The second I got home, I cut up the chicken. That's one of my favorite things to do now because if you have a sharp knife and you're confident, it's a very smooth process. I'd like to describe it here in words, but you're better off Googling for an explanation with pictures and/or video. (Essentially: cut off the leg and thigh; separate those two; cut off the wing; then cut out the backbone with poultry shears; and, finally, cut the breast in half and then cut each half in half. That's it!)

I immediately soaked my cut up chicken in buttermilk:

It was around 3 o'clock and I wouldn't start frying until 9 (Craig was coming home late with his editor, Jennie Lee, for dinner). So a six hour soaked proved quite worthwhile: the chicken was quite tender and moist within.

Now, then, I had to choose a recipe. I have plenty of Southern cookbooks, but this time I wanted a recipe I could truly trust. I recalled a conversation I'd had with someone from The Food Network recently who said that my hero, Ina Garten, has the best tested recipes around. "All her recipes work," said this person. "And that's not easy to do."

This person is absolutely right. Every Barefoot Contessa recipe I've ever done has always been a success: in fact, most of my enthusiasm for cooking started when I started doing Barefoot Contessa recipes. (I remember sitting in a chair at the Borders in Atlanta with index cards, copying recipes out of her book because I was too cheap to buy them. Now people are copying recipes out of MY book because they're too cheap to buy it. How things change!)

I saw her do her oven-fried chicken on TV not long ago and the technique made lots of sense to me: soak the chicken in the buttermilk, dip it in a flour mixture, and then deep fry it just until it's crispy on the outside and then finish in the oven. This way you get the crisp outside but a tender inside. So that's exactly what I did and, I'm proud to say, the results were fantastic.

Lucky for us, the recipe is online so I don't have to go into specifics. (For the recipe, click here).

Being the very intelligent person that I am, I set up a very intelligent frying station: I poured a mixture of peanut oil and vegetable oil (I got that idea from The Lee Bros. cookbook, which'll make an appearance momentarily) into my Le Crueset and then inserted a digital probe thermometer into the cold liquid. Then, when I turned up the heat, I had a digital read-out of the exact temperature.

This was far superior, at least in my opinion, to using the deep-fry thermometer I had been using which, though effective, isn't nearly as exact. When that digital display said "360" I knew my chicken was ready to go in.

First, I dredged in the flour mixture, only I added a little cayenne pepper to the mix to give it some color and some heat:

And then into the oil it went:

This time I was careful not to crowd the pot (remember what happened when I made onion rings?) and I was astonished at how quickly the temperature dropped. That's the other great thing about using a digitial probe thermometer: you can monitor stuff like that. It dropped below 300 and took a while, once the first batch came out, to get back up to 360. It made me realize that when I made my failed fried chicken last year, that butter/shortening mixture wasn't NEARLY hot enough: I think anyone who writes a fried chicken recipe without giving an ideal frying temperature hasn't done a very good job.

Soon, after frying in several batches, the chicken was ready for the oven:

Into the oven it went, and then I got to work on the collard greens.

I recently read Huck Finn for the first time (I know, I skipped it in high school) and I remember Huck saying that people who don't like cooked greens just haven't had any good cooked greens: that there's nothing better than greens cooked well. (Mark Twain just did a somersault in his grave).

I put this theory to the test with The Lee Bros. Cookbook and their recipe for "Sunday Greens." They have a recipe for "Tuesday Greens" which takes half the time, but I wanted to do the slow-simmered kind to experience the real deal.

I was a bit confused about how many greens I would need for the three of us and having bought only one bunch, I decided to go back to the store when I read that a recipe for 6 people required 3 bunches. I went back and bought two more bunches so we'd have leftovers.

I soaked them all in the sink, ran the leaves under cold water, and cut out the ribs (the stem and the inside of the leaf). Then I cut the collards into one-inch strips which I placed in these three lovely bowls:

As you can see, that's a lot of collards, but I was pretty sure they'd cook down.

Now for the recipe which I will abridge here (I recommend you buy the actual book; not only for the recipes, which are great, but for the wonderful commentary that comes with them).

In a large stock pot, put some oil in there, and cook 1/4 pound diced slab bacon until it renders some fat--6 minutes. (They call for a ham hock but I didn't have one so slab bacon it was, which they allow for).

Then to that you add 8 cups water which will hiss and pop. You add 1 Tbs crushed red pepper flakes (I added half that b/c I didn't want it too spicy), 1 Tbs kosher salt and bring to a boil. Then you reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes until the stock "is deeply flavored with smoke and spiciness."

After that, you add the greens to the pot a handful at a time. Stir in the handful, wait for it to turn "a bright kelly green (3 to 5 minutes)" and then add the next handful until all the greens are added. You turn the heat to low and simmer gently for an hour.

That's it!

I took a taste and they were dynamite: smoky, spicy, and just salty enough--they put all other greens to shame.

Soon, the chicken came out of the oven:

Just in time for Craig and our guest, Ms. Lee, to come home. As you can see this greedy pair dug right in (notice the missing chicken pieces in the above picture) and here they are modeling their delicious food:

Notice the apple pie on the table? I made that too. Wouldn't Mark Twain be proud? Maybe I AM a character out of one of his books after all.

I'm Aunt Polly.