SPICY THYME WINGS

 Completed slow-and-low roasted chicken wings. 

 

This favorite is simplicity itself.

 

Dry rubbed with generous amounts of Badia sazon completa, thyme, and Mara's homemade Nashville-style hot chicken seasoning, this roasts uncovered at 220° for three hours, drizzled lightly with olive oil about an hour into the cooking. Baste periodically, but that's pretty much all there is to it. The result should be ultra-tender, the combination of thyme and sazon completa should provide just the right notes of saltiness and herbal distinctiveness coupled with Latin seasonings, and the spicy flavor will remain on your lips without burning them off. (My approach to spicy is that it should be an enjoyable piquant accent, rather than an assault on the palate that frat bros use to test their self-perceived "manhood.")

 

These are superb party food, and I assure you that they require no barbecue sauce, hot sauce, or honey. Well, maybe a little honey.

SWEET AND SPICY CORNISH GAME HEN

Tonight's dinner: half of a sweet and spicy slow-and-low roasted Cornish game hen.

I gave it a heavy dry rub with a blend of spicy poultry seasoning obtained at a street fair a while back, my special homemade spicy dry rub, and some thyme, chucked it into a fridge bag and let it sit sealed in the fridge for two days to allow the flavors to permeate the meat. The hen is then spatchcocked and placed wing sides up in a deep baking dish. add a tablespoon of water, seat top of baking dish with foil, and place in oven at 230° for three hours. Next, mix a blend of sweet barbecue sauce (your preferred brand), hoisin sauce, and raw honey.

Take pan out of. the oven, unseal. (Unseal carefully; pry open the seal with something protecting your hands from the escaping steam.) Pour off most of the rendered drippings, but saving enough to add flavor during the basting that will follow. the initial glazing with the sauce. Glaze the hen and return it to the oven, uncovered. Cook at low temp for as long as you like, basting periodically and also re-applying the sauce. Also maybe shake on a bit more dried thyme (optional) At this point I let it slow cook for another 2-3 hours, steadily basting.

When done to your liking, remove from oven and allow to cool. Transfer chicken to a deep container, using a wide spatula to lift it, because it will be super-tender and might fall apart during the transfer, stacking the two separated halves on top of each other, skin side up. Once in the container, pour the remaining juices over the hen and seal. Refrigerate overnight, thus allowing the flavors to sort themselves out and fully infuse. When reheating, place covered in oven set to 330° for forty minutes. When served, it will be hot all the way through, flavorful, and mist. You won't need a knife.

JO'S BRITISH FISH & CHIPS (cribbed from YouTube)

STEWED CHICKEN WINGS WITH NOODLES

This evening's culinary project, my mother's favorite dish that I cook for her whenever I visit her home in Connecticut: stewed chicken wings with noodles, with the noodles cooked in the stew to provide a thicker gravy and a richer texture. 

First you make a roux, then drop in a diced onion. Add bone broth (32 oz.), bring to a boil and then add thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper to taste, a jot of cayenne and a jot of curry powder, three bay leaves, and stir. Drop in chicken wings, followed by three chicken livers for an earthy flavor, then add 32 ounces of water and bring to a boil. Lower flame to low and allow to simmer uncovered. As the wings begin to soften, drop in 4/5 of a bag of your favorite noodles, stir, and add water as needed to facilitate the noodles as they expand during cooking. Once the wings begin to come off the bone, remove the livers, mash them to a paste, and return the paste to the pot and stir. The pot is done when the noodles are super-soft and easily digestible, and you end up with enough for meals for the next few days.  

                                                                       The finished pot.

Make sure that the noodles are soft, the opposite of al dente, as this is a Black southern American dish and nothing posh. This is earthy slave cooking, a rich childhood favorite that's ideal for the damp and cold days of this season.

THE ULTIMATE BACON, EGG, AND CHEESE BREAKFAST SAMMICH

                                                                  Heaven in a hero roll.

Bacon, eggs, and toast were a daily breakfast staple of my life between the ages of six and eighteen, so that combo ranks very high on my short list of all-time favorite comfort meals. I recently swapped out the toast for a fresh hero roll and made what is perhaps the ultimate variant on the venerable NYC bacon, egg, and cheese on a hard roll, a deli favorite since time immemorial. Here's the formula:

6 slices thick cut bacon (I favor either 1906 Butcher Shop brand or Boar's Head)
3 jumbo eggs
3 slices Boar's Head yellow American cheese
Black pepper
1 hero roll
1 tbsp salted butter (I favor Kerrygold)

Cut hero roll open lengthwise. Set aside.

Divide each slice of cheese into two halves. Set aside.

Whip eggs and black pepper (to individual taste) in a small, deep bowl, using a three-tonged fork. Whip until you have folded in enough air to make the eggs bubbly/frothy. Set aside.

On a griddle, fry the bacon over medium heat to desired level of done-ness. Take your time with this and turn bacon periodically to allow for proper cooking without burning. (The curing medium on thick cut bacon can burn if not watched with care, and no one likes burnt bacon. Especially not if you were willing to shell out the extra scratch for quality thick cut bacon.) When bacon is done, plate onto a paper towel to drain, then arrange the still-hot strips of bacon into open hero roll. cover the bacon with the half-slices of cheese from end to end.

