Finger Food

The results of our class's canapé quickfire

Deep down, it's everyone's favorite way to eat. Think about it...what's the best part of any catered event? The little bites that are passed around on trays at the cocktail hour almost always surpass the sit-down meal or buffet line. In fact, last weekend I went to a wedding, and although there was lovely upscale food to be had at the main buffet, most of my table opted to hit up the kids' buffet for chicken tenders and sliders. Finger food is always more fun, whether it's fancy hors d'oeuvres or french fries.

These past two days in Advanced Garde Manger, we've worked on fancified finger food—canapés and hors d'oeuvres. Tomorrow we'll get to the amuse bouche, the one-biter that is supposed to "wake up the palate" and kick off a fine-dining meal. On Day 1, after a longer-than-usual lecture introducing us to the class, Chef S. gave us one hour to make canapés. We could use anything in the kitchen and each had to present three identical canapés to the chefs (see photo above). This little challenge was a lot of fun—like a Top Chef quickfire, but with a much more forgiving time constraint.

Canapés are one-biters described by Chef S. as tiny open-faced sandwiches. They have to have bread or some kind of base, a spread, a filling or "body", and a garnish, all assembled into one compact bite. One of the proteins available was smoked salmon and I knew right off the bat that I wanted to work with it. Kind of safe, since it allowed me not to really cook anything, but I knew that smoked salmon would work well in canapé form, especially when I saw that we also had cream cheese in the reck!

I cut thin slices from a baguette and then cut those into perfect squares and brushed them with olive oil. They went into the oven to toast so that my bases would be crisp and sturdy enough to hold the other components. With bagels and lox as the inspiration in my head, I chopped some chives and capers and added those to plain cream cheese for my spread. I sliced the smoked salmon thinly and made little spirals of it to stick to the spread, then julienned some cucumber for garnish. They turned out so cute! Admittedly these smoked salmon toasts were far from ambitious, but the chefs liked my presentation and the little bites definitely tasted good—it's kind of hard to mess up this classic combo.

"Bagel and Lox" canapés

Today we expanded upon our repertoire of finger food, going beyond canapés and into a variety of hot and cold hors d'oeuvres. I made little spanakopita triangles, the delicious Greek phyllo dough pockets filled with a spinach-and-feta mixture. I added chopped scallions, fresh parsley, a little mint, and marscarpone cheese to the traditional mixture—got some guidance from a Greek classmate. I feel like these are often bought frozen and thus have become a cocktail party staple, but they really are so much better made from scratch and so easy to make...

Just buy some packaged phyllo dough (our Baking & Pastry instructors don't even attempt to make this stuff) and layer about four of the paper-thin sheets on top of each other, brushing each layer with melted butter. Then cut the dough into strips, place a spoonful of filling on one end and fold the strip into a triangle like those paper footballs you used to flick at people in school. Once I hit my groove with the filling process, my spanakopita triangles looked better and better. You could really fill these with anything—an all-cheese pocket, a mushroom filling, even something sweet like honey and ricotta for dessert phyllo pockets.

Spinach mixture

Folded triangles ready to bake

Finished product

We also made paté a choux, an easy dough that's basically the only one ever used on the non-pastry side of the kitchen. It's the dough used for all kinds of puffs, gougeres, profiteroles, etc. Pipe this dough out so it looks like Hershey kisses and bake it, and it doubles in size to create little puffs that you can also fill with just about anything—our class did everything from a red pepper-goat cheese mixture to crawfish salad to curried chicken. So easy. Now I'm inspired to throw a dinner party with all one-bite food...how fun would that be?

More hors d'ouvres...paté a choux puffs and Scotch eggs (a pub staple—boiled, breaded and deep-fried)

Double Practical

I think I've turned a corner in my culinary career. We have so many practicals in International Cuisine that I don't even get nervous about them anymore. The class is split into two parts—the first week and a half was European food, and we're now into the second half, Asian cuisine. Each part has two days of practical exams, taken in groups. Chef K. is not as, shall we say, regimented as many of the other chefs at the school, so he basically gave us all an extensive mystery basket of ingredients from which to choose freely.

Last week, our first practical day required that our group of five produce a coherent four course menu: appetizer, soup, salad, and entree. On the second practical day, the chefs threw in a dessert course, bringing the total to five. Still manageable, though I was relieved when one of my group members volunteered to tackle the dessert. There were barely any parameters beyond those menu requirements, so we could be as creative as we wanted in coming up with our dishes.

