If we can cook it, you can cook it!

Hot-and-Sticky Lemon-Pepper Chicken Wings adapted from Richard Blais in Food & Wine

Hot-and-Sticky Lemon-Pepper Chicken Wings adapted from Richard Blais in Food & Wine
Spread the love
        A couple of years ago, I went on a Chicken Wing Diet.  It was about the time that New York restaurants were obliged to print the calorie count of their dishes on their menus.  In New York, with Mayor Bloomberg at the helm, we’ve gotten very used to the Nanny-state. And to tell the truth, it’s not all bad.  Smoking is virtually impossible—you cannot smoke anywhere indoors at any bar or restaurant or office building. You can’t even smoke in city parks or on its beaches. There even are apartment buildings that ban smoking altogether. Thank you Mayor Bloomberg.
Think this Chicken Caesar is healthy?
No way!

          Nanny-state behavior or not, to me the requirement to list calories really was an eye-opener.  There, clear as day, was the Chicken Caesar Salad weighing in at something like 1200 calories. But on the same menu the Baked version of Buffalo Chicken Wings with dressing and carrot and celery sticks came in at a mere 535 calories.   Anytime I can save 665 calories at a clip, I’m there.  Besides, I love the things.  The heat of the hot sauce dipped into the creamy blue cheese dressing, the crunch of the skin and tender meat underneath are irresistible.  And of course, the wings were way less expensive than the Chicken Caesar.  So I pretty much adopted them as my blue plate special from then on.  I also made them any number of ways at home. In the land of budget cooking, Chicken Wings take the prize. But none were ever as delicious as the ambrosial wing recipe cooked up by Atlanta’s Richard Blais, ex Top Chef All Stars winner and proprietor of a new Atlanta restaurant called “The Spence” (5th Street NW, Atlanta GA 30308 Tel: 404-892-9111.

         According to Food and Wine, where I found the original recipe, Richard was ‘exploring his British roots’ when he developed this recipe for wings.  Since I actually found a You Tube video of someone teaching Brits how to eat Chicken Wings, I think we can safely assume that the wings are the least British things about the recipe.  What makes them British is their use of Lemon Curd, the only brand of which I could find in our supermarket was Robertson’s (“By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen Manufacturers of Cakes and Culinary Products”) made in Long Sutton, Spalding, Lincolnshire.  So there!  And then of course, there’s the addition, in the batter, of classic malty English bitter. That’s Malt Liquor to us Yanks. The recipe recommends Fuller’s London Pride.  I confess:  I got the Lemon Curd but I was perfectly happy using ½ cup of Heineken in lieu of the Bitter.  And my other diversion from the original was that it called for ½ cup of rice flour and ½ cup of all-purpose flour.  I used 1 cup of all-purpose flour. 

         Despite my alterations to the original, these wings are off the chart.  The sauce, which is key to the whole dish, manages to be sweet and salty, not blazingly hot at all, lemon-y but not acid-y, and as pepper-y as you want to make it.  The wings, I am not sorry to tell you, are fried.  They are therefore crispy, crunchy pieces of everyone’s favorite: Fried Chicken. These wings are so good, they need no help from blue cheese dressing or carrot and celery sticks. And fortunately, there’s been no crack down on magazines for not listing calorie counts with their recipes.  There is a limit to what even Mayor Bloomberg can do. Here’s the recipe:


2 thoughts on “Hot-and-Sticky Lemon-Pepper Chicken Wings adapted from Richard Blais in Food & Wine”

  • Och! Just a little shy about posting but Monte deserves praise so here goes my email to him a couple of days ago.

    "My ongoing thanks to you for your great blog and astonishingly amazing recipes. I look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days you send out your emails, so that I know what I'll be eating in the next few days. It is uncanny how similar your tastes are to mine/ours.

    When I remember, I have been adding comments to the bottom of your blog when I've made the recipe. I'm not sure how blogging works so I'm not sure if you know when someone comments on your recipes from a year or more ago……?

    The recipes I've made have all be scrumptiously memorable! My son adored the chicken enchiladas. My dh especially loved the pork lettuce wraps. He said they were the best lettuce wraps he's ever eaten (and I've made all kinds over the years).

    And I was extremely fond of the shrimp with white beans and arugula. Yum yum. Oh, and we can't forget the recipe that introduced me to you, (or is that you to me) Jacques Pepin's Sausage and Potatoes.

    And those are only a few of the many many Monte recipes I've made!

    Congrats on your 325th post! Carry on! I can't wait for the next 325!

    p.s
    Today's Banh Mi looks like tomorrow's supper. ;)"

    Rock on, Monte!

Leave a Reply to Monte Mathews Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.