KFC Pulls "Racist" Australian TV spot

Oh yes you can.

I'll have to remember to ask next time.

You put honey on biscuits???

I think Robert was right to suggest you may have misread my tone.

I was just trying to point out that if I was a journalist, surely my postings would be of an entirely different nature and, one would hope, far superior in any number of ways. Certainly not "ire".

I certainly never said I was one, but I'm sure I mentioned media at some point, and you've made that assumption. Not a problem. Surely not pointing out that I'm not a journalist wold have been dishonest of me. There are qualifications involved that I do not possess.

I think idiotically obsessive was probably fairly accurate anyway. (I have been confessing to a tendency for melodrama the whole time). Apparently there's a chemical high induced when one feels moral indignation!

I actually hate the taste. I find the crust thing repellent, and so salty it's like eating sea water. And the "chicken" pieces are weird. It doesn't taste like proper chicken to me at all, and the portions seem made of bits of chicken I don't recognize. And then it really tastes like it's drenched in and oozing with fat.

I remember as a kid cajoling my parents into letting us try it...but I hated it immediately.


I tried it again years later...kind of because I found it weird that I had found it so horrible, when lots of people seemed to like it (judging by the people you see going in to their altars of arterial doom)...but I still found it inedible.

I can imagine nice fried chicken...but this isn't it.

So, my objections aren't JUST health ones.

KFC is hideous, if'n you ask me. But good fried chicken is NOT. Mmmmmmmm..........

Oh yes I do.

Don't knock it until you try it Eorl.

I was not referring to the Crisco oil, which may well contain olive oil. I was referring to their vegetable shortening, which can be substituted for lard in recipes calling for the latter.

Eorl, biscuits in the US are not cookies, they're a soft round risen bread - I guess in England (and maybe in Australia- although I admit I don't know) the closest thing to it would be a scone. But it's softer and less dense - in fact ideally, if someone does a good job making them, they'd be described as light and fluffy. They're very simple to make: flour, water or milk, butter, baking powder - you can roll them out with a rolling pin and cut out little circles to bake with a drinking glass, or you can make drop biscuits - drop spoonfuls of batter on the baking pan. Anyway they rise up and they are so good - you can't eat just one - I always have to have one with butter and honey, one with butter and strawberry preserves and one with milk or chicken gravy.
In a real southern home you'd have home made biscuits for Sunday lunch with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, collard or turnip greens and/or green beans with iced tea to drink and peach cobbler with ice cream for dessert.

My mom is an expert southern cook and she makes her fried chicken thus - dip in a mixture of a beaten egg and a little milk, dredge in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper and fry in a black iron skillet in crisco. It's not greasy, it's crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

I like KFC better in England than in the states because the chicken tastes better. But I do love their special spices - it's not too salty for me but then I only have it when I'm in the mood and that's about twice a year or so. I might go get me some tonight.
But the point of this post is biscuits are bread in the US, not cookies.

we always (because of my grandmother) fried chicken in lard, we rendered all our own lard, lard was a staple in our kitchen until I retired. Personally I don't eat chicken but that's another story.

What most of the English-speaking world calls biscuits, Americans refer to as cookies. When an American speaks of biscuits, they are referring to a bread-like product, often served at breakfast (especially in the Old South), and which has a consistency similar to cakes. It is made with flour, baking powder and a form of solid fat, such as lard or vegetable shortening. The best biscuits are made with buttermilk, which allows one to substitute the buttermilk for as much as two thirds of the solid fat. I am not impressed with the biscuits i have had in any restaurant, because they just don't measure up to homemade buttermilk biscuits, which are far less fatty and which produce a more cake-like consistency. A properly made buttermilk biscuit is very light in comparison to the standard lard/vegetable shortening biscuit.

People in the United States treat biscuits much as one would a slice of toast at breakfast. They commonly butter them, and/or put honey or fruit preserves on them. It is also common to see biscuits and gravy on the menu in a Southern diner--and it has become so popular that you can get biscuits and gravy all over the country these days. The gravy in question is most commonly a white gravy made with pork sausage, flour and milk. It is a health food nut's nightmare, and i love to eat good biscuits and gravy.



Buttermilk biscuits

Some restaurants also offer cornbread, or offer cornbread rather than biscuits. Corn bread is made from corn meal (what most people elsewhere would refer to as maize is called corn by Americans), and has a recipe similar to biscuits, although it uses less solid fat.



Cornbread

Both biscuits and cornbread are products of the pioneer culture in the United States. Since they use baking powder, it wasn't necessary to have an active yeast culture available, as would be required to bake bread--making biscuits and cornbread "portable." Especially in the case of cornbread, someone living on the frontier could make them from their own farm production, being obliged to buy only the baking powder, and a little salt.

And you can put butter and honey on cornbread too. And then there are hushpuppies...oh god...southern food is THE BEST!

Hush puppies are a variant on corn bread, and are usually served with fried fish, especially catfish, an American favorite--although, of course, one doesn't need fish as a reason to eat hush puppies. Made with cornbread batter, people add diced onions, chopped green onions, diced bell peppers--whatever takes their fancy--and then they are dropped into hot fat in tablespoon sized dollops.

I guess you could eat a hushpuppy with a fork. I've even heard of eating pizza with a fork, but have never seen that, either.

Fascinating....I'd heard of some of those foods, but didn't really know much about what they were.

I kind of knew you guys didn't meant something not so sweet for biscuits.


Are any of those foods racial minefields as well?
Or is it just chicken and watermelon?

I've seen pizza with a fork - by my northern italian italian teacher - but I've never set eyes on a hush puppy.
In the meantime, I'm crazed about biscuits and gravy and the wrongs done to them in some kitchens.

I don't think I'd invite President Obama over for chitlins, but it's mostly the fried-chicken and watermelon connection that make Americans cringe.

If you've never had buttermilk biscuits for breakfast I highly recommend them.

I've never made spoonbread, much less good spoonbread, but I've eaten some once or twice. There's potential there..

Time for me to say that Los Angeles has its own minefields but there has been food exploration going on amidst all the cultures for several decades, all the cultures which are very many. Some cultures, or generations of cultures, may explore more than others, another whole subject I have not noticed anyone writing about on the city or national level, much less international.

The last Gianrico Carafiglio book I read, situated in Bari in southern italy, had a few comments on Thai food, and so on. We shouldn't just assume places around the world have no clue.

I'm not a fan of spoonbread, but that might be because I don't care much for cornmeal. I've eaten more than the average woman's share of Johnnycakes because I once dated a guy who was into reenactments. Given a choice, I would prefer a good biscuit that's both light and greasy over most traditional American fast breads.