Savory Sunday: Chicken, the Old Way

I appear to have, embarrassingly, forgotten the salad.

Hiding the peas in the mashed potatoes is a known trick, and the expression often means more than it literally does. In my case, I had grandparents that used to cook a lot of game meats, and I grew up fussy. If they were cooking, they had to come up with creative ways to hide the meat. These days, of course, I know what most of the dishes are. One old trick was to call things that weren't even tangentially related to chicken chicken. I always think of that when I prepared this dish, which I call Chicken Alles Zusammen because we all used to pitch in when it was time to make supper. Nearly everything they made for us back then was prepared this way!

Chicken Alles Zusammen

Just like Nana used to make; fried dark meat of chicken, lightly dredged to make it crispy, with fresh cabbage salad and cottage fries. Was a time I used to like to put a sauce on this, but these days all I need is a little ketchup for my fries and I'm set. Serves 2

Ingredients:

• Meat from 2 Chicken Legs (with thighs), cut into morsels
• 1 Sweet Potato, skins removed and cut into thin dollars (retain in water)
• ¼ Green Cabbage, Shredded
• Creamy Ranch Dressing
• AP Flour, sifted with salt, pepper, and cayenne
• Basil Paste (or better, actual basil, finely chopped).
• Canola Oil

Procedure

1. Rinse with water and dry with paper-towel the chicken morsels. Toss them in flour mixture and shake well to remove excess, discarding remainder of flour mix. Set aside in fridge.
2. Heat two pans containing oil to the Sizzle Point.
3. Shake-dry potatoes  and fry in a single layer in one pan. Fry the chicken in the alternate pan, aiming for golden brown on both. Add a smidgen of basil to each during the cooking process - season the potatoes also with pepper and salt to taste. Dry on paper towel.
4. Salad is to be prepared at the last minute by binding the cabbage with the ranch dressing in the style of a coleslaw.

What do I have with this? There's always iced tea - Blueberry Bliss and Pineapple Kona Pop, in this case. This particular iced tea tastes more than a little like fruit punch and so is perfect for nostalgia.