Paige’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t cooking all about measuring stuff? What do you mean just grabbed and poured?” All the recipes Paige had looked at had exact measurements for everything that went in. And usually if she tried to experiment (which was often), it didn’t turn out right.
“I mean, once you know how flavors work together you can pretty much just do what you want. I been doing that for date nights and it’s been pretty cool seein what all I can make now.” Sam said with a shrug. He took a moment to preheat the oven, tapping Paige gently on the wrist to get her attention so she could watch since the ovens here were different from back home.
Paige looked over and watched what Sam was doing. “Every time I do what I want, you complain I’m doing something wrong. So what is the truth?”
“What part a once you know how flavors work together did you miss? You ain’t there yet and that’s fine, it takes practice. If you applied yerself you’d be pretty good at this, there’s a lot of chemistry involved in cookin’. Understanding how acids work, how different things are impacted by different amounts of heat…… you’d do great, you’ve just gotta take the time to learn rather than jump into it with an inflated concept of what yer capable of with no experience.” Sam said, pouring buttermilk into a bowl and then seasoning with as he talked, he hardly seemed to be paying attention to what he was doing, significantly more focused on talking to his sister. This was clearly second nature to him.
Paige stuck her tongue out at him. Maybe she had tried to do too much too fast, but Sam could be less rude about it. What happened to the nice Sam everyone at the mansion claimed existed? She turned back to what she was doing and finished grating the block of cheese. “I’m finished. Anything else I’m allowed to do or is my ego still too inflated?”
“All I meant was that yer confident but we gotta build up yer skillset.” Sam said, sticking out his tongue at her in turn. “It’s good that yer confident. Now what we’re gonna do is dry the chicken, then season it, then soak it in the buttermilk a while, while it soaks we’re gonna season the flour, get the pasta boilin’, and start workin’ on our roux.”
It was a lot of stuff, he knew that, but it would be a shame if the chicken got cold before the macaroni was ready, and Paige was good at multitasking, she’d probably be fine. Sam might not act like it now, but he did have confidence in her ability to learn and learn quickly, he always had.
Paige thought that sounded like a lot of seasoning, but unfortunately Sam did know better in this. “What’s a roux? Also why are we soakin’ the chicken in buttermilk? What’s that supposed to do?” She went to pull the chicken out of the fridge while Sam answered.
“A roux is a combination of flour and milk and or fat that makes a thick base for sauces or stews. In our case it’s gonna make the cheese sauce for our macaroni good. The buttermilk’s gonna do two things- it’s gonna make the outside of the chicken wet so our flour sticks and it’s gonna tenderize the meat, that’s why we let the meat soak in it for a while before we bread and fry it.” Sam shot her a small smile. “Again, lotsa science in cookin’- there’s some book I seen that goes through all the science, I’ll have to get it for ya.”
“Don’t ya just melt the cheese into the pasta?” Paige set the chicken on the counter. “The books sound interestin’. I’ll have to do some research myself, too.” If it really all was just chemistry, maybe Paige wouldn’t need more lessons and could finally figure it out herself.
"No, you melt the cheese into the roux to make the sauce then add the pasta, transfer to a dish and then bake it. Otherwise you don't have a cheese sauce you just got....cheese. Completely throws off the texture and the taste." Sam said, rolling his eyes slightly. "Alright, so the important thing with a roux is that we gotta keep whiskin' it so it don't burn before we add the milk and then we gotta keep whiskin' it so that it don't clump up after we add the milk."
How would cheese throw off the taste of Mac n cheese? It was half cheese. “Got it. Lots of whisking. That shouldn’t be too hard.” Grabbing the whisk, Paige held it up and waited for Sam to tell her what to stick it in. Who knew milk could clump up?
Sam waited until he was sure the water was boiling before starting to add the ingredients for the roux to the pot, instructing Paige to start whisking as he added ingredients to the pot. A squeeze of mustard, paprika, a little cayenne, salt and pepper, garlic powder, milk- eyeballing it all with practiced ease despite the carefully written measurements on the papers he’d given for Paige.“See, pretty simple so far.” He said, offering her a smile. “You got this.”Paige raised her eyebrow at how Sam didn’t measure a single thing, but didn’t comment. She just kept whisking the pot with enthusiasm. So far, this has been much easier than Sam had tried to convince her it would be. “So, just keep going like this?”“Yeah, I’m boutta add the cheese and we’re gonna whisk it while it melts to make sure it’s nice and smooth. Then we’ll add the pasta and put it into our baking dish with more cheese on top.” Sam added the cheese to the pot while Paige whisked. While she kept the sauce from clumping up, he drained the cooked pasta and waited patiently for the sauce to thicken and smooth itself out.
Paige continued to whisk the mixture like Sam told her to, but the sauce was getting thick and difficult to work with. Clearly, measuring things was important. Attempting to get the sauce to thin out and be more sauce like, Paige grabbed the milk that was still sitting nearby and poured some in. After a few more rounds of mixing, the sauce started to thin out and look correct. “Ok, I think it’s ready! You can add the pasta now.”“Paigey.” Sam said, blinking at her in clear frustration. “What did you do to the sauce?”“It was too thick, so I added more milk to thin it out,” Paige said, proud of her cooking instincts. See? She did know a few things about cooking.
Sam paused and then took a deep breath before adding the pasta. This would be a good teaching moment. “Okay, when we go to eat it we’ll see if your instincts were right or not.”
Once Paige had mixed in the pasta he helped her transfer it to the baking dish and then add cheese on top before putting it in the oven.
“Alright, so I’m gonna get the crisco hot and while I do that, I want you to take the chicken from the buttermilk and start breading it in the flour mixture. I’ll show you how to see if yer oil is hot enough once we get a few pieces breaded.” Sam gave her a tense smile. Surely she’d be able to get the flour to stick to something wet without issue…..right?
Sam was acting kind of weird about the pasta, but then again, he had been acting weird about her asking him to help her learn to cook, so it was probably more of that. Feeling good, Paige nodded and moved over to the bowls of flour Sam had seasoned and left on the counter. All she had to do was roll the chicken in the flour, easy peasy.
Sam watched as the crisco melted in the skillet and hovered his hand over it before scrunching his face up. Considering. With a small nod he gathered a bit of water on his fingertips and flicked some into the hot oil, nodding and smiling as it loudly crackled and popped. "Oil's ready when yer done. How's it comin?"
Paige held up her hands, covered in lumpy flour and buttermilk. “Uh…well, they ain’t exactly pretty…” She indicated the pile of chicken she had coated as evenly as she could in the flour mixture, most of them having uneven coverage.
“That should be good enough right?” Paige moved past Sam to wash her hands in the sink. At least the messy part was over with.
“Alright, once yer hands are warshed off, yer gonna put about four pieces of chicken in the skillet. And then we’re gonna let ‘em cook for a bit before flipping em. We want em cooked halfway before we flip. Y’know what to look for?” Sam said. “Once we get the chicken in I’ll grab some tongs you can use to flip em later.”
“Yep, when it’s golden and crispy.” Paige dried her hands off with a towel and put the first few pieces of chicken into the skillet. As they sat there frying, bits of the breading started to fall off and drift away in the oil. It definitely wasn’t supposed to do that. Maybe it was cooking too slowly? Paige reached over and turned up the burner. That ought to do the trick.
Sam frowned but didn’t say anything. He’d given Paige a recipe, that had temperatures, times, the whole shebang. If she wanted to go on instinct she could prove him right about her overinflated confidence.
There, now they were crisping up. “Where are the tongs? I think they’re ready to flip.” Paige held her hand out to Sam.
Sam handed them over and prepared a plate covered with paper towels so the chicken could drain. “Make sure to check that it’s fully cooked.”
“Yep, got it.” Paige set the plate down next to the stove and started flipping the chicken. A moment later, something started to smell like it was burning. Couldn’t be the chicken, she just checked it. “Sam, do you-“ Paige began to look over at Sam and noticed that the paper towel had been touching the burner and caught fire. “Shit!”
As calmly as possible, Sam reached out and pulled the plate away from the stove and immediately ran it under cool water. "I love you, this is not the room to lose track of your spatial awareness."
“….Sorry.” Paige turned back to the stove so Sam couldn’t see how red her face was. She could do this, she just needed to focus. And to not set another fire. Or burn any food. It would be fine.
“It’s okay, accidents happen.” Sam said, leaning against her quickly. “I’ll get new paper towels.”
