Hot Chicken with Elvis

My Mom got an Alexa for Christmas this year. As far back as I can remember, she’s forever been dancing around the house, shaking it at parties, harmonizing to whatever tune comes on the car radio. Her house in Virginia had become quiet since my Dad passed away, and my sister and I realized her stereo was too antiquated (key words: tape deck) for actual usage. So we got her the smart speaker, mindful of the fact that she’s typically suspicious of new technology. On a recent visit, I set it up in her kitchen and needn’t have worried—she took to the new device like a duck to water. Her first request, for some reason, was Hall & Oates. Once she realized that wasn’t going to do it for her, she was on to Trini Lopez, the 1960’s Latin folk sensation. The joy was palpable as she danced around the kitchen to Cielito Lindo.

As evening drew near, and she had run through the Beatles and the Stones, we wondered aloud what to have for dinner. In addition to loving music, she’s a food fanatic and knows what she likes. We had gone out the night before, and it was getting too late to shop and cook at home.

“How about we pick up some hot chicken?” I asked, as I finished ridding her cabinets of vitamins and lipsticks from 1997.

“YES!”

 So we put in our order—“HOT” in the middle of a scale that ranges from Classic (no heat) to Code Blue (super extra hot) and we headed to our usual spot for pickup.

We both adore spicy food, a family trait she inherited from her father, who used to say nothing was hot enough “unless you sweat behind the ears.” For us, it’s not a distraction from flavor but instead another taste dimension, like umami or crunch. Mom keeps a tiny, adorable bottle of Tabasco in her purse at all times to season her eggs during travel; somehow, this has never triggered an intervention at airport security. I’m happy to be married to a fellow spice lover, and our 11-year-old son liberally sprinkles red pepper flakes on his pizza. We’re no strangers to the “what the hell” fried rice at our favorite Thai restaurant. When it comes to hot chicken, Mom and I are both code blue curious…but even we have our limits.

Back at the house, we got dinner going. She brought out the old brown salad bowl with the ridges around the side, and I turned on the oven to give our chicken some extra crisp. Perhaps the highlight of this takeout indulgence is the fried okra we always order on the side, and that got some extra crisping, too. The standard “side” portion is around the size of a wine crate, and we’re good with that quantity of okra. You can’t completely take the South out of a woman, after all.

Once everything was crisped to satisfaction and the salad tossed, we were sitting down to dinner, when Mom popped up and went back into the kitchen. 

“Alexa,” I heard her say as I piled okra on my plate. “Play Elvis Presley.”

Now if you’ve ever met my Mom, you’ve probably heard the story. She knows I know it, but she loves to tell it again and again.

“When I was twelve, in the sixth grade, my friend asked me if I wanted to come to a concert with her mother and her—they had an extra ticket. ‘You know, Elvis Presley? He sings Blue Suede Shoes?’ I’d never heard of the guy, but I figured I had nothing better to do that night. He was playing at the Mosque Theater, in Richmond. We were right near the front and I’d never seen anything like it before. Girls were freaking out. They were swooning. My own mother would have dragged us right out of there, but my friend’s mom was just as fascinated as we were, so we stayed for the whole thing. And then not long after that he was a super star. I didn’t get it, but I guess all those screaming gals did.”

“Did you become a fan, right then and there?”

“I didn’t know what to think. I was twelve. And he was so greasy.”

She thought for a second and speared an okra round. Perhaps visions of sideburns and hip swivels were parading through her memory. Hound Dog bumped from the speaker in the kitchen, and she continued:

“I watched that Elvis movie recently and the actor looked nothing like the real Elvis. Too clean cut. I mean…I saw the real deal up close, so I know. We were in the second row.”

