Roommate spotted the big chicken on the kitchen counter that I had bought at Safeway for 79 cents a pound, "You going-ta fry that chicken?" It wasn't actually a question, more a declaration of preference. Given my own choice, I always bake the chicken.
"No," I'm not; but you can!"I say to him.
"I'm not fryin' that!" he retorts and he turns away from me and flops unshowered on the living room couch.
Roommate is either the best human being on the planet or the acidic opposite of that! So, given the side of him presented to me right now, of course I'm not going to fry the chicken--anyhow,I don't really care that much about my fried chicken--the best fried chicken is some you buy from KF or that someone else makes, right! Anyhow, you don't really talk to alpha males with attitudes the way he did; anyhow not ones such as me, girl-friendless, on the edgy end of sixty, and on steroids. So, it was real certain that there would not be fried chicken! Then, I got the idea that what I do like, that I can make in the big electric skillet--all bachelors have electric skillets to make the evening meal in, correct--is chicken catchatore. I never have a recipe for it because I don't always know what I am going to have on hand to put into it. But, I do have my notes on how to prepare it and once I asses what I have on hand and what I can easily acquire, I make a plan from there:
Open a bottle of beer. I dust the chicken with Italian prepared breading mix, salt, cayenne pepper, paprika, and then brown it for a bit. While I am doing that I parboil separately green bell pepper, other red sweet Anaheim peppers, and sweet onion petals (this time they happened to be red) and maybe some celery. Then I pour off the oil that I browned the chicken in and put in a dollop of regular olive oil (not extra virgin), and a few cloves of garlic ,and some bay leave that I collected on Hero Trail; after that, I drain the parboiled vegetable into the mix. Last, I add hunks of fresh mushroom. Washed, cleaned, and chopped, Then I let the whole thing simmer for about 45 minutes while I make spaghetti, wash up the cooking dishes, and finish my beer.
