Back at Oprah Winfrey's 50th-birthday party, celebrity chef Art Smith made his famous fried chicken for all her Hollywood friends. Their reaction? "Amen and hallelujah!"
He's cooked his fried chicken for 1,000 people at Winfrey's school in South Africa. He's cooked it in Jerusalem and Ramallah, Palestine. In Riga, Latvia. In Russia. At the White House. And of course at his restaurants at Walt Disney World and Chicago.
"Wherever I go, fried chicken comes with me," Smith said.
So when he came to the USO near Naval Station Mayport late Monday morning, there was his fried chicken, bubbling in canola oil in the center's kitchen. With him were some USO staffers and some cooks — officially named culinary specialists — from the nearby base.
With some good humor, he got them involved in making what he calls his "Two-Day Marinated Fried Chicken," which is marinated twice: first in a brine of kosher salt, water and spices, then in a Tabasco-buttermilk mix.
He was asked for the secret ingredient and provided a ready answer: "Patience."
In retrospect that's not much of a secret, as it's seen right there in the two-day title.
Smith grew up in Jasper, a small Florida town north of Live Oak, so you might think great fried chicken was part of his upbringing. You'd be wrong.
"My mother didn't teach me," he said. "The Colonel did."
But he's come a long way from KFC.
Smith was executive chef for then-Florida Gov. Bob Graham, later becoming Winfrey's chef for 10 years. He was on her TV show, in her magazine and has been chef for many of her specialty events. He has cookbooks and he's been on TV, a bunch.
He wanted to visit Mayport, so he toured the galley on base Monday morning and then went to the USO, where Navy culinary specialists such as Jamal Ortiz joined in the food preparation.
The menu has "a little healthy and a little comfort," Smith said, so the side dish was a brown rice summer salad (think tabouli but with rice instead of bulgur wheat), along with the chicken.
Then all the cooks got to eat it.
However, Ortiz and the other Navy cooks won't be making it as part of their official duties. They work from a 21-day rotating menu approved by the Navy, and the fried chicken that's on it is premade and actually baked.
Cooks can't just add something to the menu, so Ortiz said he is just going to have take Smith's recipe home to family and friends.
When it came time to eat, you could see, even under his cloth face mask, the grin on Ortiz's face as he walked out of the USO kitchen, bearing a plate loaded down with second helpings. "Best chicken I've ever had," he said.
The United Service Organizations is a nonprofit charitable corporation that provides entertainment, social facilities and other programs to members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families.
The Link LonkSeptember 22, 2020 at 04:29AM
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Oprah's former chef shows Mayport Navy cooks the secrets to his famous fried chicken - The Florida Times-Union
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Fried Chicken
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