French Cat Culinary School...

This evening I am trying out a recipe for "Oven Fried Chicken" as seen on Epicurious.com. I've been marinating a whole cut-up chicken since yesterday in buttermilk, olive oil and various spices and began breading this evening. Miss Kitty was very interested in this whole process, especially once the marinating chicken came out of the fridge. She made numerous attempts to jump up on to the counter to inspect said chicken.

"Just looking to make sure all of the pieces are there..." I'm sure is what she was thinking...

"Just wanting to make sure you coated all of the sides of the drumsticks, that's all..."

The recipe called for a breading mixture of bread crumbs, flour, paprika and cayenne pepper... various reviewers indicated that panko was a good addition, so I used half regular breadcrumbs and half panko. I assembled my breading in a large emile henry baking pan (also placed on said counter). Miss Kitty then became insistent on trying to inspect the bag of panko.

"I've never seen *real* Japanese panko before.... surely you'll let me take a peek?" she was thinking.

My response was simple-- "I'm sure in your days at Le Cordon Bleu" (where she studied in her summers between semesters at Sarah Lawrence, of course) "you worked with panko plenty."

That cat, always up to something. For now though the breaded chicken is "sitting" for about a half an hour, per the receipe, and then will be drizzled with butter and placed in the oven for 50 minutes at 425. In the mean time I have also breaded red onion rings (as onion slices were also part of the original marinade).

Miss Kitty seemed to find the onion rings vulgar. Perhaps she would have preferreed french fries.