The hot chicken was tasty and hit the spot. It could have been crispier, but that’s the gamble you make with takeout. In the subsequent days I thought a lot about hot chicken (and Elvis, too). I thought about how I might make it at home, and I remembered one of my favorite dishes at a neighborhood spot Popina: the hot chicken Milanese. A Milanese is a flattened version of fried chicken (see also katsu and schnitzel, as well as chicken cutlets), which gives it the advantage of quicker cooking, shallower oil, and less guesswork around doneness. The recipe below is what I came up with after some R & D. It’s neither a traditional hot chicken nor a true Milanese, but it’s delicious. You can dial the cayenne up or down, or eliminate it all together. I like this served with a nice, simple salad and half a lemon to lighten things and make it into a composed plate. It would be great with pickles and slaw, or on a Martin’s potato roll as a sandwich. You could also whip up a quick spicy mayo by stirring together mayonnaise and your favorite hot sauce, if you like things even hotter and richer.

This one’s dedicated to Mom:

Dial the spice up, down, or eliminate all together

RECIPE: HOT CHICKEN MILANESE 

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

• 2 tsp. cayenne pepper (adjust cautiously for more spice, dial it down or eliminate altogether for a non-spicy version)

• 4 tsp. sweet paprika

• 1 tsp. garlic powder

• 1 TBS. salt plus extra for seasoning at end

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 3 eggs

• 2 cups panko (Japanese) breadcrumbs

• Peanut oil for frying (or canola, grapeseed, or other high-heat oil)

• 2 lemons, halved

• Salad for serving: Arugula and cherry tomatoes, or any greens and shaved vegetables, tossed with olive oil and lemon juice, or your choice of dressing.

Instructions:

1. Flatten the chicken pieces: First pat them dry, then one at a time, place chicken thighs between two pieces of parchment paper on a cutting board. Using the flat side of a meat tenderizer, or a rolling pin, or bottom of a small pot, pound the chicken pieces until they are around 1/3” thick. It doesn’t have to be exact, just try to get it even and thin. No worries if you don’t have parchment paper—it just makes for neater work.

2. In a small bowl, mix the spices and salt together. Sprinkle the chicken pieces with around half of this mixture on both sides. You should have an even and fairly generous (but not too heavy) distribution. Reserve the other half of the spice mix for the end.

3. Set up a dredging station, which will have three steps: 1 plate or wide bowl for the flour, 1 bowl for the eggs, and 1 plate or wide bowl for the panko—plus a final tray, preferably with a rack, for the dredged chicken. Put the flour and panko on their separate plates, and beat the eggs in the bowl. Now dredge each seasoned piece. First, coat chicken completely with flour, then shake off any excess. Dip chicken pieces in the egg, then shake off as much as you can. Next, roll the chicken pieces in panko, pressing to coat every surface area with the crumbs. Repeat with all pieces, setting them on the tray at the end. When you’ve finished, put the tray with chicken in the refrigerator for a half hour to an hour to really set the panko—this will ensure your breading stays put during frying.

4. You can prepare the salad, if serving, while the chicken rests. When ready to cook, heat a skillet over medium high heat, with oil in it. You are shallow frying, so you want around 1/4” or less of oil, enough to cover the bottom of the skillet but not immerse the chicken. When the oil begins to shimmer slightly, place the pieces gently in the skillet, not touching. Fry around 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown and crisp and cooked through. Move to a tray when done. Working quickly but carefully, spoon a few spoonfuls of hot oil into the bowl with the spices, and stir. Brush the hot oil onto the surface of the chicken, coating evenly. You can skip this step if you like your chicken milder, but either way sprinkle some salt on the chicken if you think it needs more seasoning (taste a bit of the breading if you’re not sure). Serve with lemon halves and salad.

The Hamover

The star of my childhood Christmases was a ham I refused to eat. I’m not talking about the honey-baked variety or the pineapple-and-maraschino studded roasts that beckon from soft-focus holiday ads. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, they’re just not real hams. They’re not Virginia hams—a regional specialty that people who have lived in certain parts of the state know well.

The ham I speak of is a country ham that has undergone a months-long curing and smoking process and, if done properly, is a smoky, nutty, salty delicacy that gets sliced paper thin and practically melts on the tongue. In my opinion—and my opinion is not unique—the best way to enjoy it is to bake heaps of small buttermilk biscuits, cut them in half crossways, spread each side thick with butter, then lay either a thin slice or minced shards of ham in between the biscuit halves, and make yourself a delightful little sandwich. Or two. Or five dozen.

This type of ham is a form of charcuterie dating back to 17th century Virginia, when English newcomers found that hogs thrived in the pine and poplar forests where they could shelter from the summer sun and fatten themselves on acorns in the fall. Later, Virginia pigs enjoyed a diet of peanuts long before they became a popular American snack (tangent: peanuts are native to South America but zigzagged across the globe and reached North America via slave ships from Africa—as did many of the finest “Southern” ingredients). In the Virginia Tidewater, country ham quickly became a staple not only because of its deliciousness, but because pigs were plentiful, and curing and smoking the well-padded hind legs was a way to preserve the meat year-round. Similarly iconic hams from Parma, Italy and Serrano, Spain are close cousins, though they bear the distinctive marks of regional terroir and technique.

When I was growing up, Virginia country hams were commonly referred to as Smithfield hams, after the town near the Chesapeake Bay that was long the epicenter of ham production in Virginia. Unfortunately, the megacorporation that now bears that name was purchased by overseas investors and became infamous for environmental and safety issues. The best hams now come from family producers that have stayed small and adhered to traditional techniques. Edwards makes a very fine ham, as does Nancy “The Ham Lady” Newsom in Kentucky (yes, neighboring states make wonderful country hams, as well).

My father worshiped at the altar of the Virginia ham and mail-ordered one every year, several months in advance of Christmas. It would arrive at our home in Alexandria in a handsome cloth sack, artisanally mummified, its skin stretched taut and maroonish. But because Dad always had to take things a step further, he would embark on an additional ripening period himself. In our basement.

A quick side tour of this basement, which even now, years after my father’s passing, remains a strange, chaotic shrine to him. The house is old, and its sublevel was always meant to be an unfinished space that is home to the furnace and washing machine and other mechanics. The concrete floor becomes a riverbed every time it rains, and there’s no stopping it, so you just go with it and step over the waters. The ceiling was once crisscrossed with a network of asbestos-lined pipes, but when in the 80’s the city of Alexandria mandated expensive remediation, Dad donned an N95 mask and ripped out the friable asbestos casings with his own hands (no he was not a professional contractor—he was an ad man).

Apart from the nuts and bolts of the basement, it has a back room that was and still is a cabinet of curiosities of all things Dad: gym, art studio, wine cellar, time capsule. The first thing you see is a weight machine and a treadmill, on which he used to take leisurely strolls while watching 60 Minutes and sipping a glass of wine, a pair of beat-up leather topsiders on his feet. Staring out from behind the workout equipment is a ginormous, 80’s era photograph of himself that was presented upon his retirement; it still makes me jump every time I walk in there. Opposite the workout equipment is an analog TV propped up on a long, paint splattered workbench strewn with crusty brushes and tubes of paint, canvases and colonial-era nails and leaking cans of mineral spirits.

But of all the rare and imperfect gems that basement holds, its crown jewel is the wine cellar: a space of barely 50 square feet that contains multitudes. Wine was one of Dad’s many hobbies, and soon after we moved into the house he enclosed the back quadrant with drywall to create a hermetically sealed, climate controlled chamber lined with wooden racks, laid with threadbare oriental rugs, and lit with a brass chandelier. A deep and mysterious recess in the rear brick wall—one of those quirks of old houses—was put into service as “The Port Hole” and stored bottles of vintage port for friends. At one point, while browsing in a French flea market, Dad stumbled upon what just might have been the original lock to the Bastille—a baronial oak and iron contraption with a key the size of fireplace poker. He bought it for nothing, lugged the hefty rig home in his suitcase, and mounted it onto the cellar’s aluminum Home Depot entry door, which he painted a high-gloss crimson. He built the room 100% by himself, and it was his man cave extraordinaire. Over the years he collected wine and oenological paraphernalia: antique corkscrews and silver wine tasters, decanters and framed posters from his friend Mark’s wine bar, Willi’s, in Paris. Wooden wine crates piled up outside the door like cubist snowdrifts and no doubt made a cozy nesting spot for several generations of mice. For additional ambience he wired speakers down there that usually blasted classical music but which in August of 1997, while I happened to be visiting, delivered the unforgettable news that Princess Diana had been killed.