I'll focus on the courses that I personally contributed to my group each day. We all pitched in with everything, helping each other to prep, taste and adjust each dish, but on both days we had each person take responsibility for one dish (two people on entree). Day one, I knew exactly what I wanted to make when I saw some mussels in the reck (kitchen speak for requisition—the food order that is delivered on a given day). I loved the mussels that I made back in Meat Fab, and although I haven't cooked mussels since, I knew I could create a good variation on that recipe.

With the ingredients provided, we decided to go with a French menu, so I cooked the mussels with shallots, garlic, white wine, parsley, and roasted tomatoes. The roasted tomatoes made the sauce really flavorful—the first thing I did when we got our products was to cut them in half, brush them with olive oil, and put them on a sheet pan to roast slowly in a low-heat oven. They stayed in there for close to an hour and came out bursting with juice and sweetness.

French-inspired moules with toasted baguette (the next best thing to frites)

The rest of our menu that day included a cream of carrot soup with dill cream, seared duck breast with cherry sauce, and a salad of roasted peppers garnished with a sauteed shrimp. We scored a 96. Chef K. claimed the mussels were so bad that he ate all of them :)

Day 2, we went with my go-to cuisine, Italian. I had an idea for the salad course and went with it—an elegant take on panzanella, a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and day-old bread that I've always loved. I saw lobster in the reck and thought that it would pair well with this refreshing, light salad.

Lobster Panzanella

In their critique, the chefs told me that this had great flavor, just too much lobster. I used the full tail for some reason and definitely agreed that this was pretty decadent for a salad in a five-course meal. Other dishes that day included a vegetable soup with lentils (awesome), ricotta-and-mushroom ravioli (not a huge success), chicken cacciatore, and zabaglione over fresh berries for dessert. Since my salad was not very time-consuming to make—mostly just knife cuts for the vegetables and whisking up a dressing—I also cooked the sides for the chicken: sauteed spinach with pine nuts and parmesan risotto.

I guess it's a good thing that I'm finally comfortable with these cooking challenges, because my biggest practical of all came last Friday when I went up to New York for an interview/test day at Food Network studios. Le Cordon Bleu requires that we complete a three-month externship in the culinary field after we finish our 12 months of classes, and while most students seek out top restaurants, I wanted to do something in the realm of food media.

The opportunity to "try out", so to speak, for an extern spot at Food Network was really cool to begin with, but later that same day I found out that I got the position! I won't go into the details of the extremely fun yet exhausting day that I spent at their studios in Chelsea—don't want to give away FN's test day secrets to my vast readership (ha, ha). I had a blast, though, and I'm pretty excited about this next step in my culinary adventure.

Next Rachael Ray? Not so much. I'll be behind the scenes, doing some editorial stuff and some hands-on prep for shows, which is exactly the happy medium I was looking for. But who knows...if you watch enough Food Network, maybe you'll catch a glimpse of me in the background sometime this fall!

I'm Back...In the Kitchen

I know you've missed me, faithful Mise En Place readers. I've suffered through three weeks of Hospitality & Supervision—well, in reality, it wasn't so bad taking it easy, away from the stoves in an air-conditioned classroom.

The highlight of that class was watching episodes of the hilariously disastrous reality show "The Restaurant" and discussing the many ways in which pretty-boy chef Rocco DiSpirito and his bankroller Jeffrey Chodorow failed. They subsequently drove Rocco's (The Restaurant) into the ground, and the show also turned Rocco, actually a talented chef, into a joke in the New York food world (although he does still make lots of money doing commercials for frozen pastas and appears on Top Chef, probably only because the pasta company is a sponsor). Anyway, I digress...there were lots of lessons of the restaurant business to be learned from the show.

Our instructor, Chef R., was not just a lazy teacher who plays videos to pass the time (loved those in high school though!) He's really knowledgeable and shared a lot of insight about the restaurant business, and when it came to the videos, he selected his material carefully. He showed us interviews with successful chefs like Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter in which they shared their philosophies on food and business. I knew a lot about these guys beforehand—they're household names for anyone who reads as many food publications, food sections and food blogs as I do—but many of my classmates learned about them and their high standards of excellence for the first time and came away really inspired. It was cool to see that. We also had to do a presentation on a chef and a restaurant that we admired, and—no surpirse here—I chose Johnny Monis from Komi in Washington, probably my favorite restaurant anywhere.

So that's the short gist on the last three weeks. I'm happy to say that I'm back to cooking (and blogging about it), to sweating behind the stoves and rushing to get my plates ready on time for presentation. Although I know that culinary-school production is nothing compared to the frenetic pace of a restaurant kitchen, feeling that stress in the kitchen definitely does give me a rush that makes it clear, for a second at least, why people choose to enter the crazy career of cooking professionally.

Having reached International Cusine, we are truly culinary school Seniors. Only one more rotation after this, and then we go into the school's restaurant. International covers so many cuisines that I really wish it were spread out over six weeks or more. Some days are devoted to one country—this week we hit Italy and Spain—but other days are a hodgepodge, with one group focusing on Greece, another cooking Middle-Eastern, and yet another preparing something from Eastern Europe. That was Friday.

I was very happy to be at the table cooking Greek food—one of my favorite cuisines. Our group of four made spanakopita, moussaka, baklava, and shrimp with feta, each of us taking the lead on one dish. I worked on the shrimp with feta and loved the results. It was a simple, fresh, light entree that I will most definitely be making again. First, I made a fresh tomato sauce with white wine and lots of herbs and spread it on the bottom of a baking dish. Then, after peeling and deveining the shrimp (the only annoying part!), I quickly sauteed them in olive oil and layered them on top of the tomato sauce. Thinly-sliced tomatoes were arranged on top of the shrimp, and then I sprinkled the whole baking dish with a generous amount of feta. It goes into the oven for 10-15 minutes, just until the cheese begins to melt and brown a tiny bit.

Shrimp with feta, just out of the oven

Plated shrimp

Spanakopita, phyllo filled with spinach and feta

Baklava...more phyllo, filled with nuts, cinnamon, honey, lots of butter.

Backtracking to Italian day, I made the classic soup pasta e fagiole. It's a hearty dish made with white beans and macaroni, very comforting. I used to order it at the little restaurant across from my apartment in Rome whenever it got cold outside. Other chefs throughout the school know to come to International on Italian day—other dishes included fresh pasta with pesto, lasagna, veal picatta, eggplant parmesan, panzanella salad, tiramisu. My old chef from Baking & Pastry, who is in fact Italian and said his grandma always made paste e fagiole, polished off a huge bowl of ours. That's the best compliment I could get!

Crappy cell-phone photo of pasta e fagiole, topped with Parmesan. After sitting for a while, the macaroni absorbed much of the broth. It still tasted wonderful!

All U Can Eat

The final Wednesday of the American Regional rotation is always buffet day. The class picks out a theme, selects more than a dozen recipes to go along with it, and decorates the room accordingly. The buffet's "guests" are always the students from Food Science, one of the first classes of the program. Food Science is not a kitchen class, so the newbies get a little preview of what goes on in production classes in addition to an opportunity to eat until they're Thanksgiving-style full.

It honestly seems like forever ago when Mr. W., the Food Science teacher, walked my class down to American Regional for the buffet. At the time, American Regional seemed so far down the road for me, and I was impressed that the students pulled off such an elaborate feast—their theme was New Orleans Thanksgiving, appropriate given that it was November. Culinary school is flying by, and sure enough this Wednesday was my own buffet day. I'd like to think that our feast was just as impressive to the clean-jacketed Food Science students we served.

We decided against a seasonal theme, since the April holidays have already passed, and went with "A Tribute to Hollywood." We picked five movies that are tied to regions in the U.S., and each table prepared a few dishes that represented those regional cuisines. We decorated our tables with movie posters and random props that we all dug out of our closets and basements, and each wrote our name on a construction-paper star to make a "Walk of Fame" on the floor.

My group's movie was Scarface, thus our cuisine was "Floribbean"—the Florida cuisine that encompasses Latin and Caribbean influences. We made Cuban-style yellow rice, a spicy gazpacho (a bit different from the recipe we made last week on Tex-Mex day), and a refreshing shrimp salad. The top photo is a closer shot of these three dish presentations. Funny that this movie was assigned to a group of four girls, none of whom had ever actually seen Scarface all the way through!

Another table took inspiration from a movie that I had suggested when we were throwing out regionally-appropriate titles: Fried Green Tomatoes. It's one of my all-time favorite tear-jerking chick flicks, and couldn't have been a better theme for Southern food. This group, obviously, served a riff on fried green tomatoes stuffed with cheddar cheese; candied sweet potatoes; and a peach and blueberry shortcake.

