I woke up to a blizzard Saturday with a whole chicken in the fridge--clearly a sign I should try Kate Hundt's Sunday Chicken at Sofya's, and the gravy.
It's quite a good recipe. It's a version of the classic Southern dish called Smothered Chicken, which is old-fashioned comfort food. Perfect for a blizzard, followed by several cups of organic, fair-trade Mexican decaf coffee and a couple of chocolate chip cookies.
Cooking Notes:
I followed the recipe closely. The only substitution was in the gravy, noted below. What struck me is that the spices are added by hand during the fry, rather than being mixed into the flour coating. This gives the cook more control and doesn't waste any spice, which seemed very sensible.
When frying the chicken, I cooked it to a khaki/ tan color. I'm not sure that was dark enough because it didn't darken when roasted. In the photos at Sofya's it seemed to darken when roasted but her glorious big chicken roasted twice as long as mine. Next time I'll fry it a few minutes longer.
With a store-bought, all-natural chicken weighing 4.2 lbs., it was fully cooked after roasting 40 min. That's with the two breasts whole. The coating looked kinda damp, so I took the lid off and returned it to the oven for 5 more minutes. At that point the coating wasn't sodden but hadn't started to crisp at all.
Gravy: nice! We've got a lactose intolerance & milk allergy (yes, both) in the house, so I used home made chicken stock instead of dairy. It was quite good, 'though it broke more easily than it would have with dairy, I think. I put it on mashed Yukon potatoes where it was good. I also put it on some boiled red potatoes, where I liked it even more. My husband and I agreed it would be a good gravy for biscuits.
We'll make this again. The only thing I'll fiddle with is to add a little cayenne and garlic powder to the spices, but I'm from Texas and can't really stop myself.
delicious!
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