By September. The month that belongs to me — September 23rd, my birthday, the autumnal equinox of Carmen Iris Delgado-Ortiz, the day the year tilts toward fall and I tilt toward fifty-five. But that is three weeks away. First there is the rest of September to navigate — the turn of the season, the cooling of the air, the hospital shifting from summer staffing to fall staffing, the pandemic entering its seventh month with no end visible and no beginning forgettable.
The hospital received new PPE guidelines this week. More masks, different masks, N95s for certain departments, surgical masks for mine. I trained my team on the new protocols with the seriousness of a woman who has trained food service workers for twenty years and who understands that compliance is not optional and that compliance, in a pandemic, is love — love for the patients, love for each other, love for the strangers whose lives depend on whether we wash our hands and wear our masks and do the small, tedious, unglamorous work of not spreading a virus while serving lunch.
Rosa called on Tuesday. She is back in the classroom — in person, masked, six feet between the desks, twenty-five third-graders in masks trying to learn fractions through fabric. She says the children are resilient, which is true, and scared, which is also true, and hungry for normalcy, which is the truest thing of all. Carmen's daughter is feeding children knowledge the way Carmen feeds people food: with patience, with insistence, with the belief that the feeding matters even when the world is falling apart.
I made pollo al horno — roasted chicken, whole, rubbed with adobo and garlic and roasted until the skin is golden and the house smells like Sunday even though it is Wednesday. I made it because Wednesday needed to feel like Sunday, because the pandemic has dissolved the boundaries between days and the only way to mark time is with food — Monday tastes like rice, Wednesday tastes like roasted chicken, Sunday tastes like pernil, and the tasting is the calendar.
The pollo al horno I made that Wednesday — golden-skinned, garlicky, filling the apartment with something that felt like a real day — reminded me that you don’t need a Sunday to make chicken taste like home. This Ranch Cornflake Crusted Baked Chicken carries that same spirit: oven heat, crispy skin, the kind of smell that tells everyone in the house that someone is paying attention and that dinner matters. When the days blur together and the calendar dissolves, you bring it back, one pan at a time.
Ranch Cornflake Crusted Baked Chicken
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 lbs)
- 1 cup cornflakes, crushed
- 1 packet (1 oz) dry ranch seasoning mix
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 2 tablespoons olive oil or melted butter
- Cooking spray
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack on top. Lightly coat the rack with cooking spray.
- Prepare the coating. In a shallow bowl, combine crushed cornflakes, ranch seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper. Stir to combine. Drizzle in the olive oil and mix until the crumbs are lightly moistened and clumping slightly.
- Soak the chicken. Pour buttermilk into a separate shallow bowl. Pat chicken thighs dry, then submerge each piece in the buttermilk, turning to coat fully. Let sit for 5 minutes.
- Coat each piece. Lift each thigh from the buttermilk, letting the excess drip off, then press firmly into the cornflake mixture on all sides. Make sure the coating adheres well to the skin side.
- Arrange and bake. Place coated chicken skin-side up on the prepared rack. Bake for 38 to 42 minutes, until the crust is deep golden and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part reads 165°F.
- Rest and serve. Let the chicken rest on the rack for 5 minutes before serving so the crust stays crisp. Serve straight from the pan with your preferred sides.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 390 | Protein: 31g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 680mg