Paige leaned back into him. “Thanks.” Now that the plate wasn’t on fire, she started removing chicken from the pan and replacing it with the uncooked pieces. Not too much later, she managed to finish the rest without incident.
“Chicken’s done!” Paige turned off the burner and put the plate of chicken in front of Sam.
Sam pulled the macaroni out of the oven, and handed Paige a serving spoon. "Alright, go ahead and scoop out some macaroni and check if yer chicken is cooked in the middle."
Paige stuck the spoon in and scooped out…a bunch of dried noodles. Looking at the casserole dish, it seemed that the cheese sauce had all run to the bottom, Lea the noodles on top to crisp up. Gross. Cutting into one of the pieces of chicken showed it was still raw and pink inside. “…..the chicken needs a few more minutes. Maybe we can throw it in the oven?”
Sam shook his head and walked to the fridge, where he pulled out a completely new set of the same ingredients. “We’re gonna do it again. I got extras for a reason. Are you going to follow directions this time?”
Paige closed her eyes and resisted the urge to smack Sam with the spoon. Of course he bought do over ingredients. “I really hate you sometimes, you know that?”
Sam stared at Paige, brows furrowed. "You want me to teach you to cook? You? You've spent the last ten years tellin' me you didn't need ta learn how to cook. What changed?"
Paige crossed her arms. “I can change my mind if I want to. Are you gonna help or should I ask someone else?” She could always look up some tutorials on YouTube.
"Did I or did I not buy the ingredients to teach ya?" Sam asked, rolling his eyes fondly. "I still think ya shouldn't start with Mamaw's fried chicken and macaroni but I hope you listen better to my directions than my suggestions."
“How hard can chicken and macaroni be? They’re basically staples back home. And I can already make macaroni, I do it all the time!” Paige smiled. Sam may say she couldn’t cook, but making things from a box still counted. Right?
“You…. You do know that this took me five years to get right and I already knew how to cook when I started learnin’ right? And please tell me you know that boxed macaroni ain’t what Mamaw serves?” Sam said, brow furrowed anxiously.
Now it was Paige’s turn to roll her eyes. “Yes, Samuel. I know Mamaw didn’t make boxed macaroni, she made everythin’ from scratch. Similar process, though, right? And you started trying to make her chicken when you were 8. I’m 24, I’m not still learning fine motor skills.”
“Right…… so….the first thing we’re gonna do is prep all our ingredients and get the crisco hot in the pan. And preheat the oven but that’s kinda an obvious step.” Sam said, rolling up his sleeves and starting to pull out everything they needed, organizing it on the counter around the cutting board and bowls they’d grabbed to make life easier. “Do you think you can shred the cheese?”
Paige took a moment to write down Sam’s directions. “Yes, I can shred cheese.” Putting her pen down, Paige reached for the block of cheese and grater. She placed the grater in a bowl and started scraping the cheese against the side.
“I wrote down the recipes for ya already.” Sam said, using his elbow to gesture towards some papers he’d put on the counter while he started removing the chicken from the package. “Or bout as close as I could figure on the spices- Mamaw just likes to grab n pour and you just gotta know her system and copy her exact or fail.”
Paige’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t cooking all about measuring stuff? What do you mean just grabbed and poured?” All the recipes Paige had looked at had exact measurements for everything that went in. And usually if she tried to experiment (which was often), it didn’t turn out right.
“I mean, once you know how flavors work together you can pretty much just do what you want. I been doing that for date nights and it’s been pretty cool seein what all I can make now.” Sam said with a shrug. He took a moment to preheat the oven, tapping Paige gently on the wrist to get her attention so she could watch since the ovens here were different from back home.
Paige looked over and watched what Sam was doing. “Every time I do what I want, you complain I’m doing something wrong. So what is the truth?”
“What part a once you know how flavors work together did you miss? You ain’t there yet and that’s fine, it takes practice. If you applied yerself you’d be pretty good at this, there’s a lot of chemistry involved in cookin’. Understanding how acids work, how different things are impacted by different amounts of heat…… you’d do great, you’ve just gotta take the time to learn rather than jump into it with an inflated concept of what yer capable of with no experience.” Sam said, pouring buttermilk into a bowl and then seasoning with as he talked, he hardly seemed to be paying attention to what he was doing, significantly more focused on talking to his sister. This was clearly second nature to him.