From the ceiling near the Port Hole hung an ancient iron “S” with a wicked sharp point; this was the ham hook. The wine cellar apparently provided the ideal environment for a ham to age, and so it did, each year for several months. As it mellowed, it lazily dripped an oily, iridescent fluid onto the floor, adding to the general patina of the room. And whatever mass the ham lost in moisture it more than replaced in mold. A marbled moldscape of fuzzy white, blue, and green grew on the exterior, cloaking the ham thickly. Sometimes, while hosting playdates, I would lead an unsuspecting friend down for a tour of the musty and mood-lit basement: through clanking pipes, past retired Halloween props and the realistic rubber rat that Mom placed among wine racks for kicks, and ending with a flourish at the ghoulish ham swaying on its hook. No one ever believed me that it was destined to be consumed.

But consumed it was, every December, after an intense soaking and scrubbing in the slop sink of our laundry room. I can’t vouch that any part of the process, or in fact anything about the basement, would pass health inspection, but after a day or two the ham would ascend spotless into the kitchen above after going a few rounds with a wire brush.

The ham cleaned up pretty nicely, and after more soaking, boiling, and a final baking, it was ready for showtime at our Christmas day open house, sliced with a surgically sharp carving knife on a silver platter with a host of flaky biscuits waiting to envelope it. I never could bring myself to eat any, as its sordid basement past was burned in my mind’s eye. I hung back slyly as the grownups clustered around the sideboard, cramming ham slices into biscuits, loading up plates of seconds, washing it all down with wine as they chatted and laughed excitedly. I thought to myself as I watched them: “Oh, you have noooo idea.”  

But it was I who had no idea. No idea that some of the best things are touched and shaped by time and mold and rot. That while the grownups really were digging the ham, they were mostly in it for the company. I got it years later, when removed from Virginia and—maybe sentimental, maybe curious—began incorporating ham biscuits into my own family’s Christmas tradition. At first, I bought it sliced to order from the excellent and sorely missed Stinky cheese shop, where you could get different kinds of ham carved by the pound. Later, I started mail-ordering entire hams that were larger than any of my babies at birth (which is saying something). We had to have a few people over to help eat the ham, and those few people became more, and the vibe really got quite merry because the thing about eating salty ham is that it makes you thirsty, and then you drink whatever is in your hand to slake the thirst, then eat more ham, refill the glass, and so on. Our friend Tim coined the term for what happens the next day: a Hamover.

A few years ago, I think it was the year Dad died, we reluctantly let this tradition slide because, honestly, it just felt too overwhelming; quiet and order were the balm that was needed in the holiday leadup. We stopped ordering a whole ham because there would be no one to help us eat it, and our home was empty of the familiar briny, primal scent of the ham soaking and simmering on the stove: a smell, it took me many years to realize, I had always connected with the holidays. This year, in our small merry pod, we will probably make a batch of sausage rolls: a tradition from my husband, Ben’s English family. They’re a delicious substitute, but they’re not quite the same.

It’s common to talk about 2020 in terms of things we’ve lost, and it’s true we’ve lost so much—some of it irreplaceable. But I also like to remind myself of what we have gained, and for me it’s a deepened appreciation for those things that were so easy to take for granted before: hugging our parents, laughing around a close table, seeing each other’s smiles, having enough people over to make nice work of a Virginia ham until all that remains is the hock and the promise of a big batch of smoky split pea soup on new year’s day. May 2021 be the year we can enjoy those things once again with renewed gratitude. May 2021 bring the Hamover back.