Husk Bar 3/10/2015

The four of us had an awesome dinner at Fulton Five (highly recommend a visit) and then, since we hadn't gotten downtown in time for pre-dinner drinks, we decided, what the hell - after dinner drinks!

Of course Husk Bar was the first choice.  Daryl (hope I spelled that right) and Brian were there working their asses off making the delicious and unique, but complicated drinks.  We of course had Ham on a Plate (technically barrel stave but I keep calling it by its original name).  Lovely slices of salt cured Virginia ham.  We also had the pimento cheese.

The beers were Westbrook and Highland.  Ox had a barrel aged Manhattan which is my go to drink.  They combine Bourbons and other ingredients and age for over a month.  Updated regularly and if you like whiskey, you'll love these.

The ladies tried a couple unique drinks that tasted great, but I didn't write them down and no one's around to remind me what they were, so maybe a later update.

Who am I kidding - I'll never remember to update this.

Anyway...

Go to Fulton Five (make a reservation) and got to Husk Bar.  In fact, go to both!  It makes for a perfect food and drink night.

P.S. Don't let Fulton Five not getting a lot of ink in this post make you think they don't deserve recognition, but this is a Sean Brock stalker blog after all...

Chicken Simply Roasted in a Skillet - Page 109

This is one of the easiest and delicious recipes we've done.  The hardest parts are breaking down the chicken (if you've never done it) and having enough skillets.  Neither of these were a problem for us, since Ox didn't drop out of culinary school until after the chicken butchering lessons.  As to cast iron skillets, some may say I have too many, but I don't talk to those people.  I love my skillets and am obsessed with prepping and maintaining them.  I love finding a totally rusted out skillet at a flea market or garage sale and lovingly bringing it back to life.  Hang on a second, I need to go admire my collection.....

Thanks for bearing with me...

We started with a beautiful Keegan Fillion whole chicken which Ox "expertly" quartered (somehow I had difficulty getting a picture that didn't look obscene.)  Seriously, this is the LEAST creepy picture.  The bird wasn't completely unfrozen so that caused some difficulties breaking it down, but Ox powered through it.

The recipe calls for a Garlic Confit that made me drool just thinking about it.  It takes 30 minutes in the oven, which delayed dinner since we missed that part.  I'm literally starving as I write this.  If this blog post trails off to nothingness, it's because I passed out.  Kinda like the Castle Arrrrrg dude in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

It wouldn't be a Sean Brock recipe if it didn't use 2 cast iron skillets, all the burners and set off the smoke alarms.  Though to be honest, I'm pretty sure the smoke alarms are Ox's fault.  The recipe also involved a complex, two pan deglaze/roux building process that made perfect sense once you did it.  I may use two pans for all my cooking.  The results were quite spectacular.  A beautiful, rich, and tasty sauce over perfectly cooked chicken.  We (Ox) may have over-confitted (made up word of the day) the garlic, but it was actually like garlic candy - chewy and caramel like.

This is our first foray into attempting to upload a video and it is not going well.  I'm actually writing this while I wait for the video converting software that I don't know how to use to finish converting, combining and compressing the videos.  Apparently blogger doesn't accept full HD videos with file sizes in the terabyte size range.  Here's the attempt: