Chicken-fried steak with mole colorado.
Here are facts you need to know:
- Chicken-fried steak (and Chicken-fried Chicken) is traditionally served with gravy. White flour (White Flour!) gravy. No me gusta el gringo gravy blanco.
- There are seven different styles/schools of Oaxacan mole : negro , red, yellow, colorado, green, almendrado, pipián. Mole is - in my ignorant opinion - Mexican curry. I don't mean that gross tumeric ridden powder you get in grocery stores I mean the real deal curry - a melange of flavours and spices. Personally I'm a SE-Asian curry kind of fan.
- One day while sitting at the Austin Diner - I'm not name dropping, we live next door and eat there all the freaking time - I wondered if a Chicken-fried Steak would be good with anything except white gravy. They did not have any mole made so I could not test my theory then and there. About a week later we went there for lunch and on the Specials menu was an Omlette with mole verde and Chicken-fried steak. I asked the waiter if the guys in the back could just put the mole verde on my Chicken-fried steak. They did. It was good but it wasn't right.
- If you want something done right you have to do it your damn self.
- Before you do it your damn self you have to learn how to do it. To the internet!
- I enlisted two real life Texans to help me make a trial batch of Chicken-fried steaks. This being Texas it really wasn't that difficult.
- The day of I began with a jar of mole - what? you ever make mole from scratch the first time out? - and started adding things to it. The flavour I was shooting for was smoky, mysterious, and dangerous. I think I did fairly well but I will tweak it a bit the next time.
- Making Chicken-fried steak is very, very easy but involves the need for counter space - you need room for flouring pans, etc, etc.
- Make more than you think you could possibly eat because you will eat all of it all the while thinking, "We have to eat it all...it won't keep!"
- If you have any doubts about the awesomeness of this Chicken-fried steak variation then come over and let me disspell them for you.
That's all for now. I must think of a way to tweak my mole...or something...
