Back in December, my love took me to the Indulge LA event for food and wine tasting. The most memorable fare were the ice wine and the chocolate fried chicken. The initial thought of chocolate fried chicken kind of threw me off. I didn’t really know what to expect; I certainly wasn’t planning on falling in love. The chicken was cooked perfectly, juicy in the middle with a crispy chocolate crust. The chef placed it atop a waffle that was a little too hard unfortunately, apparently someone had tampered with his oven. He served it with a drizzle of honey Tabasco sauce. It was absolute heaven! The best fried chicken I have ever had in my life, and should I be surprised that it was covered in chocolate?? I think we were able to get back in line at least two more times before he finally ran out. Needless to say, it was very popular.

We had been hoping to visit the restaurant in L.A. but they have been closed since then for reasons unknown. Fast forward to the week before Valentine’s Day. I’m not one to celebrate a countrywide give a shit about your S/O day, but underneath this bitchy exterior, I’m kind of a sap.  I thought it would be great to try and re-create the chocolate fried chicken and also combine two of our favorite foods as a side dish, macaroni & cheese and cornbread. The initial experiment was almost a success! I didn’t have the proper thermometer to make sure the oil was at the right temperature for frying, so my first batch of chicken burned on contact. It filled the apartment with a nice cloud of smoke for a while. The second batch was almost there, the oil wasn’t quite hot enough to get a good crisp crust but all the flavors were there. I made the honey Tabasco sauce to go with it which also went very well with the cornbread mac & cheese. The sauce is absolutely necessary in addition to the chicken, it really pulls out the flavors of chocolate, cinnamon and nutmeg. I’ve made chocolate fried chicken several times since then and the last batch I made for Brian’s birthday was pretty damn perfect! The look on his face as he bit into it told me so. I’d still like to play around with the recipe just a little bit, I know there’s something that could send it right over the top!