Bama Chicken and Oven Fried Zucchini

First of all, I would like to acknowledge how long it has been since I last posted here. Life has been busy and balancing work and free time has again become challenging. The time I do have to cook at home is further limited by my difficult relationship with my dad's girlfriend whom I recently got into a blow out argument with over an avocado (it's a great story) and have since been avoiding communal spaces, like the kitchen, at home. I do apologize as I can only assume all of you reading have been anxiously awaiting my next post, or at least that's what I tell myself, and I'll do my best to not let any more of those pesky avocados get in the way of my cooking time.

So while I've been sticking it to the man (woman?), I've also been trying to write this recipe for the last two weeks. I know the recipe by heart, that's not the problem, it's just such an important one that I haven't been able to decide how to talk about it. This is chicken I grew up eating; a soy sauce, garlic, and ginger masterpiece that has even been known to tempt the occasional vegetarian (shout out to Freya). Everyone in my family knows how to make it, everyone who doesn't know how to make it wishes they did. The recipe comes from a woman named Gloria Jones who was best friends with my great grandmother, Bama. I don't know much about the recipe's origins beyond that except for that my family stole it and now all of us call it "Bama chicken". Gloria now lives in Tonasket, Washington in a luxury log cabin style home designed by my great grandfather. I went to visit her four years ago with my grandmother, aunt, and cousin shortly after Bama's death.

Bama and Gloria had been friends since their families were young and people had often spoke of her, but this was my first time meeting her. She made us a dinner of a strange but delicious chili with meatballs on the side, (for the vegetarians) and a very memorable homemade lemon jello with green pimento olives and pieces of pineapple, a vintage tasting side dish that wasn't exactly savory, yet couldn't be called dessert either. I suppose it was one of those "salads" you might find in a 1960s edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook. We all politely took a small portion and I poked at it throughout the evening. I remember marveling at the jello and thinking, "Is this really the same woman that invented Bama chicken?"

In my family, Bama Chicken is made for big events like birthday parties and often brought to picnics as an excellent finger food, some of us even call it "picnic chicken". Bama made it on my sixteenth birthday, the last one she was alive for, and we ate in in Volunteer Park off of paper plates. My cousin recently told me that Bama used to bring buttered bread along with the chicken for picnics, because, she said, "nobody wants to butter their own bread". I laughed at that, it was such a little gem of wisdom, so silly, but all the same, so oddly true. I thought of being little and my mother handing me a piece of bread with butter- probably cut into triangles, not squares, because even I found a way to be a picky child- and how much that simple interaction meant. Cooking is an act of care, whether it be for yourself or others. When we cook for someone, no matter if it's a feast or simply a buttered piece of bread, we're telling them we love them. This is something I try to remember as I'm tempted to avoid the kitchen and the step monster; that even if the miracles of cooking can't bring us to find love for each other, cooking can always help me find love for myself.

Bama chicken is oven fried thighs that have been marinated in soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and ginger. I've stayed true to the original recipe. What I have done differently from others in my family is I simply take the marinade, cook it, and reduce it down to a teriyaki-like sauce. Over the summer, in London, Luke and I took to eating Bama chicken with zucchini on the side. Something about it just goes and the dish definitely begs a vegetable. Zucchini is easy as you can throw it in the oven partway through cooking the chicken and, while you're at it, you might as well butter some bread too.

Bama Chicken

Serves 4

Total time: 2-3 hours, Active time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

6 bone in, skin on chicken thighs. This recipe work for anywhere between 4 and 8 thighs.

12 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp fresh minced ginger

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup white granulated sugar

Flour for coating, about 1 cup

1/4-1/2 cup olive oil

Method:

Place garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and sugar in a large pie pan or other wide and flat dish (or a gallon sized ziploc bag). Stir together with a fork or whisk until the sugar has mostly dissolved. Place Chicken skin side up in dish, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge. You can marinate it anywhere from 1 hour to overnight. Flip the chicken over halfway through your marinating time, or at least after 30 minutes.

Take the chicken out of the fridge. Preheat the oven to 375 degree F. Prepare flour on a plate or in a bowl by seasoning it with salt and pepper. (1 tsp and and 1/4 tsp) and mix it together with a fork. Place your marinating dish with chicken on one side of the flour, and a clean, empty plate on the other.

Get out a large baking dish. Pour enough olive oil to generously coat the bottom. You want there to be about 1/8 inch of oil in the pan. Place the pan in the preheated oven.

Pick up one piece of chicken and pat it dry with a paper towel. Place it in the flour, flip it over, make sure it is well coated, sprinkling flour into the all the weird crevices. Shake off any excess flour and place on the clean plate. Repeat with the remaining chicken.

Take the baking dish out of the oven and place it on top of the stove or other heatproof area. Using tongs, place chicken thighs skin side up into the hot oil being careful not to to crowd them. They need space in order to become crispy.

Place pan back in the oven and bake for about 1 hour or until the chicken is browned, crisp, and the meat is tender when pierced with a fork. Do not flip the chicken.

For the sauce:

The leftover marinade

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

Pour the remaining marinade into a small saucepan. Add the extra soy sauce, sugar and water- you are doing this to bulk up the sauce as it will cook down.

Bring to a boil and let boil for about 5- 10 minutes. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10-20 minutes more. You should be left with a slightly syrupy sauce.

Oven Fried Zucchini

Total time: 30 minutes, Active time: 10 minutes

2 large Zucchini (or 4 small, or whatever, however much you want)

About 1/4 cup olive oil

Salt to taste

Method:

Thinly slice zucchini into rounds. Scatter the rounds on a baking tray, sprinkle with salt, and drizzle with olive oil.

While the chicken is cooking, place the pan of zucchini in the oven on the rack below it for the last 20 minutes of cooking. When the chicken comes out, move the pan to the top rack and finish the zucchini under the broiler. This should only take 2-5 minutes, depending on how close you put the rack to the heat. Cook until lightly browned (not all of them will be browned but the thinnest will be very brown).