Six-Seven-Eight: The Chronicle of a Liberal Couple's Culinary Adventures: Fried Chicken Benedict

Unlike the last two posts, our latest Man Vs. Food excursion is more emulation than inspiration, as we only changed a single ingredient from the original recipe. This delectable meal was brought about due to the Las Vegas episode on Season 2. The idea is to take two heavy breakfast favorites, the chicken fried chicken and the eggs benedict, and meld them into one single perfect dish.

The Fried Chicken Benedict is a layered tower that starts with a base of griddle mashed potatoes.

This is my very do-able wife stirring chives into the mashed potatoes to give them a bit more color and life.

We wanted to make absolutely everything from scratch, so I put together a coating for the chicken breasts consisting of flour, corn flakes, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and chili powder for some spice.

The recipe on the episode uses a full one pound chicken breast, which seemed a little excessive even to food lovers like ourselves. Since we were planning on feeding several people I pounded out the chicken breasts and then cut them in half, and they still ended up bigger then strictly necessary. You can also see my oh-so-stylish (and insanity inducing) Cthulhu apron.

Megan put together buttermilk biscuits to go on top of the griddle mash. As an interesting side note, this was the first time she ever made roll out biscuits, as she usually makes drop biscuits.

A spicy chipotle sauce goes on top of the tower instead of the more traditional hollandaise sauce that would accompany eggs benedict. To make the sauce we mixed together chiles in adobo sauce with heavy cream in the blender. It didn't end up that pretty red color, so I added in paprika to bring to the right hue.

Here's the chicken breasts just before getting dipped in egg wash and dredged in the coating. Each breast was rubbed with pepper, sage, rosemary, and garlic powder.

Hey, what are these guys doing here? You'll see soon enough....

Finally the construction actually begins! Here's two big dollops of mashed potatoes getting fried on the griddle so that the bottom is just slightly crispy and the top is nice and hot.

The finished griddle mash is the base of the tower. If only it knew then the weight it would have to support!

The next layer consists of the buttermilk biscuits and the finished fried chicken breast.

We layered fresh spinach leaves and tomato slices on top of the chicken breast. What would a breakfast meal be without a little bacon as well?

And now for the layer of scrambled eggs!

We're finally nearing the top of the tower. This is a layer of cheddar cheese we cooked directly on the griddle to act as a gooey top and hold everything in place.