Kid food and bar food

Every parent needs chicken fingers. Needs. They are a staple food of everyone under 12 and everyone over 21 (or 18 if you live in a country were voting and drinking are allowed at the same age.)

There was a time when chicken fingers were a quick snack to have with drinks. A basket of them shared with friends and many bottles of beverages, and never enough plum sauce.

And then... The Boy.

Chicken fingers are now kid food to me. No longer do they conjure images of friends falling off stools and sticky floors covered in peanut shells... now I see high chairs and thrown french fries and ketchupy fingerprints. Okay, yes, sometimes grownups turned the french fries into projectile weapons, but I think you know what I mean.

Unfortunately, a lot of what's available to parents is highly processed and full of excess salts and fats.

Yes, they're fast and easy and mindless, but they're really pretty mindless to make from scratch, and kids can even help make them. And it can be done in the time it takes to preheat the oven. Preheat your oven to 375. Quick! Do it now! Before I forget!

Chicken Fingers

What you need:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1/2 c flour
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c milk
• 2 c bread crumbs
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper

If you're making fries too:

• a few small potatoes
• 1 tsp peanut oil

What you gotta do:

The fries take longer to cook than the chicken, so get them going first. Chop them any way you like. My dad's restaurant offered "silver dollar fries" and I loved them that way. The Boy is also enamoured with them, so that's what I make. (and here's the peanut oil that didn't make it into the ingredient pic)

Put the chopped taters onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and drizzle over the tsp of oil.

Alternatively, you could pour it into the palm of your hand. Rub the tiny bit of oil all over the potatoes. This is something kids can do. It's messy, squooshy and fun! A single layer works best for browning, but a bit of overlap is okay.

The potatoes need about 40 minutes total, so give them about a 20 minute head start on the chicken.

First thing to do with the chicken is the bread crumbs. If you don't already have some in the freezer (toss heels of bread into a ziplock bag and every once in a while toss them all into the food processor and you'll have a ready supply of your favourite bread crumbs always on hand) break up a few day old slices into the food processor and whiz for a few minutes.

That thing is freaking loud!

Seriously, if they were running this thing at work, hearing protection would be required.

Add the seasonings to the crumbs and give it a few more seconds to get them all incorporated, then transfer your seasoned crumbs to a large zip bag.

Break the egg into a shallow pan (pie pan works best) and mix in the milk.

Spread the flour onto another shallow pan or plate.

I like to beat the shit out of my chicken before I slice it.

The bottom of a pyrex measuring cup works nicely to flatten the breasts to a uniform thickness.

Slice into strips or chunks or a combination thereof, depending on whether your kid is demanding fingers or nuggets.

Here's where it's handy to have a helper.

With one hand only pick up a strip of chicken and drop it in the flour. Roll it around until it's completely covered. This is called "dredging".

Then plop it into the egg/milk mixture and roll it around until it's all wet. I don't know that there's an actual term for this. I'm sure that if there is Recipe Guy will come along and tell me.

Now, get your helper to hold open the large zip bag that has the crumbs in it, and drop your dredged, wetted chicken strip into the bag.

Have the child shake it gently. Gently! What the hell dude, it's already dead you don't need to kill it again! Sheesh.

Keep going until all of your fingers are in the bag. The chicken ones, not your totally gooey floured and egged fingers.

Zip the bag shut and let the kid give it one last good shake, toss it up in the air, dance around with it, sing songs to it... while you wash your hands.

Release your beast, I mean child, from the kitchen and retrieve the chicken from the bag. If you've got the time and your kid isn't about to starve to death (tip: if they are feed them carrots or beans or some other fruit/veggie now while they're waiting for dinner, then you won't have to try to convince them to eat veggies when there are yummy chicken fingers and fries on their plate!) lay the chicken fingers out and let them rest for up to 10 minutes; this makes it less likely that you'll lose coating when you fip them or remove them from the pan.

Oh, this is also the ideal time to freeze these things. Lay them on a cookie sheet, freeze for a few hours, then pack them into a fresh large zip bag for future use.

If you've got potatoes on your pan already, just shove them off to the side to make room for the chicken.

Bake the fingers at 375 for about 10 minutes, then flip them and bake for another 10.

The dipping sauce that comes with these seems to vary by region. When I lived in Alberta, it was honey mustard, BC you got plum sauce, here it's some kind of augmented mayo that people call "honey dill sauce" (but really just seems like mayo and dried dill to me), the southern US is all about ranch dressing, and small children require nothing but ketchup. Lots and lots of ketchup.

What do you like to dip your chicken fingers into?

