Guest Post!

It's been a while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been frying. I've just been too lazy to sit down and write a post. "Exactly how lazy?" you ask. So lazy that for this blog post someone else had to actually sit down and write the entire thing for me. And even then I didn't get around to posting it for another a week. Anyways, here we go:

You know how they say that behind every great man is a great woman? Hey, what's up, I'm Elise, Bobby's girlfriend. One day during Snowpocalypse 2011, Bobby made me a fried feast.

"Hey, I should take some pictures and make a blog post!" he said. "Are you actually going to write a blog post?" I inquired hopefully."Probably not," he conceded. "You're always right. And beautiful. Have you lost weight?" One thing led to another, and I offered to write it for him. If you want something done, you do it yourself.

(Editor's note: I don't really recall having this cnversation, but I guess an excellent memory is just another of the many great qualities of my amazing girlfriend. Also, within my blog, I kind of want to refer to Elise as "The Fry Gal" a la Bill Simmons.)

Enough with the introductions, let's get to the frying! First, we started off with some simple fried cheese. There wasn't any string cheese around, so we used a block of cheddar that needed to be eaten. I cut it into small rectangles suitable for breading and frying. The night before this, Bobby had made me some fried fish using corn muffin mix and flour instead of bread crumbs. It reminded me of the fried food at Cock of the Walk near Jackson, MS, a wonderful place where pretty much the only things on the menu that aren't fried are the cornbread, the collard greens, and the soda. So I suggested that we try using the cornbread in other situations to see if we found anything good.

The cheddar cheese was interesting to fry. It made the cheese very gooey and almost runny. Now we know why mozzarella is the cheese of choice for frying. The cheddar tasted very good, to be sure, but there wasn't that satisfying feeling of pulling a long string of melted cheese with your teeth. The cornmeal coating was a little bland compared to the bread crumbs. We didn't mix it with flour, so it was just straight up corn muffin mix, which kind of puffed up into a corn muffin when fried. You can see how thick the coating is on the pickle spear below:

I think the corn mix fit much better with the pickles than with the cheese. Again, it was like a very rich, dense corn muffin surrounding the pickle. Then for the sake of comparison, we coated the cheddar and pickles in bread crumbs. You can see how gooey the cheddar gets: The center of that was basically hot viscous cheese. "Hot viscous cheese:" Terrible word combination or awesome name for a metal band? You decide.

(Editor's note: after extensive negotiations with Dave Barry's lawyers, I was allowed to keep in the previous joke as long as I mentioned that his new book will be released on April 5.)

The pickles in bread crumbs were definitely more flavorful than the cornbread, but bread crumbs remind me too much of mozzarella sticks to really fit perfectly with the pickle flavor. They were also a little dry compared to the juiciness of the pickle within. I should also mention that Bobby had the foresight to dry the pickles on a paper towel beforehand, which made them much easier to coat.Now for some dessert! Bobby had some buckeyes from home that he wanted to fry up. Buckeyes are balls of peanut butter goodness dipped in chocolate.

(Editor's note: My Mom made these and I don't know the exact recipe, but I'm told they are actually really easy to make. Here's a recipe I found online that looks easy enough.)I whipped up some pancake batter and we used that to coat them. Then we stuck them on the end of some wooden skewers and put them right into the oil, turning while they cooked to get a nice even coating. They came out beautifully.With all that peanut butter and chocolate (not to mention the pancake batter), they were very rich. I think we could have let them cook a little bit longer to soften up the peanut butter; it stayed pretty solid after frying.

(Editor's note: I always think the peanut butter should get softer than it does when you deep fry it. Reese's peanut butter didn't soften either. A future post will cover Peanut Butter Patty Girl Scout Cookies, formerly "Tagalongs." And if that peanut butter doesn't soften, I'm going to deep fry a PB&J sandwich.)

They were nice and warm though, it reminded me of stealing peanut butter cookies fresh from the oven. We looked around the pantry to find other things to fry, and decided to try dark chocolate Lindt truffles. This didn't turn out so great.

(Editor's note: I was very worried I had given her a bad first impression of deep fried chocolate! She tried a deep-fried caramel cube soon after and loved it and then tried, and also loved, a Cadbury Caramel Egg. So I think those undid any damage done by the truffle.)The chocolate on the inside of the truffle was basically liquid. When I say "liquid," I don't mean just kind of runny like the cheddar cheese or melted like fondue chocolate. I mean it was about the density of water, but molten hot and chocolate flavored. It was delicious, but it was kind of a weird experience. It probably has something to do with the fat content of the chocolate we used, but overall I'm optimistic about the possibilities for frying chocolate. (Editor's note: Whew!) So anyway, hope y'all enjoyed reading my guest post as much as I enjoyed eating the food! I hope to be involved in many more deep-frying adventures!