Heat butter in a small sauce pan, preferably non-stick, over medium-low heat. Give eggs one more good whip to fold in more air, then pour into pan. Cook slowly, turning with spatula as the eggs firm up a bit. Individual preferences vary, but I suggest cooking the eggs to a soft consistency, then drop them into the hero roll straight from the pan. The heat from the eggs, coupled with remaining heat from the bacon, will melt the cheese to a semi-solid creamy consistency, and once you have arranged the eggs from end to end atop the cheese and bacon, close the roll. Press down a bit, so that any excess of the soft eggs comes out. Any excess that comes out is to be scooped back into the roll's interior, and then the roll is pressed again, so that the contents properly fuse together. The soft eggs will partially absorb into the bread. Cut sandwich in half at the middle, then enjoy.

For accompanying beverage, I recommend pouring a can of chilled seltzer (preferably Schweppes), into a deep tumbler, topping it off with about an inch of orange-pineapple juice. The effervescence and citrus offer a delicious counterpoint to the protein and salt of the sandwich.

It's admittedly excessive, but I have found that this belly bomb not only shamelessly satisfies, it is also ideal as fuel when one will be stuck in place for 9-8 hours. I first made one of these with the intent that it keep me sated from about a half hour before I was picked up for the drive to that day's dialysis through the end of the session and the drive home, so about six hours, give or take, and it absolutely did the trick. When I eat one of these first thing in the morning, my food needs are met until the early evening, so no lunch is needed. Anyway, it's my ultimate homemade comfort breakfast sammich, and I fucking love it.

DUCK FAT OVEN FRIES

While in Chinatown on Tuesday, I picked up a whole roast duck to serve as reheated meal components for a few days. (I can get three days worth out of one duck.) Though most of the rendered fat from the duck is drained before it gets cut into sections and packed up to take home, a duck is still a very fatty critter, so when its meat and skin are reheated, the remaining fat renders out and can be collected from the bottom of the reheating pan. I pour it off into a small vessel, seal it, and fridge it for future cooking use. When at room temperature, duck fat liquefies quickly, and it is VERY greasy, so pour carefully and fridge the stuff immediately.

One handy hack that duck fat is good for is perking up frozen fries. My go-to freezer fries of choice are Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Crinkles, for when my body craves something starchy that I won't have a problem keeping down. (When eaten around 11:30 last night, a plate of them saved the day after yesterday's three rounds of vomiting due to post-dialysis low blood pressure and light-headedness.) What I do is lay out the desired amount of crinkle cuts on a foil-lined baking pan, then I driz a bit of liquid duck fat over the potatoes (seen here before hitting the oven). It gives the fries a bit of a coating that responds well to the oven's heat once the fries are inside. Upon completion the fries will not only be as crispy as their marketing proclaims, they will be just as firmly crisp as fries fresh out of a proper deep-fryer, only minus the submersion in gallons of cooking grease. Once out of the oven, hit them with the customary pass of salt, and bon appetit! :)

THE ARCANE SIMPLICTY OF "EGGBURG"

 
After yesterday's post-dialysis illness and subsequent inability to keep down anything more substantial than some Popeyes biscuits, I awoke this morning in a ravenous state. My body craved protein, so I resorted to a dish that has been a staple since my childhood, and I now record its simple formula for posterity.

Toward the end of his time living with my mother and I, my dad began cooking meals for himself (my mother was fed up with his ass by that point) and in the process revealed a hitherto unseen cook who was quite innovative. One of his favorite go-to quickie meals was an unnamed scramble of browned ground beef and eggs seasoned with salt and pepper, and when I saw him make it for the first time, I asked for a taste. I loved it, and in no time it became the first meal I learned to cook for myself. It's a simple protein bomb that was especially helpful during my serial weekend hangovers in the '90's, but today it's a comfort dish that requires little effort and takes no time to prepare.

Brown the amount of ground beef that you want to eat, seasoning the meat with salt (to taste), then drop the skillet temperature down to low. 

 

Add 2-3 eggs and season with black pepper. 

 

Fold the eggs into the ground beef, cooking slowly until they reach the level of firmness that you prefer for your scrambled eggs. I find that it comes out more delicate and flavorful with a soft scramble, as there is no need to overcook the eggs because they continue to set from their own heat once plated. 

 

Usually served with buttered toast (which I opted against this morning), from start to finish this dish takes about seven minutes to make.

The origins of this scramble remain arcane and are probably lost to time, but going from what little my dad revealed about past, I'm guessing it was born out of necessity and affordability during his upbringing in rural segregated Mississippi. My parents' generation of southern Black folks were extremely close-mouthed about their families' dire histories, so even something as simple as a recipe may have had its roots in painful memories. All I can say is that I know he grew up poor, so his family likely got their protein any way they could. The times I asked my father for even the smallest details on his history, he would always avoid discussing any of it (with the exception of the entertainment that he enjoyed in his childhood), and when I asked about the name and origins of this meal he directed the conversation elsewhere, though he did attempt to humorously attribute its source to a rare (made-up) animal called the "eggburg," which even at the tender age of eight I knew was total bullshit, but I nonetheless deploy that ridiculous moniker whenever I am called upon to give a name for those I tell about it or whom I serve it to.

A plate of this was just what my stomach needed, and I can feel the protein boost working its way into my system. A solid comfort breakfast that also makes for an easy and convenient meal at any hour.