Paige stuck her tongue out at him. Maybe she had tried to do too much too fast, but Sam could be less rude about it. What happened to the nice Sam everyone at the mansion claimed existed? She turned back to what she was doing and finished grating the block of cheese. “I’m finished. Anything else I’m allowed to do or is my ego still too inflated?”
“All I meant was that yer confident but we gotta build up yer skillset.” Sam said, sticking out his tongue at her in turn. “It’s good that yer confident. Now what we’re gonna do is dry the chicken, then season it, then soak it in the buttermilk a while, while it soaks we’re gonna season the flour, get the pasta boilin’, and start workin’ on our roux.”
It was a lot of stuff, he knew that, but it would be a shame if the chicken got cold before the macaroni was ready, and Paige was good at multitasking, she’d probably be fine. Sam might not act like it now, but he did have confidence in her ability to learn and learn quickly, he always had.
Paige thought that sounded like a lot of seasoning, but unfortunately Sam did know better in this. “What’s a roux? Also why are we soakin’ the chicken in buttermilk? What’s that supposed to do?” She went to pull the chicken out of the fridge while Sam answered.
“A roux is a combination of flour and milk and or fat that makes a thick base for sauces or stews. In our case it’s gonna make the cheese sauce for our macaroni good. The buttermilk’s gonna do two things- it’s gonna make the outside of the chicken wet so our flour sticks and it’s gonna tenderize the meat, that’s why we let the meat soak in it for a while before we bread and fry it.” Sam shot her a small smile. “Again, lotsa science in cookin’- there’s some book I seen that goes through all the science, I’ll have to get it for ya.”
“Don’t ya just melt the cheese into the pasta?” Paige set the chicken on the counter. “The books sound interestin’. I’ll have to do some research myself, too.” If it really all was just chemistry, maybe Paige wouldn’t need more lessons and could finally figure it out herself.
"No, you melt the cheese into the roux to make the sauce then add the pasta, transfer to a dish and then bake it. Otherwise you don't have a cheese sauce you just got....cheese. Completely throws off the texture and the taste." Sam said, rolling his eyes slightly. "Alright, so the important thing with a roux is that we gotta keep whiskin' it so it don't burn before we add the milk and then we gotta keep whiskin' it so that it don't clump up after we add the milk."
How would cheese throw off the taste of Mac n cheese? It was half cheese. “Got it. Lots of whisking. That shouldn’t be too hard.” Grabbing the whisk, Paige held it up and waited for Sam to tell her what to stick it in. Who knew milk could clump up?
Sam waited until he was sure the water was boiling before starting to add the ingredients for the roux to the pot, instructing Paige to start whisking as he added ingredients to the pot. A squeeze of mustard, paprika, a little cayenne, salt and pepper, garlic powder, milk- eyeballing it all with practiced ease despite the carefully written measurements on the papers he’d given for Paige.“See, pretty simple so far.” He said, offering her a smile. “You got this.”Paige raised her eyebrow at how Sam didn’t measure a single thing, but didn’t comment. She just kept whisking the pot with enthusiasm. So far, this has been much easier than Sam had tried to convince her it would be. “So, just keep going like this?”“Yeah, I’m boutta add the cheese and we’re gonna whisk it while it melts to make sure it’s nice and smooth. Then we’ll add the pasta and put it into our baking dish with more cheese on top.” Sam added the cheese to the pot while Paige whisked. While she kept the sauce from clumping up, he drained the cooked pasta and waited patiently for the sauce to thicken and smooth itself out.
Paige continued to whisk the mixture like Sam told her to, but the sauce was getting thick and difficult to work with. Clearly, measuring things was important. Attempting to get the sauce to thin out and be more sauce like, Paige grabbed the milk that was still sitting nearby and poured some in. After a few more rounds of mixing, the sauce started to thin out and look correct. “Ok, I think it’s ready! You can add the pasta now.”“Paigey.” Sam said, blinking at her in clear frustration. “What did you do to the sauce?”“It was too thick, so I added more milk to thin it out,” Paige said, proud of her cooking instincts. See? She did know a few things about cooking.
Sam paused and then took a deep breath before adding the pasta. This would be a good teaching moment. “Okay, when we go to eat it we’ll see if your instincts were right or not.”
