My first fried chicken

I did not grow up with home-cooked Southern-style fried chicken, as frying things with a lot of oil happened very rarely in my parents' home. I've been attracted to the idea of making a batch of fried chicken as a picnic food, which I've read about in older cookbooks and novels set in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Enter the motivation of needing a dish for a Memorial Day weekend potluck, the availability of fryer chickens at the Bloomington Farmer's Market, and Mark Bittman's recipe in How to Cook Everything, and I'm in business.

Of course, I departed from the original recipe in order to use the ingredients I have at hand. I did soak the chicken in buttermilk overnight as recommended by the recipe for added tenderness and flavor, and I think it helped.
Mixed in with the flour was 1/2 cup matzo meal for a little coarser texture to the breading. The next time I make this dish, I'm definitely using more spices. I didn't have nearly enough pepper and salt at 1 tsp each, and I should have had much more of the Penzey's spice mix (I don't recall whether I used the Jerk Seasoning or the Adobo Seasoning) because its taste didn't come through at all.

Using my cast-iron covered Dutch oven and a mix of Crisco and canola oil (Nigella Lawson highly praises the results from solid vegetable shortening, and I had a cup of Crisco on hand), I fried at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for seven minutes with the cover on and seven minutes with the cover off, one batch for the dark meat and one batch for the light meat. The dark meat stayed in a couple more minutes with the cover off.

The final taste test at the potluck was successful. The chicken was, alas, fried earlier in the day and had been refrigerated, so it was not at the peak of its crispness, but the texture was better than acceptable, even when I ate leftovers another day later. Can't wait to try this again and improve upon the spice mix.