Pardon the long story but let me tell you about Dora.
So when I started dating the mother of my children I moved in with her at her parents house. Her parents were very well to do doctors at NIH and Johns Hopkins. They had a huge house between Columbia and Ellicott City that essentially was an old Maryland estate. I'm talking huge oval driveway 200-year-old Oaks, Giant pool, Smokehouse off of the back kitchen, Barn, Carriage House, and slave quarters still on the property. Giant 8 bedroom house with a 20 foot ceiling in the foyer. Beautiful woodwork everywhere. Copper roof that was brought over from england. You get the idea
Both of the doctors were gourmands but really didn't cook. They had a lady that basically raised all four kids and took care of the house for their entire lives. She was a black woman from South Carolina named Dora who was uneducated and came from a sharecropper family. The doctors took very good care of her and she had her own apartment and everything where she wanted in Southeast DC. She also had her own room in the house right off the kitchen. She smoked Salem 100s and the room smelled like it. She had some cheap ass wig she would throw on her head and walk around in an old tattered robe. They paid her very well and took care of all of her bills but she just didn't give a shit.
So during this time I was an executive chef and I would come home 11 12 1:00 2:00 in the morning. Nobody in the house was up so I would open a bottle of wine and roll into the kitchen and see how Dora was doing. She always had food ready for me. Now Dora was not this sweet old woman. She would bust your balls and not take any shit but she had a good heart. My favorite thing to eat was her Fried Chicken and collard greens.
Very simple southern cooking. She made the collards with bacon onions chicken stock salt and pepper vinegar and sugar. The Fried Chicken was simple she seasoned the flour with salt and pepper and cooked it in Crisco. She used the old brown bag trick and cooked it around 350°, 360°. I don't know if you've seen the movie The Help but you get the idea. She always had to do it in two batches so she did the thickest parts first and then held it in a low temperature oven while she did the rest.
We spent many nights in that kitchen talking shit to each other and enjoying her cooking. She had a really hard life and I got to know her well. She never stopped giving me shit but over time she gave me less shit.
Still the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life.
God bless you Dora you are sorely missed.
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