I love chicken wings. I could eat them every day. But I like to change up the flavors once in a while. So I often improvise. Sometimes, it’s…meh. But this last time, it was pretty tasty!
To keep calories a little lower–because, let’s face it, chicken wings are full of tasty fat and gristle–I usually bake my wings, not fry them.
4 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons granulated garlic 2 tablespoons granulated onion 2 tablespoons Kosher salt 1 teaspoon black pepper
I cut the tips off the wings and save them for future use, when I’m making chicken broth. And I like to cut the wings at the joint to get two pieces, but that’s a personal preference. Place all the wing pieces in a large plastic zip bag.
In a bowl, combine the rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Pour this into the bag of wings, seal it tightly, and squish it around so that the marinade gets to every part of the wings. Let this marinate for at least an hour at room temperature.
In a separate bowl, combine the brown sugar, garlic, onion, salt and pepper.
When the wings have marinated long enough, get a bowl large enough to hold all the wings. Transfer the wings to this bowl, and discard the used marinade.
Dust the wings with about 1/3 of the seasonings, and toss the wings to coat. Dust again and toss. Do it one more time, using up all the seasonings, making sure the wings are evenly coated.
Pre-heat a convection oven (or air fryer, for you younger kids) to 325. Place the wings on a raised rack above a baking sheet (I like to line the sheet with parchment paper to catch the drips) and bake for about an hour, until the wings are crispy.
Note: If you bake the wings at a higher temperature, you could burn the sugar, so low and slow is the way to go!
I posted an Instagram photo of soup I made the other day, and had quite a few friends ask me what the recipe was. My daughter got hit with a cold a while back, and I knew only one thing would help: a bowl of my homemade chicken soup. But rather than adding pasta or potatoes, I decided to give it an Asian kick. It was simple, delicious, and soothing.
Making the ingredients for a great bowl of chicken soup, or wonton soup for that matter, takes a little time. But once you’ve got them, you can freeze them, so that putting them all together takes no time at all.
The key to a great chicken soup is making your own chicken stock. Let’s be honest, nothing out of a carton can possibly compare. For one thing, I buy the best quality pastured chicken I can get. Here in Rhode Island, that means buying from local farms when available.
I prefer buying a whole bird, roasting it for dinner, then removing all the meat from the carcass before I start making stock. If I’m making fried chicken for dinner, I’ll cut the raw bird up into pieces, then drop the raw carcass into a pot to start the process. Either way–a cooked bird or raw bird works great. (Just remember that a cooked bird can have some salt on it, so you don’t want to add any.)
Making chicken stock is incredibly easy. It just takes time, which is an ingredient many people don’t have enough of. Honestly, though, if you’ve got time to binge-watch your favorite show on Netflix or watch a football game on a Sunday afternoon, you can make stock. If you can’t make stock at the same time you’re making dinner, simply put the carcass in a Ziploc bag and toss it in the freezer until you’ve got more time.
If you don’t want to deal with cutting up a chicken carcass, buy a pack of chicken parts. It doesn’t really matter what parts you use, as long as it’s something on the bone. You want all that good fat and gelatin.
Once you’re ready to make stock, fill a large pot with clean, filtered water. Drop in the chicken carcass or pieces. Chop an onion in half, 2 or 3 celery spears, and 2 or 3 carrots. (Wash the carrots well, or just peel them.) Everything goes in the pot. Turn the burner on high, and let it come to a boil. If it’s boiling too hard and spilling over, reduce the heat to medium.
Let it go for at least an hour, two or three is better. If it looks like too much water has evaporated, simply add more. How intense you want your stock is really up to you. You can reduce it like crazy to make something very concentrated, or you can cook it down to a point where it’s user-friendly right away. The best way to know is to taste it along the way.
When making your stock, feel free to add any other ingredients you like. But I stick with only the onion, carrots, and celery–avoiding garlic, salt, bay leaves, and other flavorings–adding them only when I use the stock at a later time in a particular soup or recipe.
Once the stock is done, I let it cool a bit before I strain it and pour it into individual plastic containers with tightly sealing lids. (Don’t use glass if the stock is going into the freezer!) Then it’s off to the freezer until I need to use it in a recipe.
When it’s time to make soup, I run the frozen container under warm water, and drop the frozen “block of stock” into a sauce pan, adding a little water to it, setting the burner on medium to thaw. Then it’s time to decide on what I want to put in my soup. Most of the time that simply means using whatever I’ve got in my fridge.
When I made my almost-instant wonton soup the other day, I had some carrots and organic kale in the fridge. (I only buy organic kale. The regular stuff is loaded with pesticides.)
