Chefs and kids agree: Chicken fingers rock
Here's one thing a lot of restaurant chefs have in common with a lot of kids, and we're not talking about the Wunderkinder who compete on junior cooking shows: They love good, crispy, crunchy chicken tenderloins, aka chicken fingers.
"They are the easiest thing to cook and eat when you're busy back there," says Ed Scarpone, executive chef at DBGB in Washington, D.C. "Everything's always around to bread and fry them, plus a cheap sauce can be found, or hidden, in the walk-in. We do them every other week, at least."
Scarpone says he knows "for a fact" that his pals who cook in high-end restaurants often bring in chicken tenderloins or order a case of them that will never make it out of the kitchen, starring in staff meals instead. He prefers a spicy coating, and he whetted our appetite with talk of cacio e pepe chicken fingers with a Parm sauce.
The accompanying recipe is particularly kind to those of us who don't have 375-degree oil at the ready. It starts with butter-toasted panko bread crumbs, done on the stove top; that way, the coating becomes nicely golden brown and delicious - in restaurant parlance, GBD - in the chicken's short time in the oven. You can assemble the fresh salsa before the chicken is done.
And because we're thinking chicken fingers go over well with a lot of "grown-up kids" as well (read Eater executive editor Helen Rosner's award-winning ode, published last year in Guernica), an early evening just before Date Night could go like this: Make this recipe for hungry children and baby sitter - but not before stashing away a few of the tenders for yourself. Upon returning home, kiss sleeping children's foreheads and then head to the kitchen for your late-night snack.