Chicken & Waffles

Malted Waffles

1. Place the milk and fresh yeast in a bowl, whisk and leave to bloom for 10 minutes. Put all the dry ingredients in a separate, large bowl and whisk to combine.
2. Add the egg to the yeast and milk mixture and whisk thoroughly.
3. Slowly pour in the yeasted milk and egg mix to the dry ingredients. Whisk as you go until there are no visible lumps.
4. Once you have a smooth batter, drizzle in the melted butter, whisking again until fully combined.
5. Place the mix into a deep gastro leaving enough space for the batter to rise.
6. Leave for an hour to become frothy while you go back to bed / buy the newspaper.
7. Preheat your waffle iron until it reaches 190°c.
8. Depending on the size of your waffle iron, ladle on about a quarter of the batter onto the iron and cook for about 7-8 minutes until the waffle is golden and risen.

For the fried chicken

1. Make the chicken salt: toast the Szechuan and black peppercorns and cumin seeds in an hot frying pan until fragrant. Allow to cool then into a spice grinder to blend them to a fine powder. Add to the other ingredients and mix together.
2. Prep the chicken by cutting the breasts into flattish pieces. About 3 or 4 per breast.
3. Mix together the marinade ingredients using your chicken salt and stir in the chicken pieces to coat. Cover and refrigerate for two hours.
4. Meanwhile mix together all the ingredients for the dry dredge in one large bowl and the wet dredge in another large bowl.
5. Heat some oil for deep frying.
6. Take 100g of the mixed dry dredge and stir it into the chicken and marinade.
7. Now put the chicken pieces into the remaining dry dredge and toss 60, yes sixty times.
8. Carefully tap off any excess dry dredge from each of the chicken pieces and drop them into the wet dredge and straight out again, tapping off the excess liquid.
9. As each piece is removed from the wet dredge, drop it straight back into the dry dredge bowl. Turn the chicken pieces another 60 times.
10. When the oil has reached 170 degrees fry the chicken for 8-9 minutes until crisp and golden.
11. Drain the chicken on kitchen paper and dust with chicken salt.

Serve the chicken and waffles liberally drizzled with maple syrup.