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.

CHICKEN EXPERIMENT (Saved for posterity, if not for eventual refinement)

The result of today's wingette experiment. 

As the pandemic rampages on and I diligently quarantine hard, my cooking practice and experimentation has gone crazy, and part of that is this chicken process that I just gave a shot.

T sectioned some huge chicken wings and used only the wingettes — the drumettes were saved and frozen for eventual soup deployment — and instead of the usual plain salt & pepper method, I seasoned the shit out of the dredge with a melange of numerous spices in an experiment in technique and seasoning, dredged the chicken, and fridged it overnight to let the seasonings absorb, which they certainly did. Sitting overnight allowed the dredge to form into a crust around the individual wings, and when deep fried that aspect soon becomes apparent. 

When done and cooled to the point of being edible, they were quite good and needed no further seasoning, though hot sauce would definitely be a welcome accent. That said, the average fired party snacker or bar-muncher would destroy these and love them, but I think they are a case of overkill in all aspects. 

Chicken is a simple food and its preparatioon as a snack item should be kept just as elementary. From now on I'm sticking to a standard salt & pepper dredge and not overnighting, just straight into the oil, with crispy skin rather than the crunchy crust/batter. But all of that is just my usual bitchy kitchen perfectionism. They are perfectly tasty wings and can be enjoyed by all audiences.

TWO NOTES: 1. The crust effect unexpectedly allowed the chicken to hold in its juices, so it has cooked all the way through but remains delightfully juicy, and the juices carry the flavor of the seasonings. 2: The crust effect unfortunately overwhelms the tips, making them mostly useless, so keep that in mind. Had I known, I would have saved the tips during prep, bagged them, and frozen them for later use in soup stock.

THE SIMPLE MAJESTY OF SAUSAGE ROLLS

Ready to rock your party guests' world, or just a tasty snack.

It's no secret that I enjoy many things from British culture, as is the case with many Americans, but I happen to be a Yank who absolutely loves British cooking. It's the epitome of “comfort food” and nothing exemplifies that to me more than the delicious simplicity of the humble sausage roll. If you think pigs in a blanket using cocktail weenies go over well as a party snack, these blow pigs in a blanket out of the water. All you need to make a big batch of these is the following:

2 pounds of thin breakfast link sausages (I prefer actual British-style chipolatas as obtained from Manhattan's Myers of Cheswick for their texture and seasoning, but Parks or Jones breakfast sausages will do just fine and they can be found at pretty much any local supermarket)

1 package of frozen puff pastry (I favor Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets)

NOTE: All food photos are from my kitchen (such as it is) and the batch of these I made tonight, in preparation to take a container of them home to my mother as a Christmas treat, so none of them were cribbed from the internet.

Get a type of sausage link that you enjoy (again, I cannot recommend fresh chipolatas enough), bake them at 325 for thirty minutes, then transfer them to a container for chilling overnight in fridge, making sure to pour the drippings over the sausages so they continue to steep in all of the goodness of the juices. 

A tray of baked chipolatas, just out of the oven.

Next day, take your frozen puff pastry dough and allow it to reach room temperature. (The average package of puff pastry dough contains two large sheets divided into three sections, so you should have enough to wrap roughly two pounds of sausages.)

 

One sheet of room-temperature puff pastry.

Lay out the sheets of pastry on a cutting surface. Line up sausages on the pastry. 

Eyeball however much may be needed to wrap individual sausages, cut pastry to size and wrap, making sure the seam is concealed underneath. 

Once the wrapping in done, cut each sausage into three bite-sized pieces and place on a non-stick surface for baking. 

Wrapped and sectioned. 

Ready for the oven.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. When the oven reaches proper heat, bake at the temperature and time-length stated on the pastry packing. (Pepperidge Farm states 15 minutes but I suggest 17, as that allows for a more crisp pastry effect.) When done, remove from oven, allow to cool, then serve. 

Fresh out of the oven.

Two pounds of sausage links yields approximately 48 bite-sized pieces, by the way, and if allowed to cool and stored in a container in he fridge, they last for several days and should be slowly reheated at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven. Easy-peasy.

In a storage container, ready to be sealed and refrigerated.

The perfect teatime treat.