If you thought adding blue food coloring was cheap, how about tweaking the tint on the picture of the food?
Here, for your gall bladders delight, are my greasy contribute to the Blue Party; Blue cheese batter dipped Cordon Blue.
(also in the picture is a deep fried cornbread. Because what else are you gonna do with a ton of batter and hot oil but fry things)
Chicken breasts cut into small strips
Bacon
Veggie oil
Batter:
1 cup all purpose flower
1 cup ice cold water
1 handful of ice cubes
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese.
So I was aiming for a tempura type batter here. The recipe for that is the same as above just without the spices and blue cheese. I also originally planned on making a blue cheese dipping sauce, but the blue cheese I got was really crumbly, almost a powder. Instead I mixed it into the dry portion of the batter. The flavor came through in the end, so that was good.
The rest was really easy. I had the small cuts of chicken that I sat on one end of a piece of bacon that was laid out. I rolled it up, stuck a toothpick in it, then cut the extra length of bacon off to be used in the next bit of chicken. I ended up getting about 4 little rolls out of each strip of bacon.
I then dipped it into the batter, and dropped it into a pot of hot veggie oil for about 3 minutes. The end product wasn't really what I would call fine dining. In fact, I only ate about three at 6pm, and wasn't hungry again for the rest of the night. Normally, when deep frying, the layer of batter creates a barrier to the oil as you well know, but when inside of the batter is bacon, that barrier doesn't really matter. It just traps the bacon grease in. Also, I could only taste the blue cheese and bacon, and not much else.
Finally, here is a non-tinted picture of the goods.
Left to fend for myself for dinner tonight and for whatever reason I decided I felt like pizza, even though it was already after 6pm when I found out.
Chicken, bacon, and garlic pizza. Pretty good. Here's a couple more shots to give you the full experience.
Update: There have been some complaints that I didn't actually post the instructions for making this. I didn't because I am lazy, and since I'm still lazy I'll just direct you to where I got the dough recipe here. Follow this, top as you want, cook as it instructs, and then there's pizza.
Oh man, can I tell ya? There is absolutely no way these were good for me, but da-yum, were they good. Here's what I did: I got some chorizo rendering down in a big skillet. I then fried some garlic, onion, green bell pepper in that fat. I seasoned the bone-in pork chops with salt and black pepper and actually a little (very little, I was scared) chopped fresh rosemary, wrapped them in bacon, securing the pieces with toothpicks. Then I fried the chops in the rendered chorizo. Served all that with some white cheddar mac and cheese. Very, very good accident. Definitely doing this again. Ring the bell!
