For Saturday's Eurovision fiesta, I decided to make some home-made buffalo wings with some blue cheese drssing (also made from scratch by moi). Ever since we moved here, I've been somewhat frustrated by the fact that you can only get decent buffalo wings in Bergen and Oslo, 'cause that's where TGI Friday's have restaurants. Sure; there are plenty of restaurants in Trondheim where buffalo wings are on the menu, but these dishes bear as much of a resemblance to proper buffalo wings as social anthropology does to science.
So if I can't get proper wings at restaurants, what remains is to make them my very self, right? And I had reason to believe that this would not be an insurmountable task, because we have recently purchased a recipe book by an actual American, who also happens to be Aftenposten's barbecue expert. In his book "Far Lukter Svidd", he gives a recipe for what he refers to as proper Buffalo Wings, and follows that up with a recipe for blue cheese dressing. In my mind, this project was destined for success.
Right off the bat I ran into some problems - getting hold of raw chicken wings turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated, and I ended up having to order them through Ultra. I started out by making the blue cheese dressing, and it did not peoperly dawn on me until I mixed the ingredients how unbelievably much saturated fat is in that thing - jus amazing. Still; everything appeared to go as planned, until I added the finishing touches, where I discovered that the smell was all wrong - all lemony and stuff. Despite having used less lemon juice and apple cider vinegar than prescribed, it was way too lemony and thus bore little resemblance to the product I was after. Bummer.
Then, as I started prepping the wings, I noticed that there was a severe mismatch between the amount of seasoning prescribed and what was needed to properly cover the wings when using the shake'n'bake technique. Ok - no probs, just double the amount of spices for the seasoning. As the wings went into the oven, I was somewhat taken aback by the color of the wings, or rather, by the lack of reddish color they're supposed to have. According to the recipe, this color would emanate from a 1:1 mixture of melted butter and tabasco sauce (to which I added some proper hot sauce), but that wasn't really happening, and I ended up with a product with more or less the same color, texture and taste as what you get from places like Egon.
As for the final result, I think Darth Vader said it best:
So if I can't get proper wings at restaurants, what remains is to make them my very self, right? And I had reason to believe that this would not be an insurmountable task, because we have recently purchased a recipe book by an actual American, who also happens to be Aftenposten's barbecue expert. In his book "Far Lukter Svidd", he gives a recipe for what he refers to as proper Buffalo Wings, and follows that up with a recipe for blue cheese dressing. In my mind, this project was destined for success.
Right off the bat I ran into some problems - getting hold of raw chicken wings turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated, and I ended up having to order them through Ultra. I started out by making the blue cheese dressing, and it did not peoperly dawn on me until I mixed the ingredients how unbelievably much saturated fat is in that thing - jus amazing. Still; everything appeared to go as planned, until I added the finishing touches, where I discovered that the smell was all wrong - all lemony and stuff. Despite having used less lemon juice and apple cider vinegar than prescribed, it was way too lemony and thus bore little resemblance to the product I was after. Bummer.
Then, as I started prepping the wings, I noticed that there was a severe mismatch between the amount of seasoning prescribed and what was needed to properly cover the wings when using the shake'n'bake technique. Ok - no probs, just double the amount of spices for the seasoning. As the wings went into the oven, I was somewhat taken aback by the color of the wings, or rather, by the lack of reddish color they're supposed to have. According to the recipe, this color would emanate from a 1:1 mixture of melted butter and tabasco sauce (to which I added some proper hot sauce), but that wasn't really happening, and I ended up with a product with more or less the same color, texture and taste as what you get from places like Egon.
As for the final result, I think Darth Vader said it best:
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4 comments:
I respectfully disagree: the wings were very good and so was the blue cheese dip. I tried the dip with the pizza too and it was almost as legendary as the 120% chocolate muffins :)
Thanks - you're way too kind...
Although I agree that they didn't taste bad, it wasn't proper buffalo wings, and it wasn't proper blue cheese.......
Hei there Willster, you need to send some of those buffalo wings my way for some quality control!
Don't know much about buffalo wings or blue cheese dressing, but I do know one thing about blue cheese: I does make a lot of difference depending on what kind of blue cheese you use. I prefer roquefort or gorgonzola. I think Roquefort is the most common in dressings, but if I make blue cheese sauce, I mostly use gorgonzola, so maybe that's the way to go for your dressings as well (dolce is mild, pikante is strong)?
it did not peoperly dawn on me until I mixed the ingredients how unbelievably much saturated fat is in that thing - just amazing.
We only count carbs, right? This is the Atkins/ Fedon Lindberg healthy snack... ;-)
Hei there Willster, you need to send some of those buffalo wings my way for some quality control!
Can do, brah! How's late June?
I do know one thing about blue cheese: I does make a lot of difference depending on what kind of blue cheese you use. I prefer roquefort or gorgonzola. I think Roquefort is the most common in dressings, but if I make blue cheese sauce, I mostly use gorgonzola, so maybe that's the way to go for your dressings as well (dolce is mild, pikante is strong)?
I used gorgonzola - the recipe offered several choices - and the "cheesy" part of the dressing worked out well. Actually, the dressing can be modified to work simply by cuttin' down on the ol' citrus...maybe I'll try roquefort next time?
We only count carbs, right? This is the Atkins/ Fedon Lindberg healthy snack... ;-)
The sad thing is that blue cheese dressing - an unholy amalgam of mayo, sour cream and cheese, is totally ok for use every day as specified by Atkins. If his mom had been makign blue cheese dressing, it would have fulfilled all criteria Fedon requires of an ideal food as well. near as I can tell, his diet, supposedly ideal, consists of exactly the same food that his momma made for his smug and overweight li'l self way back in Greece or wherever the hell kind of olive oil-guzzling country he's from
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