Fried Stuff: Chicken Wings, Tofu, Cheese

I’ve pretty much got the fried chicken wings down by now (I use the little wing drumettes, coat them in a mix of corn starch and spices, heat the oil to 6 on my stove, and fry for 12 minutes), but I wanted to experiment with more flavor. In the past I’ve put spices into the corn starch mix, but it usually doesn’t come through very strongly. This time I ground up a fair amount of salt, pepper, cardamom, and coriander and actually combined that mixture about 3:2 with corn starch. The chicken was definitely more flavorful, and looked good as well, with dark flecks of pepper and cardamom visible in the coating.
I figured as long as I had some left over corn starch mix and the oil sitting there, why not try frying other things? So next I sliced up some tofu and tossed it in the corn starch. Then I sliced up some cheese (asiago and fresh mozzarella) and tossed that as well. I dropped both into the oil, figuring on giving them 6-8 minutes. Well I don’t know how they make those fried mozzarella sticks at crap restaurants like Chili’s or whatever, but mine was an utter fiasco. The cheese, non-surprisingly, melted and got all in the oil and stuff. I managed to scoop the tofu and globs of the cheese out. The tofu was actually pretty good — the coating had formed a fairly distinct skin, and the tofu inside was kind of soft, almost a fried cheese stick effect (probably because I ended up having to pull the tofu out before it’d been in the oil very long). The cheese, of course, was a lost cause. So, tofu good, fried cheese needs some study.