Southwestern oven-fried chicken

 

My April foolishness is leading me to a resolution of trying a bunch of new-to-me recipes from some of the many years of magazine back issues on shelves in my sunroom. It's a good way to find a seasonal recipe, and to justify to myself that I haven't purged the back issues. Yes, I know nearly all the Bon Appetit recipes are on epicurious.com, but that only shows you what you're searching for, not what you didn't know you wanted to find.

For my first choice, I figured I'd try a recipe from the oldest April issue I've got: Bon Appetit, April 1990. Even the magazine's flag font was different, and cigarette ads were still legal in magazines at that point. And everyone in the pictures still had bad '80s hair.

This recipe isn't exactly seasonal, but it's the first one to catch my eye.

Spicy Southwestern oven-fried chicken

Adapted from Bon Appetit, April 1990. I would link to the recipe, but I actually can't find it on the site since the Internet really wasn't so much a thing at that point. So maybe there's another excuse for keeping the hard copies around.

Ingredients

3 soft white bread slices, chopped into pieces

3 tablespoons fresh cilantro leaves

2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal

2 tablespoons pine nuts

2 large garlic cloves, chopped

1½ teaspoons ground cumin

½ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Pinch of ground cloves

2 teaspoons egg white

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon water

2 teaspoons honey

4 chicken thighs, skin removed

4 chicken drumsticks, skin removed

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a rimmed baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

Combine bread, cilantro, cornmeal, pine nuts, garlic, cumin, oregano, salt, cayenne pepper and cloves in a food processor. Process into fine crumbs. Add egg white and mix to moisten. Transfer to a shallow bowl.

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Combine mustard, water and honey. Brush over chicken pieces.

Roll chicken in crumb mixture, pressing it to adhere. Place on prepared baking sheet. Bake until crisp and brown, about 40 minutes.

Rating: This smelled absolutely divine while it was cooking, so I was a bit disappointed with its subtlety of seasoning when I tasted it; spicy was a bit of a misnomer. It was absolutely fine, and nicely tender, just not as wondrous as its aroma build-up. The other drawback is that the coating tended to break off from the chicken. But it was still tasty. And in case you’re wondering, the lack of skin didn’t seem to make a difference on the likelihood of coating adherence. I took all the skin off the thighs but not all of the drumsticks because it was getting too annoying, so I can attest that both were somewhat resistant to accepting the crumb mixture.