This butter fried chicken recipe is in my head more often than not. That's saying something. It's one of our monthly meals at the Zimmern house, and it's yet another brilliant way to do chicken for a crowd that includes kids. Paired with a bright citrus punch and salty capers, this fried chicken entrée makes everyone happy. My son starts screaming "butter chicken" and runs up and down the hallways when he comes home from school and learns what's for dinner. I first ate this dish 30 years ago, served for a family meal one night at a restaurant in Florence where I was a stagiaire. I hadn't seen butter during my first few weeks in Italy and almost fainted when I tasted this.
Ingredients
It’s miraculous to make a biscuit with only two ingredients, particularly when making such an impressive biscuit, light and tender, capable of convincing anyone that the cook was born holding a biscuit bowl. This recipe is a good fallback for anyone who hasn’t made a biscuit for a while or has to hurry up and get some baked. If using a cream with less fat (heavy cream has 36 percent) start with less and use only what is needed to make a moist, slightly sticky dough. Half-and-half just doesn’t work well enough to use by itself. This is really a hurry-up recipe, but the directions are detailed.
This pastry dough calls for pastry flour, a special flour that you may not already have in your pantry, but the results are well worth acquiring it for a crust that's both flaky and tender. We prefer unbleached pastry flour, such as King Arthur. If you prefer, you can substitute cake flour for the pastry flour. The pastry or cake flour keeps the pastry dough tender, and the vinegar strengthens the gluten and adds elasticity. This pastry dough has more salt than most. Kosher salt is coarser than table salt. If you are using table salt instead, cut the amount of salt in half.