"Crispy sells."

"Crispy sells."   - John Gibson

This is a maxim that I couldn't agree with more.  John, my former chef, used to say this from time to time and he was certainly correct, what's more, whichever menu item received this descriptor always sold like hot-cakes.  There's something about a crunchy crust giving way to a moist and succulent interior that gets my palate going, whether it's veal milanese, chicken wings, croquetas, fried sweetbreads, fish-cakes (particularly bolinhos de bacalhau), or my childhood favorite deep fried shrimp.

Surely deep frying is the easiest method of creating this crispy exterior.  However, I often find that the traditional trifecta of flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, while delicious, becomes oil soaked and heavy.  Happily I've found a couple of techniques for creating this crispy business in ways that are lighter and new (at least to me that is):

1) If you have the luxury of deep frying I particularly recommend a buttermilk batter.   This is very easy to prepare, dip item to be fried in some buttermilk and then into flour.  I've been doing it with 1/2 AP flour and 1/2 semolina flour and also with all AP Flour and I've found the semolina mix to be a bit lighter, though both are delicious.  It's very important to have extremely hot oil for this frying process or else the item will be overcooked before the batter is as crunchy as one would like.  I've tried it with bacalhau, shrimp, hake, zucchini flowers and sweetbreads, all to great satisfaction.

2) Dijon mustard is one of my favorite ingredients: I love its heat and its tang.  It is a great accompaniment to meats of all sorts and has endless uses as an emulsifier for sauces.  Recently I marinated some de-boned chicken legs with lots grainy Dijon, lemons, capers, garlic, thyme, chili flakes.  I heated my cast iron pan to smoking hot and slipped them in, skin side down.   At high heats the mustard caramelizes and the resulting crust and rendered skin creates a great textural contrast.  I recommend placing a weight of some sort on top of the item to make sure that all of the surface is touching the pan and thus quickly making a more even crust.

3) I don't have much experience with tahini, but I do now know that it creates a beautiful crust on a variety of foods.  At work lately we've been marinating quail with tahini, olive oil, lemons and smashed garlic cloves, salt and black pepper.  Put into a hot pan the tahini will turn a golden brown and have a charming toasted nutty flavor and aroma.  I think this could work very nicely with chicken as well, or maybe some sort of chopped chickpea cake.  On a lark we threw a couple of the quail into the deep fryer and ate them as a snack with hot sauce to make a gourmet chicken wing.  Very delicious.