newmerican.

Above: De Prael on Sunday, featuring completely reasonable non-cheesy piano jazz. Might be a good appetizer for the slightly later and historically more raucous session at the Engelbewaarder if you're into that kind of thing.

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Our own kitchen is still not a hotbed of thrilling cooking these days, but what with the Super Bowl lumbering into view this weekend you kind of can't go anywhere on the internet without running into somebody's idea of what appropriate food would be.

So let me completely unnecessarily add our diminutive quack to the fracas. Something on Saveur led me down the ol' bunny hole into a bunch of Dale Talde recipes that we're going to try and steal.

Buffalo Cauliflower.
Kung Pao Chicken Wings.

more to come...

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sriracha ranch dressing.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 tsp sriracha
1/2 tsp prepared mustard
3 tbsp finely chopped fresh chives or scallions
1 or 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste

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good evening.

Mara just reminded me that one time in high school she threw up on a cop at a U2 concert. Jägermeister.

Above: Westerpark this morning at 9am. Tonight's dinner: beet carpaccio. Moroccan chicken wings. Some kind of salad with a faux-bacon dressing or if that fails then maybe this tahini dressing that we haven't made in a while.

The fennel seed in these wings makes for nice little surprising bursts of flavor.

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moroccan chicken wings.

3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cayenne
Juice of one lemon
an extra sprinkling of salt

Oven at 200C. Place chicken in a single layer on a roasting pan. Cook for 30 minutes until chicken is tender, then increase heat to 250 and cook for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until chicken is crispy and caramelized.

chkn.

Above: oliebollen and Crash, a possible first in the history of humanity.

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Well, 100M has fallen prey to yet another 2011 head cold, so we are trading out one comfort food plan (duck confit, sauerkraut, and that horseradish/butter/parsnip mash thing) for another: phở.

Bought some chicken to go into this thing, and with some of the non-necessary bits I'm doing two things: wings; and some kind of lettuce-wraps.

But I'm wondering, why did I not document the cooking process for the superamazing wings I made for Mara's birthday last year? I also don't think I documented the cooking process for this amazing phở I made this summer that involved toasted ginger. Why??? WHAT'S WRONG WITH MEEEEEEEEE??????

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UPDATE: Everything worked out fine. Turns out that you just cook the wings for like 20 minutes at 350, 20 minutes at 400, and then blast them at 450 til they're the right color. Or slower if you have time. For wings that you're coating in sauce, you can't really dry them out.

For the rest, below: chicken phở with all accompaniments; red dragon chicken/lettuce wraps, kind of a Momofuku thing, not bad; wings.

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le home run.

So, we made two awesome things this weekend that we shouldn't make very often, but, yeah...sometime soon again.

The first was a continuation of our buffalo wing infatuation, but this time I made, uhhhhhh....chicken tenders? They sure look like wings, don't they.

It's just chicken breasts cut into strips, dipped in egg wash and cornmeal and fried in peanut oil. Then tossed in the same old amazingly simple and perfect Frank's + butter sauce and then placed strategically close to some blue cheese dressing and celery, it was almost like being back in the motherland.

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Then, the cobbler. This was thoroughly dreamy. The recipe's still not a recipe, but should be decipherable enough. Serve warm with an assertive ice cream. I personally wonder about like a goat cheese or buttermilk ice cream, but I'm like that.

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rosemary, brown butter, and almond apple cobbler.

5 apples, peeled, chopped
8 tbsp butter
1 six-inch sprig fresh rosemary
plus stuff below

Butter a baking dish. In a food processor, combine 1/3 cup unsalted almonds, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 cup raw sugar; 1/2 cup flour. Then add 1/2 stick melted butter, stir to a crumble. Brown the butter with the rosemary, then remove rosemary.

Put the chopped apples in a bowl. Pour the browned butter over the apples with 1/8 cup sugar, a little salt, couple tbsp flour, sprinkle of cinnamon. Stir to coat. Add this to the buttered baking dish, cover with topping, bake at 175C for 30 minutes.

I found that a little sprinkling of salt over the whole thing seemed to make things even better. 

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buffaloed.

Little known fact: I've spent a considerable amount of time in Buffalo, NY. Not lately, but up until I was eight or nine I was probably there at least once a year. All I remember is snow, and ducks.

Relevance, your honour? We made some seriously authentic Buffalo wings tonight. There are basically two parts to get right: crisp up the wings properly via high heat to emulate fried wings (or actually fry the wings); and then there's the sauce.

To get the sauce right, I'm pretty sure there's only one answer: Frank's Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce. There's a recipe on the back of the bottle: follow it and you have the correct sauce. It goes like this:

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buffalo wing sauce.

1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce
1/3 cup melted butter

Combine. Coat your wings with this. Serve with blue cheese dressing and celery sticks.

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winger.

Undertaking something new this evening: cutting up chicken. As we've noted before, I've only recently started cooking chicken at all, but basically what I do is fry or roast drumsticks, or roast a whole chicken. I never really take one apart.

It was, ehh.....fun! Satisfying in a caveman way. My mom had pounds and pounds of chicken legs in the freezer that she'd been avoiding for months, and so we decided to do something about them. We're doing two batches of wings: buffalo style in the oven and BBQ wings on the grill. Both are sitting in a brine right now for 30 minutes, then we'll rinse them off and get started.

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bbq chicken wings.

40 chicken wings
3/4 cup salt
1 quart water
3 tbsp sugar

2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp powdered chipotle chile
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp black pepper
1/2 cup to 1 cup prepared BBQ sauce (I used Stubb's Mesquite b/c it doesn't have a pile of bullshit ingredients in it)


Make the brine and let the wings sit in it for 30 minutes in the fridge. Rinse them off. Coat them with the cumin, garlic powder, chipotle, and black pepper. Cook the wings for 15-20 minutes over low or indirect heat on your or your parents' gas grill. Then turn the grill to high and crisp up the outsides, about 5 minutes of standing at the grill turning things constantly and wincing from the smoke in your eyes. Then bring the wings in, coat with BBQ sauce and stick in a 200C oven for 5-10 minutes. Salt to taste. Serves 4 or so.

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