The Tex-Mex table was represented by Hang 'Em High, a Clint Eastwood movie that I've also never seen. The guys in my class seemed to be collectively obsessed with it, though. This all-guy group made a Mexican chocolate and pecan torte and an enchilada casserole.

The Fargo table showcased Midwestern food, including a beef-and-bacon meatloaf and braised cabbage (also with bacon, naturally!)

The final movie was another that I suggested—this time not a chick flick! There is no better movie for Italian-American cuisine than The Godfather. They made some stuffed shell pasta with meat and ricotta and actually found a recipe for a "Corleone Salad". I couldn't come up with any specific ties to the movie in the recipe, but was a tasty, simple salad with greens, mozzarella, and olives—something you'd be served with your meal at any red-sauce Italian-American restaurant.

The buffet was a hit—our student and chef guests came back through for seconds and thirds. Word gets around the school when it's buffet day in American regional, so people from every class usually mosey in to try the food during their breaks. We still had tons of food left over—the plates you see above were just the presentation plates; we served from huge dishes and platters behind the displays.

Though the kitchen was chaotic at times with so many dishes in the works, it was a really fun day. I loved getting to present and serve our food to people other than just Chef P., and decorating the room with construction paper etc. brought me back to the thrill of class parties in elementary school. And it may not be the most refined dining experience, but who doesn't love a good all-you-can-eat buffet every once in a while?

Louisiana, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains...all in one week!

It's been a delicious week in American Regional. Monday kicked off with the Cajun and Creole cuisines of Louisiana. Before Zack and I met in college, I'd never even been to Louisiana, but after more than five years of food-filled visits, I consider myself pretty well-educated in its cuisine. However, prior to Monday I'd never actually cooked any of it myself before.

The Louisiana menu was full of classic dishes: gumbo, stuffed mirlitons (called chayote squash outside of the bayou area), red beans and rice, maque choux (a creamy, rich stewed corn dish), crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, trout with pecan butter, pecan pralines, beignets. My group was on entree duty, and I volunteered to make the jambalaya. It's one of those dishes that seems straightforward enough to make at home—I love one-pot meals!—and I wanted to learn the tricks that make the rice so delicious and flavorful. We used a classic combination of chicken and spicy andouille sausage—I like seafood jambalaya the best, but this is what we had to work with since shrimp were needed to stuff the mirlitons.

Jambalaya turned out to be very simple, provided you have some pre-cooked andouille, which we did. We made sausage from scratch back in Garde Manger class and I'm fine with never doing that again, thanks. I broke down a chicken and cut the meat into bite-size pieces, then browned it in a pot with a little oil. Then, I took out the chicken pieces and browned the vegetables: the "holy trinity" of onions, peppers, and celery replaces traditional mirepoix in Cajun and Creole cooking. Some diced lean pork went into the pot with the vegetables as well. Once all of that had browned, I threw in the spicy sausage and all of the spices—our recipe called for equal amounts of black pepper, cayenne, chili powder, dried thyme, ground cloves, dried basil, and mace. New Orleans food certainly is not bland!

At this point, the rice goes into the pot and is browned for a few minutes before the chicken stock is added. The chicken pieces go back in too, and I brought the pot to a boil, then cut the heat to a simmer and covered it to let the rice cook. That took about 35 minutes with occasional stirring. Then it needs just a few minutes uncovered to let the rice dry out a little, and you're done! It was spicy and rich and flavorful, just how I remembered it from Mother's in the French Quarter. We molded it and scattered the plate with fresh herbs for presentation—Chef P. requests that we plate everything in fine-dining style, but for this one I'm all for serving it in a big messy heap.

Jambalaya goes refined

Other highlights from Louisiana day included the shrimp-stuffed mirlitons, which were almost as good as the ones I was first introduced to at Zack's parents house. They went really well over a delicious corn-and-boiled-peanut salad that another group made. People seem to either love or hate boiled peanuts—I love them! They're just regular peanuts boiled in the shell in salted water, sometimes with spicy Cajun seasonings, and they take on a totally different flavor and texture. In Louisiana, you can get them at roadside produce stands and even gas stations. Zack remembers a "peanut man" who came around selling them when he was little. Whenever we visit, he's always on the lookout for this "peanut man"...no success yet, unfortunately.

