Wednesday, February 3, 2010

adventures in middleton and deep fryer revisited

last friday reed drove us out to middleton to visit my friend bethany and her kids. we also hung out with her chickens and her very friendly cat.




the chickens were hilarious. when we arrived the four of them were roaming around the front yard--apparently they’re not fat enough yet, so they can fly over the fence and explore the world whenever they please.





i got to take some portraits of bethany and her new baby, arturius:

he was born on my birthday this year.

when we got back to boise it was time for more experimenting with the deep fryer. a few nights before i made some falafel dough and brought it over to reed’s friends’ house...frying it was kind of a disaster at first. i have almost no experience with frying food, and we tried to do it in a pan without measuring the oil temperature, cooking on an electric range (i’m used to gas), and using this plastic utensil that promptly bubbled up and melted in the oil:

i felt bad about ruining it, but reed’s friend hung it up on the wall like a trophy, so it was ok.

after that failure we pulled out the deep fryer, which no one had used before, and an obsession was born. that first night we cooked falafel and sweet potato fries, all the while brainstorming the multitudes of wonderful food that could be made even more wonderful by crisping and saturating it in a bucket of hot oil. i think my best idea was cookie dough. i made reed promise me we’ll never own a deep fryer.

friday night we made tempura vegetables and fried tofu. reed and i took turns at the fryer with a pair of slippery chopsticks, serving mushrooms, potatoes, yams, onions, broccoli, sweet pepper and tofu. it was all so oily and horribly delicious...

No comments: