Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Puree of Garlic Potatoes

This was a fun one!  Exactly what I needed after the poached salmon and cabbage.  I have been promising this one since the start of the project and was ready to go with the brine and everything when my fridge went out and I lost my poor chicken.  So here is take two and I must say it was a big success!

Growing up in the South will cause you to appreciate fried chicken as a bit of a delicacy.  We have tons of what we call "soul food" restaurants and diners in every small town and fried chicken is always one of their specialties.  I was excited to try this recipe because it featured a new brining technique that I haven't tried before with fried chicken.  I also decided to pair it with "puree of garlic potatoes" from the book...more simply stated down here as "mashed potatoes."

The night before I wanted to fry the chicken, I made up a chicken brine of water, salt, honey, lemons, herbs, and some other ingredients.  I brined the chicken during the day while I was at work and came home at lunch to make the garlic confit (another recipe from the book) for the potato recipe.  Garlic confit is basically cloves of garlic that simmer in oil for about thirty minutes.

 

The cloves get really soft and can be used to flavor dishes and the garlic oil can also be used.  Here is my finished garlic confit:

 After getting home from work, I boiled the yukon gold potatoes to be used in the recipe, peeled them, and put them a pot with butter and the garlic confit cloves.  I used my immersion blender to puree the potatoes and set them aside.

  I then heated a large pot of peanut oil (the only oil that can be used to fry chicken in my book) and setup my alternating breading stations of flour, buttermilk, and flour.  The flour is seasoned with various spices such as cayenne pepper, paprika, and others.

 After the oil was heated, I fried the chicken in batches and stirred in heated heavy cream to the potatoes.

We had our friend Stephen over for dinner and the fried chicken was definitely a hit.  He said the fried chicken was on par with that of the "Clayton Cafe" which had previously been his "BOAT" (best-of-all-time).  The crust was light and airy and the brine on the chicken made it super moist and gave it a nice lemon flavor which really complemented the breaded crust.  The potatoes were the perfect complement to the fried chicken and this made for one excellent Southern meal.  I think Mr. Keller must have spent some time in Georgia!