Beauty plate of shrimp-stuffed mirlitons over corn-and-boiled-peanut salad

The etouffee was extremely rich, as it should be, and the crawfish were tasty even though we got them frozen. There's nothing better than fresh crawfish straight from the shell.

Crawfish etouffee—not the most attractive dish, but very delicious

On Tuesday, we moved into the Midwest. The cuisine of the "Central Plains" isn't very easily defined with specific dishes—but they use a lot of beer, bacon, sausages, and beef. It's not the lightest fare, to say the least. We were at the sides table and I made some braised cabbage that I actually liked a lot. Naturally, it was made with bacon and braised in Guinness (and some apple cider).

Beer-braised cabbage

Here we plated some of the cabbage and our other side of corn-and-wild rice cakes with another group's pork medallions, which were served with a blueberry sauce.

Pork with blueberry sauce, braised cabbage, and wild rice cakes

Moving along, we headed into the Rocky Mountain region. Chef P. talked about the abundance of wild game and berries out there, but admitted that there wasn't much to talk about in this cuisine: "You know what their main crop is out there? Rocks." It was probably a good day to be stuck at the dessert table. We made an amazingly moist blueberry cake that was served topped with cream that we'd warmed in a pot with a vanilla bean. The class devoured two large cake pans of it. Our group also made some skillet cornbread and lemon chess pie, which I always thought was Southern, but apparently not.

Melt-in-the-mouth blueberry cake with cream

Just for the record: it was Passover this week and I was avoiding anything leavened, so I allowed myself only a tiny taste of cake—to make sure it came out okay, obviously! And as for all the rice on Louisiana day, I have adopted Sephardic culture and they're cool with rice during Passover. Yeah...we all do religion differently, people!

Next, we tackled Tex-Mex cuisine and the soup table. Chef P. explained that the day's menu was actually more authentically Mexican than Tex-Mex, which in this country has come to mean fake-Mexican food like nachos and jalapeno poppers. Our class made chicken with mole, the intense sauce made with chocolate and chiles; chile rellenos; matambre, a roulade of flank steak filled with greens and hard-boiled eggs; tres leches cake, etc. In my opinion, this was the best day ever to find ourselves at the soup table. We made two of my all-time favorites: tortilla soup (which is one of my staple dishes at home) and gazpacho (which I'd never actually made myself before, but I ordered it at pretty much every meal on my trip to Spain!) Speaking of, Chef P. clarified that gazpacho is not indigenous to Mexico, but to Spain. She didn't write these menus and admits that sometimes they are a bit misguided! We also made empanadas, which are not really Tex-Mex but South American.

Back to the soups. The grilled vegetable gazpacho is definitely a recipe that I will make again on my own. Grilling the zucchini and onion and roasting the peppers before pureeing them gives the soup a wonderful, slightly charred flavor. We gave it an extra kick with some siracha and rice wine vinegar and garnished with perfectly diced cucumbers (knife skills!) and tortilla strips that we fried ourselves. I brought some of this home and Zack loved it—I guess he's like a little kid who will only eat vegetables when they're hidden, because the pureed soup includes several that he normally doesn't touch!

Grilled vegetable gazpacho

The tortilla soup was very different from the one I make at home. Mine is a tomatoey base thickened with corn tortillas that are pureed with the broth. It may have originally been a recipe that I found somewhere, but I usually just tweak it a little each time I make it. In class, we made a brothy soup that was more like chicken soup gone Mexican. This is probably the more authentic version. Both have corn kernels and are flavored with cilantro and lime. I like tortilla soup both ways—my version is more of a hearty meal-in-a-bowl, while the brothy one, like chicken soup, would be perfect medicine for a cold.

Tortilla soup, brothy-style

Finally, we hit California cuisine. I don't have much to elaborate on—my group made salads and it was a fun, laid-back Friday if not all that interesting. Plus, I forgot my camera. The spinach salad I made was pretty tasty though. How could it not be—it was tossed with warm bacon dressing, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, crispy chopped bacon, and some dates. It's a salad that's really about as healthy as a steak dinner. Other chefs from throughout the school always come by our class after production time for some lunch, and I've never seen them hit the salad table so hard!

Fifty-Nifty-United-States

Did everyone have to sing that song at some point in elementary school? It's how I remember the 50 states to this day—all I have to do is start singing "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas..." and soon enough I'll hit the elusive state that's momentarily slipping my mind. In my current class, American Regional Cuisine, we're cooking our way through every state (I sang the song in my head while reading over the syllabus to make sure we weren't missing any).