With Caramel, Even Failure is Delicious

Caramel apples are a very traditional treat around Halloween.  In my house, as I’m sure it was in most of yours, dipping apples involved unwrapping a whole bunch of premade caramels.  Well, the truth is, premade caramel doesn’t hold a candle to homemade.  After my first attempt at making my own, though, I understand why our parents always defaulted to the caramel cubes.  It’s easy, and more importantly, it’s foolproof.  I had two caramel apple making sessions.  The first was simply a lesson in all the things not to do when making caramel apples.  I’ll let you learn from my mistakes, so you can make beautiful caramel apples on your first try. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 cup sugar
½ cup brown rice syrup
½ cup milk
½ cup cream
(or 1 cup half & half)
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Whatever toppings you want to use

Lesson one:
When I lived in Utah, most grocery stores would have a whole caramel apple setup around the apples this time of year.  This always included popsicle sticks.  Well, here in Mass., that is not the case.  The two grocery stores I went to did have caramels by the apples, as well as those caramel wraps and caramel dip.  They didn’t, however, have sticks… anywhere in the store.  After much creative thinking, I finally decided that plastic knives would work just as well. 

They don’t.  They bend, and if you’re not careful, they even break.  If your grocery store doesn’t have sticks, wait until you can go to a craft store and get some.  For round two, I bought little wooden dowels which worked perfectly.  So that’s step one in the process.  Wash and dry your apples thoroughly, then insert your sticks about halfway into the apples.

Lesson two:
Even buttered parchment can stick, and if it does, it tears easily.  Instead, line a sheet pan with buttered foil.  Heavy duty foil if you’ve got it. 

Now it’s time to start on the caramel.  This recipe makes enough caramel for about 4 medium sized apples.  Feel free to double the recipe if you need more, but make sure your pan is big enough.  The caramel expands while it’s cooking so you need plenty of room.  Poor in the sugar, brown rice syrup, milk, cream, and salt. 

Stir the mixture over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then raise the heat to medium.  Stir constantly until the mixture comes to a boil. 

Once it boils, stop stirring.  At this point, you can either place the lid on the pan for a minute or two or you can wash the sides of the pan with a pastry brush and water.  Either will work to get rid of any errant sugar crystals.  It’s important to do this because one seed crystal can turn this whole pot into a grainy mess.  (If that happens to you, by the way, you can add a bit of water and start the whole cooking process over.)  So, I don’t believe in candy thermometers.  I think they’re a pain, and rarely reliable.  I use the drop a bit of candy into ice water method.  Perhaps that's where I went wrong. 

Just drop a bit of the candy mixture into ice water and feel it between your finger and thumb. 

Lesson three:
The caramel needs to change color a bit more and hold its shape a little better than that.  When it comes out of the ice water, it should have just about the consistency you want it to have on the apples.  It’s called the firm ball stage. 

When you reach that stage, turn off the heat and add the vanilla.  It’ll hiss and sputter, so be careful and stir quickly.  Once it’s incorporated, pour the caramel into a clean pyrex or metal bowl. 

If, like me, you have a little puddle of caramel where you’ve been setting your spoon, don’t waste it.  That’s liquid gold… and not of the Velveeta variety. 

While the caramel cools slightly, prepare your toppings.  My favorite was the coconut, but some other things you can use are mini chocolate chips, toffee pieces, pumpkin seeds, chopped nuts, and although I don't usually use things that are artificially colored, I thought Reeses Pieces were a cute option for Halloween.  I used a paper plate for round one, but found that a shallow bowl actually works better, in round two. 

Yes, that was my attempt at a jack-o-lantern.  I’m no better at making the real thing.  Fortunately for me, dogs don't have any interest in carving pumpkins.  But, onto dipping.  Place the apple sideways in the caramel and roll it to coat all the way around. 

Allow the excess to drip off. 

Turn it upside down and move it around to even out the caramel and allow it to cool.  When it is mostly set, roll the bottom half of the apple in you topping. 

On some of them, I also sprinkled a bit of sea salt on the top half. 

So, what happens if you don’t cook your caramel long enough? 

Most of it runs off and pools around the apples.  I wasn’t about to just waste all that caramelly goodness, though, so I scraped it off and had caramel candy piles, which I refrigerated and then cut into bite size pieces. 

Fortunately, round two was much more successful. 

If you’ve cooked your caramel just right, you’ll end up with just a small ‘foot’ at the base of the apple. 

Personally, I like to cut mine into more manageable pieces to eat them. 

Feel free to just bite into it, if that’s more your style.  Either way, you’ll be glad you went to all that effort instead of using the premade stuff… even if you have to do it twice. 

Do you have any candy failure experiences?