Buffalo Wings

Every Superbowl Sunday I make Buffalo chicken wings. I can never make enough, so I have decided to tutor my ravenous friends on how to make their own:

- Buy a very large package (or two) of chicken wings (on sale, if possible) at most a day or two before their intended use.

- Rinse and dry off these wings well. Cut each wing at their joints into three pieces. Put the expendable tips into a large pan with lightly-salted water, a small onion, and a bit of celery. Simmer long enough to get a nice chicken stock as a side benefit. Cool, drain and save the stock in the refrigerator or freezer for future use.

- Now well salt and pepper all the two bigger wing joints in a big bowl. In a large heated cast-iron frying pan add about an inch and one half of peanut or safflower oil. Fry and turn these chicken wings in batches until nicely browned (about five to eight minutes) adding more oil as required. Drain each batch on copious amounts of paper towels.

- When finished frying all the wings, dump them all into another large clean bowl.

- Depending upon how many wings you have, melt at least one stick of butter in a pan and add ½ a medium bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce to each melted butter stick. Right before you serve them, pour this hot buttered sauce over the wings and stir (or flip) until they are all covered.

- Serve while hot with cleaned and chilled quartered celery sticks and chilled blue cheese dressing. (I usually make this blue cheese dressing by taking a bottle of such dressing -- Ken’s is good -- and augmenting it with crumbled blue cheese bits bought separately.)

- Make sure you have enough cold beer on hand to cool and lubricate the enjoyers.

Devil in the Details

This construction of deviled roast beef bones is for the frugal among us who love manly foods. I used to eat this dish many years ago at the Biltmore Men’s Bar when it really did bar women. When you have finished that standing roast beef for Sunday dinner, don’t throw away the bones! Follow these simple directions for a delicious Monday lunch:

- Cut the roast beef bones apart leaving a goodly and roughly equal amount of meat on each one. (You may have to separate and discard the chine bone.)

- Create the following “deviling paste” with a little bit of panache. Mix about two heaping tablespoons of a good quality mustard (Kosciusko or Gray Poupon) with about a tablespoon of horseradish. Give this mixture a few squirts of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, one squirt of hot sauce (Frank’s or Tabasco), a pinch of salt, a few turns of fresh-ground pepper, and, maybe, a few drops of lemon juice. Next you have to turn this sauce into a paste. You do this with a beaten egg yoke and enough bread crumbs (or Panko) to create a tight texture.

- Spread this paste all over the roast beef bones and place them on some aluminum foil covering a small pan. I use the toaster-oven pan and cook them in the toaster oven (again, frugal). Start them in the (toaster) oven at about 250 degrees to start rendering the excess beef fat. After about five minutes turn up the (toaster) oven to 300 degrees. Then, after another five minutes (or so), up it to 350 degrees, Then, 400 degrees. Finally, to broil. Be careful not to burn the bones but make sure they are a good dark color.

Enjoy them in private unless you don’t care if people see you with grease all over your chin. They go well with a hearts of lettuce salad with Russian dressing (made with caviar, not pickle relish … my one departure from frugality).