Obviously, some states are far more exciting than others, and the curriculum is laid out appropriately—for example, Louisiana gets its own day, while the "Central Plains" day represents a whole bunch of culinarily-challenged states. On Mid-Atlantic day last week, my home state of Maryland (and its Chesapeake neighbors) probably got most attention because we bring crab cakes and softshells to the table.

Each day over the next three weeks, we'll talk about a different region and make several recipes from that part of the country. Chef P. has a great system going—our groups rotate tables every day, and table 1 always makes soup and appetizers, table 2 salads, table 3 entrees, table 4 starch and veg, and table 5 bread and dessert.

We were at the sides table for New England day and made this delicious "New England stuffed eggplant"—still not exactly sure how this recipe is indigenous to New England, though. We also roasted some expertly-cut root vegetables (below) and baked a green-bean casserole with fried onions (made from scratch, NOT from a can!) which we plated beautifully with the entree group's broiled bluefish (top photo). Next week I'll take more pictures—I wish I had one of their other entree, lobster-and-cod cakes.


I was disappointed that we ended up at the dessert table for Mid-Atlantic day—I'm already way out of baking mode. We were stuck with applesauce cake (a super-moist and delicious Pennsylvania Dutch recipe) and shoofly pie (kind of like pecan pie minus the pecans, made with molasses—not a huge fan). The tables around us got to tackle softshell crabs, Maryland crab cakes, crab puffs, potato latkes (representing New York's kosher delis), and chicken-and-dumplings (we learned that this dish is actually not indigenous to the South, but to those Pennsylvania Dutch again).

We only have an hour and a half for production in this class, and the time constraint is most difficult for the dessert table. Making a cake and baking it in this amount of time is tough (in fact, for the applesauce cake, almost impossible—it needs an hour and 15 minutes in the oven). That's why there are no pictures of our desserts...in our rush to get them out of the oven and plated for presentation time, I completely forgot to take some. Oh well—at least Chef P. had good things to say in her critique. Looking forward to hitting the entree table tomorrow!

Great Fried Chicken (though not made by me!)

Since I'm off from school this week, I thought I'd still provide you with some food-related reading. I initially planned to post about this on Atlanta Magazine's blog, Covered Dish, to which I contribute weekly. However, after talking it over with my editor there, I realized that people here in Atlanta (especially the foodie community) are already intimately familiar with the Watershed's excellent fried chicken. Plus, a close-up of it appeared on the magazine's cover just a few months ago. So I figured I'd share my first Tuesday fried chicken experience with you instead.

The other day, one of my favorite food blogs, the Amateur Gourmet (a.k.a. former Atlantan Adam Roberts) alerted me to a wonderful 20-minute documentary on Southern cuisine maven Edna Lewis. You can watch “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie” here on Gourmet’s website and I don’t know how I missed it until now—the posting date is January ’08. It’s narrated in the soothing voice of the “Grande Dame of Southern Cooking” herself, collected from past interviews (Lewis passed away in 2006). Watershed chef Scott Peacock also provides commentary and insight into the remarkable life of his close friend and culinary inspiration.

Every Tuesday night at Watershed, Peacock is still cooking the fried chicken recipe that he and “Miss Lewis” perfected together. I’ve been dying to try it ever since I moved here, but Zack and I are generally late-dinner people and always seem to make it over to Decatur just in time to learn that the kitchen is out of chicken. We reluctantly order something else from the (still very good) menu, drooling as heaping plates of fried chicken and biscuits arrive at the tables of those who arrived earlier.

After discovering “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie”, I was determined to get to the Watershed early this Tuesday. We didn’t have a reservation but showed up before seven and scored a table for two in the packed restaurant without too long a wait. “Two chickens?” asked our server before even handing us the menus. “Yep!” we replied gleefully.

It did not disappoint. True, I’m from up North, but I’ve never had fried chicken like this before: the flavorful crust is dark-brown, not golden, and the meat beneath tender and juicy, even the breast. It came on a homey plate piled with mashed potatoes, green beans, and two of Peacock’s justifiably famous biscuits ($19). There was no sweet potato pie on the dessert menu last night (we were way too stuffed to have dessert anyway), but still, Miss Lewis would surely be proud of her protégé.
Watershed, 406 West Ponce De Leon Ave., Decatur; 404-378-4900; watershedrestaurant.com