I peeled and thinly sliced the carrots, and I removed the stem from the kale before chopping it up. I dropped the veggies in the soup and brought the heat up to high to get it to a boil.
If I’m using potatoes, I usually peel and chop them into small cubes and add them raw to the boiling stock. If I’m adding chicken, I usually choose already-cooked chopped breast meat. And if I’m using pasta, I use dry or pre-cooked, but I only add the pre-cooked pasta at the very end to avoid it turning mushy. When making chicken noodle soup, I add a pinch of salt and, for flavor, a pinch of dried bouquet garni to the pot.
With my wonton soup, I skipped the pasta and potatoes, because I had a package of dumplings in my freezer. A half-dozen of them, still frozen, go right into the boiling water. They’re fully cooked in about 5 minutes.
These dumplings were delicious in my soup.
Once the dumplings are cooked, the soup is done! I turn the heat off, and add a couple of drops of sesame oil to the soup, mixing it in well.
Once I’ve placed the soup in the bowl, a few splashes of soy sauce, and it’s ready to serve.
Growing up in a Lithuanian family, there was a small group of foods that I had to love to survive, since they constantly appeared on the dinner table: potatoes, cabbage, mushrooms, herring, and beets. Fortunately for me, I loved them all, despite my Mom’s desire to boil everything to death.
One of the many uses for beets, besides a cold summer soup and a hot winter soup, was pickling. Pickled beets are an excellent side dish for any hearty meat dish. (I love ’em with kielbasa!) Store-bought pickled beets pack way too much sugar in every jar, so it was time to make my own. The addition of hard-boiled eggs to the mix is a personal one. If you don’t like ’em, leave ’em out and add more beets.
A real time saver is a product called Love Beets, which you can find in any supermarket. If you use them, you can skip the roasting of the beets altogether.
4 to 8 beets, scrubbed (your favorite variety)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
3 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
1 onion, sliced (I like Vidalias)
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled (optional)
6 fresh dill sprigs
Pre-heat the oven to 450.
If you’re using fresh beets, wash them well and then wrap the beets in foil and roast them for about an hour, until tender. When they’re cool enough, carefully peel and quarter them. (Otherwise, just open the pack of Love Beets and you’re ready to go.)
In a medium saucepan, combine the vinegar, water, garlic, sugar, peppercorns and salt. Bring it to a boil and simmer over moderately high heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Let the pickling liquid cool to warm, about 15 minutes.
In a heat-proof glass jar or container, layer the beets, onion, eggs (optional) and dill sprigs and then cover them with the pickling liquid. Put the lid on the jar.
Let the jar stand at room temp for 2 hours, then place it in the fridge overnight.
They stay fresh for a week, but they won’t last that long!
Chourico is as important to the Portuguese as bacon is to us Lithuanians. Here in Southern New England, they pronounce it “sha-rees,” not “chaw-reezo!”
I was joking with a friend the other day that if I won the lottery, I could buy a lifetime supply of chourico at my favorite store: Mello’s, in Fall River, Mass. His response was: “Is there such a thing as a lifetime supply of chourico?!”
Good point!
If you’ve had really great chourico, you’re always looking for new ways to include it in your cooking. Inspired by chef Chuck Hughe’s recipe, this is a great chourico appetizer that’s really easy to make. Whip up the arugula pesto ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. Then when guests come, just slice the chourico, sauté it in a pan until brown, and serve.
3 cups fresh baby arugula 1/2 cup walnuts 1/2 cup olive oil 1 clove garlic 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/2 cup + one tablespoon grated Parmigiano Reggiano
2 lbs. chourico, sliced into 1/2″ pieces
Combine the arugula, walnuts, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and the 1/2 cup of cheese in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Set the remaining tablespoon of cheese aside for garnishing later.
Remove the casing from the chourico and slice it into 1/2″ thick pieces. Sauté the chourico slices in a pan until both sides are caramelized and golden.
Place the chourico on a plate, topping with some of the pesto. Sprinkle a touch of the grated cheese to garnish. Serve immediately, while the chourico is still hot!
Margeaux is located in the Porter Square Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had the opportunity to dine there recently, and it was a really enjoyable experience.
Where most restaurants don’t want to bother with varying portion sizes, Margeaux excels. You can order just about every as a small plate or main course. You can combine random plates or go with 3 that follow a particular theme. And sharing plates is encouraged.
Deviled eggs with fried oysters.Roasted oysters.Beef Wellington, ribeye, beef tips, roasted duck.A closer look at that perfect Wellington!
With the many meats we chose to share, a glass from a flight of wine was always the perfect match!
