sauceless hotwings

On Superbowl Sunday, Jack had a hankering for hot-wings. So did I. So we set about trying a new way to make them. Inspired by my oven fried chicken strips, Jack made a buttermilk-based marinade for the drummettes. The marinade was spicy...


Seriously hot...3 canned chipotles plus a couple tablespoons of the adobo sauce they came in, along with about 2 tablespoons of Habanero Tabasco sauce were pureed together and added to about 2 cups of buttermilk. We filled a dish with 2 dozen chicken drummettes and the marinade, and let them sit for about half an hour.


The wings were then taken out of the marinade, sprinkled with garlic powder, cayenne pepper and salt, then dredged in flour and deep fried in vegetable oil.

They were good. Perfectly fried, crispy on the outside, tender meat, good flavor. The thing that stumps us, though, is that they weren't at all spicy hot. You could taste the flavor of the habanero, but the heat was not there. We are not complaining...the outcome made us happy, and they will be made again for those occasions when guests aren't equipped with the tongues of steel we both have.

We do like the spicy, though, and are wondering why these lost that. The buttermilk seems the obvious culprit...as dairy does tone down the burn. However, we both tasted the marinade, buttermilk and all before adding the wings, and agreed that it was smokin'. Any ideas?

The Bobs are Winners!

For our office post holiday party (the actual holidays are always too busy to plan a party), we had a dip contest. I loved this idea, but I have made very few dips. I didn't know where to start. Googling "dips" led to numerous results, but most were your usual artichoke, taco, nacho and such dips. Which are all good. But this was a contest! I needed something that stood out...something different, but still crowd-pleasing.

I put a plea out to all my non-work friends for any ideas they had. I got some good ideas that I will probably try in the future. But there was one that stood out. It was a suggestion from a friend in Denver, who had had this dip at a restaurant there called the Irish Snug. It's a warm blue cheese dip with garlic and bacon. To me, that sounded like a sure winner.

Dip contest entrants were encouraged to give their dip a fun name. I went with "The Bobs," a reference to Office Space. There were 6 other dips, and it was a fun contest. In the end, it came to a tie between "The Bobs" and "Harry Cheese", which was cream cheese mixed with Harry & David's Pepper & Onion Relish, which, despite the over-easy nature of it, is a really yummy dip. But the tie breaking vote went to the Bobs! Yay!!


Here is the recipe (which I doubled):

The Bobs
(Warm Blue Cheese Dip with Garlic and Bacon)

Yields: 14 servings

7 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup half-and-half
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives


1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Remove bacon from skillet, drain on paper towels and crumble.
2. Place garlic in hot bacon grease. Cook and stir until soft, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place cream cheese and half-and-half in a medium bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until blended. Stir in bacon, garlic, blue cheese and chives. Transfer mixture to a medium baking dish.
4. Bake covered in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until lightly browned.

party stef

This weekend I "catered" a friend's Halloween party. It was quite a bit of work, but not stressful at all. I got to try some recipes I've been hoarding. Here's what I made:

Hummus:

I made 3 kinds; Plain, Roasted red pepper and curry. I didn't use a recipe for any of them, because Hummus is simple and hard to mess up. It's basically canned chickpeas, fresh garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and tahini (sesame seed paste). However, I could not seem to find tahini at my normal stores, so I used sunflower seed butter instead, which was a good substitute I think. For the Roasted red pepper I simply threw in some jarred roasted red peppers. For the curry I added curry powder, ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric. I served them with pita chips and raw veggies. People who were hummus eaters at the party liked them, but these ended up being the least popular of my 5 items. Just not the crowd for it, I guess.

Brie tarts:

These are a simple idea I got from attifood. Basically you put cubes of Brie in pre-made phyllo cups, put some kind of preserves (I used pepper pecan jelly) on it and top it with a walnut. Bakes them for about 10 minutes, and voila! The second most popular item I made.

Meat Lollipops:


These were an idea from Food Wishes. Simply spread goat cheese on a bread stick and wrap it with some delicious meat. I used proscuitto, capicolla ham, and salami. For half of them, I mixed in chopped fresh basil with the goat cheese. These were a pretty big hit. I wish I could have found skinnier breadsticks (which I did a couple days later, darn it). On second thought, the cheese makes the stick a little soft after awhile (don't be grossed out, it's still tasty, and you hardly notice because the rest of the stick is still crunchy), so a skinny breadstick might not have held up well unless people are eating them right away...

Salami and Pistachio mini muffins:

These were adapted from Chocolate & Zucchini's recipe for a Chorizo Pistachio and Sun-dried tomatoes loaf. I simply replaced the hard-to-find chorizo with some smoked salami and cooked the batter in mini-muffin tins instead of a loaf pan. These were Jack's favorite, and he has requested that I make some for Thanksgiving.

Sweet & Sour meatballs:

These were so popular I didn't get a picture of the finished product. That's just a naked meatball, there, fresh out of the oven. It's a very 60's recipe, with a sauce consisting only of chili sauce and grape jelly and lemon juice and garlic powder. The meatballs are a mixture of pork, hamburger, onions, garlic, breadcrumbs and eggs. Here's the recipe I started from, but I added more to my meatball mixture. It's amazing how such a weird sounding and simple recipe can be sooo popular. A few people commented that the flavors brought back memories from when they were kids. Ha!

overall I enjoyed doing this. It was like I was hosting a party myself, only it was at someone else’s house (my apartment could not handle it) and someone else was paying for everything. Awesome!