Cooking
Dan’s Special BBQ Chicken Wings: my brother is making a guest appearance in today’s newsletter with his special BBQ’d chicken wing dredge:
2 lbs chicken wings
½ cup flour
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp of each, garlic powder, and onion powder
½ tsp of each, red pepper flakes, ground cumin, curry powder
Mix the flour with salt and spices. Toss the chicken wings in the flour mixture until well-dredged. Grill over medium-high heat for 3 mins per side to get good grill marks, then turn down to medium heat and move the wings around every few minutes to avoid burning or flare-ups. Once the flour is no longer visible on the wings, move to the top rack to continue cooking off direct heat until chicken is 165F internal temp (about 25 mins total cooking time).
Toss in your favourite BBQ sauce or hot sauce mixed with melted butter.
Other things I cooked:
The First Mess Brussel Sprout Salad with Lime & Miso: I love this salad so much. Instead of roasting my Brussels I did them in tinfoil packs on the BBQ.
Rick Andrew Martinez Sweet & Spicy BBQ Chicken: This marinade/glaze was so flavourful! Instead of making sandwiches, I did bone-in/skin-on chicken thighs following his method, just took a bit longer to cook. So so good!
Potato packets: one of my fav BBQ sides from my childhood - sliced potatoes tossed in olive oil with whatever dried spices are on hand. This week I did paprika, curry powder, and some dried dill with salt and pep. Wrap in a tinfoil packet and cook on the BBQ.
Rebekah Pepper’s Carrot Salad: I have had SO many carrots in my fridge, this was a super simple but flavourful way to use them up. I also added in two parsnips I had in my fridge too. A great summer side!
Alison Roman’s Pasta Salad: any pasta salad with chunks of parmesan cheese is great in my books. I riffed on her original recipe, using leeks instead of scallions, sunflower seeds instead of walnuts, and added in asparagus since I didn’t have enough zucchini. So bright, briny, and fresh - another great summer salad to add to the rotation!
Smitten Kitchen’s Shortcake: I have a 1L heavy cream in my fridge that needs to be used up by mid-June so this used up a good chunk of it. Made these shortcakes served with fresh strawberries that I let sit sliced, tossed with some white sugar to get them juicy, and some whipped cream (added in a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt for a bit of tang and a little bit of icing sugar for sweetness).
Drinking
Benjamin Bridge Pink Piquette: one of my absolute favourite drinks ever is BB’s original Piquette but this pink twist is growing on me! My very unprofessional description of it is “Five Alive meets wine spritz*”. Leads with papaya aroma and ends with rose. A tasty summer treat!
Reading
The Beauty of the “Outdated” Suburban Restaurant.
Following
@billclarkmakes I’ve been following Bill for about a year now and his pastry recipes look divine. I still have yet to try any of his recipes but his photos fill my feed with dessert joy.
Listening
Using
My BBQ. Now that I’ve gotten over my initial anxiety of using my bbq (happens at the beginning of every summer - gas is scary!), I now can’t stop using it. It’s so lovely to just grill my supper and have limited mess in the kitchen (although I always find a way to destroy my kitchen). Weekday meals feel that much more doable with the grill steps away!
Thinking
About chorizo-stuffed dates. I kept my promise from last week and published a new recipe on my site this week! This is my attempt at one of the most memorable restaurant meals I’ve had in my life, and I think back to that meal often. I hope you try out this recipe and experience the life-changing combo of chorizo, dates, bacon, and spicy marinara.
Laughing
Have a great week!
Kaleigh
*edited to fix typo from email