Once Paige had mixed in the pasta he helped her transfer it to the baking dish and then add cheese on top before putting it in the oven.
“Alright, so I’m gonna get the crisco hot and while I do that, I want you to take the chicken from the buttermilk and start breading it in the flour mixture. I’ll show you how to see if yer oil is hot enough once we get a few pieces breaded.” Sam gave her a tense smile. Surely she’d be able to get the flour to stick to something wet without issue…..right?
Sam was acting kind of weird about the pasta, but then again, he had been acting weird about her asking him to help her learn to cook, so it was probably more of that. Feeling good, Paige nodded and moved over to the bowls of flour Sam had seasoned and left on the counter. All she had to do was roll the chicken in the flour, easy peasy.
Sam watched as the crisco melted in the skillet and hovered his hand over it before scrunching his face up. Considering. With a small nod he gathered a bit of water on his fingertips and flicked some into the hot oil, nodding and smiling as it loudly crackled and popped. "Oil's ready when yer done. How's it comin?"
Paige held up her hands, covered in lumpy flour and buttermilk. “Uh…well, they ain’t exactly pretty…” She indicated the pile of chicken she had coated as evenly as she could in the flour mixture, most of them having uneven coverage.
“That should be good enough right?” Paige moved past Sam to wash her hands in the sink. At least the messy part was over with.
“Alright, once yer hands are warshed off, yer gonna put about four pieces of chicken in the skillet. And then we’re gonna let ‘em cook for a bit before flipping em. We want em cooked halfway before we flip. Y’know what to look for?” Sam said. “Once we get the chicken in I’ll grab some tongs you can use to flip em later.”
“Yep, when it’s golden and crispy.” Paige dried her hands off with a towel and put the first few pieces of chicken into the skillet. As they sat there frying, bits of the breading started to fall off and drift away in the oil. It definitely wasn’t supposed to do that. Maybe it was cooking too slowly? Paige reached over and turned up the burner. That ought to do the trick.
Sam frowned but didn’t say anything. He’d given Paige a recipe, that had temperatures, times, the whole shebang. If she wanted to go on instinct she could prove him right about her overinflated confidence.
There, now they were crisping up. “Where are the tongs? I think they’re ready to flip.” Paige held her hand out to Sam.
Sam handed them over and prepared a plate covered with paper towels so the chicken could drain. “Make sure to check that it’s fully cooked.”
“Yep, got it.” Paige set the plate down next to the stove and started flipping the chicken. A moment later, something started to smell like it was burning. Couldn’t be the chicken, she just checked it. “Sam, do you-“ Paige began to look over at Sam and noticed that the paper towel had been touching the burner and caught fire. “Shit!”
As calmly as possible, Sam reached out and pulled the plate away from the stove and immediately ran it under cool water. "I love you, this is not the room to lose track of your spatial awareness."
“….Sorry.” Paige turned back to the stove so Sam couldn’t see how red her face was. She could do this, she just needed to focus. And to not set another fire. Or burn any food. It would be fine.
“It’s okay, accidents happen.” Sam said, leaning against her quickly. “I’ll get new paper towels.”
Paige leaned back into him. “Thanks.” Now that the plate wasn’t on fire, she started removing chicken from the pan and replacing it with the uncooked pieces. Not too much later, she managed to finish the rest without incident.
“Chicken’s done!” Paige turned off the burner and put the plate of chicken in front of Sam.
Sam pulled the macaroni out of the oven, and handed Paige a serving spoon. "Alright, go ahead and scoop out some macaroni and check if yer chicken is cooked in the middle."
Paige stuck the spoon in and scooped out…a bunch of dried noodles. Looking at the casserole dish, it seemed that the cheese sauce had all run to the bottom, Lea the noodles on top to crisp up. Gross. Cutting into one of the pieces of chicken showed it was still raw and pink inside. “…..the chicken needs a few more minutes. Maybe we can throw it in the oven?”
Sam shook his head and walked to the fridge, where he pulled out a completely new set of the same ingredients. “We’re gonna do it again. I got extras for a reason. Are you going to follow directions this time?”
Paige closed her eyes and resisted the urge to smack Sam with the spoon. Of course he bought do over ingredients. “I really hate you sometimes, you know that?”
