The boy (otherwise known as the ravenous teenager) has been pretty good about food. We've never been authoritarian about what he eats, but neither have I volunteered to buy and cook nutritionally worthless trash. OK, with a teenager it's a bit late to inculcate good nutrition by pure habit, but we've at least never allowed there to be any food conflicts.
I think it's easier because actually we eat some things like burgers quite a lot - but then we make them ourselves. If he wants a bacon double cheese burger then that's fine by me: we start with minced steak, dry cured bacon and local cheese and take it from there. It's the work of minutes and anyone whose taste isn't completely atrophied by sodium and sugar overload will always prefer a home made real burger to anything the fast food giants can serve up.
There has been one thing though that our angel (as in fallen) has occasionally pined for and recently I decided to see if I could satisfy his craving. He wanted chicken nuggets and fries.
Fries, well no problem - I cook them a quite a bit. But I persuaded him on this occasion to be satisfied with wedges because they're easier to produce and in any case I would be using the deep fryer for the chicken. He was so excited by the prospect of his nuggets that he agreed and didn't complain at all about cutting some floury potatoes (skins on of course) into wedges and dousing them with seasoning: salt, pepper and Tabasco on this occasion. I got on with the chicken.
I decided to use skinless breast for his nuggets but I wanted to fry some chicken for me and the big bloke as well and so I got some thighs (with skin) too.
The nuggets started with a quick bath in seasoned milk for one inch by two inch strips of breast meat. Once they'd absorbed a bit I dipped them in seasoned flour then seasoned egg and then finally when they were all sticky and gooey shook them up in a plastic bag full of - you guessed it - seasoned matzo meal (I used the fine ground). OK, so that's seasoned-just-about-everything but I wanted him to be impressed by them and I knew it was still less sodium than you'd find on the coating of any commercial nugget.
When they'd rested a bit, I fried the strips in deep vegetable oil for a few minutes in smallish batches and let them drain on kitchen paper. The wedges took twenty minutes in the oven at a quite high heat. To balance things a bit further nutritionally I made coleslaw to go with. (Carrots, white cabbage, onion and vinaigrette (mayo coleslaw is gross) or red cabbage, raisins, apple and vinaigrette).
Ravenous teenager loved them. I know because not only did he scarf two breasts worth of nuggets but he even told me so. It doesn't get much more rewarding than that.
Meanwhile, for those who are interested, our fried chicken went like this: poach the thighs in milk with half an onion studded with a few cloves, two bay leaves a few squashed cloves of garlic and some peppercorns. I gave them twenty minutes at a bubbling simmer. Why did I poach you ask? Two reasons: first, you'll lose a lot of fat to the poaching liquid and second the much thicker thighs on the bone (as opposed to the boy's breasts (fnar...boy's breasts!)) will be more difficult to cook through thoroughly by deep frying alone. If you poach them first you reduce the chances of biting into one and sucking blood. After poaching they got exactly the same coating treatment as the breast meat had and then I fried them off. I started them at a slightly lower heat in the deep fryer and then raised it towards the end of cooking (no more than 10 minutes) to get the colour right. If you're unsure about the cookedness of your chicken joints then just haul one out and poke with a nice sharp knife to the bone: you should see no red.
The big ravenous guy likes the fried chicken but despite recognising the nutritional superiority of mine over the Colonel's he sometimes observes that it's a tad drier (ie there's no fat dripping down his chin). To placate him, I make sure he's got a well lubricated salad on the side: it seems to work.
People have suggested that it's easier to bake the chicken joints, but then again they've suggested that I use the fast food chicken joint round the corner, so what do people know?
I'm not in this foodie life to treat food neurotically, as though eating in the modern world were some high risk occupation. I don't self-diagnose with allergies and intolerances; I don't think organic is necessarily healthier or plain better; I love red meat. However, I'm convinced that eating processed food on a regular basis is injurious to health and more importantly to taste. Weaning the ravenous teenager gently off the high sodium, high sugar, chemically "enhanced" diet he was used to has been surprisingly easy and we've done it without turning him into a life loathing, food despising health nut. It can't be a bad thing, surely? Maybe I'm just feeling defensive.
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