Sweet and Tangy Wings with Butter Lettuce Salad

from Real Simple magazine

1/4 cup apricot jam
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Kosher salt
3 1/2 pounds chicken wings (about 25)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the grill
2 tablespoons store-bought pesto
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 head butter lettuce, torn into pieces

Heat grill to medium-low.

In a large bowl, combine the jam, vinegar, ginger, cayenne, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Set aside 1/4 cup of the mixture. Add the chicken wings to the large bowl and toss to coat.

Lightly oil the grill and cook the chicken, covered, turning occasionally, until cooked through, 25 to 30 minutes. During the last 10 minutes of grilling, baste the wings with the reserved jam mixture.

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, pesto, and lemon juice.

Divide the lettuce among individual plates and drizzle with the pesto vinaigrette. Serve with the chicken wings.

Technique: If you don't have access to a grill, you can cook this dish in the broiler on a sheet pan for the same amount of time. (Most grill pans aren't large enough to hold all the wings at once.) (I baked mine at 350 degrees for probably 30-40 minutes, turning and basting them every 10 minutes or so.)

Yield: Makes 4 servings

Ricotta Eggs with Basil

from Williams-Sonoma

• 15 oz ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Romano cheese
• 1 1/2 Tbs. thinly sliced fresh basil
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• Toast for serving

In bowl, whisk together ricotta and Romano cheeses, basil, cream, eggs and salt. Set aside.

Fill egg-poaching pan with 1 inch water. Set over medium heat, cover and bring to simmer.

Set 4 egg-paching cups on plate. Pour about 1/2 cup egg mixture into each one.

Set cups in pan, cover and simmer until eggs are set, about 12 minutes. Flp eggs upside down onto plate. Repeat to make 4 more poached eggs.

Transfer eggs to individual plates; serve immediately with toast. Serves 4.

Chocolate-Orange Cookie Stacks

• 1 cup chilled heavy whipping cream
• 2/3 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, partially thawed
• 40 chocolate wafer cookies (about one 9-oz package)
• Finely grated orange peel

Using electric mixer, beat cream and orange juice concentrate in medium bowl until stiff peaks form.

Place 8 cookies on rimmed backing sheet, spacing apart. Spoon about 1 level tablespoon whipped orange cream atop each cookie, then top each with second cookie and another tablespoon cream. Repeat 2 more times with cookies and cream, creating 8 stacks of 4 cookies with 4 layers of orange cream. Top each stack with fifth cookie. Transfer remaining orange cream to small bowl; cover and chill cream. Cover and chill stacks at least 6 hours or overnight (cookies will soften).

Carefully transfer 1 stack to each of 8 plates. Rewhisk reserved orange cream, if necessary, until stiff peaks form. Spoon dollop of orange cream atop each stack, sprinkle with grated orange peel, and serve.

Thin-Crust Pizzas with Fresh Mozzarella

• 1 package dry yeast
• 1 cup water, 105 - 115 degrees
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 1/2 cups flour plus more for rolling
• 1 tsp salt
• Olive oil spray
• Cornmeal
• 1 cup pizza or pasta sauce, preferably spicy
• 2 8-0z packages mozzarella cheese
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Dried red pepper flakes

Stir yeast into warm water and let stand until dissolved, about 5 minutes. Stir in olive oil.

Put flour and salt in food processor fitted with metal blade. Slowly pour yeast mixture through feed tube and process until smooth and elastic, about 40 seconds. (mixing by hand works fine too)

Transfer dough to large resealable plastic bag, squeeze out air and seal, leaving enough room for dough to expand. Place bag in bowl and let rise in warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch dough down, then cut into 4 equal pieces.

Put 1 piece dough on lightly floured board and roll into 10-inch circle, flipping it occasionally and sprinkling on more flour as needed. Repeat with remaining 3 pieces of dough.

For each pizza, center 1 piece dough on pizza pan, preferably black steel, that has been sprayed with olive oil spray and sprinkled with cornmeal.

Evenly spread 1/4 cup sauce to edge of each piece dough. Cut cheese into 1/4-inch-thick crosswise slices and divide among pizzas, spacing evenly. Sprinkle 1/4 tsp. oregano, 1/8 tsp salt (I recommend less) and red pepper flakes to taste on each pizza.

Bake at 525 degrees (my oven only goes up to 500 degrees) on lowest rack of oven until sizzling and bottom of crust is brown and crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. If baking 2 pizzas at a time on 2 racks, reverse them after 2 1/2 minutes.

Chinese Hot and Sour Soup

1/4 lb. mushrooms
1/4 lb. spinach
2 green onions
3 T light soy sauce
3 T vinegar
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 T sesame oil.
1/2 tsp. hot pepper sauce
6 cups chicken broth
3 T cornstarch
5 T water
3/4 pound (12 oz.) tofu, drained and cut into 3/4 inch chunks

• Wipe mushrooms clean with damp paper towel. Break stem off each and set aside. Thinly slice caps, then stack them into a pile and cult in half. Rinse spinach in cold water and dry well. Trim roots and most of green tops from onions and thinly slice. Set aside.
• Mix soy sauce, vinegar, pepper, sesame oil and hot pepper sauce. Set aside.
• Combine broth, mushrooms and spinach in large pot. Simmer over medium heat 4 minutes.
• Stir soy sauce mixture into broth. Taste and add more soy sauce or hot sauce--whatever you feel would improve and balance flavor (I ended up using probably 3 times the recipe amount of soy sauce and hot sauce, plus a little additional vinegar).
• Mix cornstarch and water and add to broth. Stir a couple of minutes to blend. Add tofu and continue to stir; cornstarch mixture will give a slight thickness to broth. Serve hot (or cold) with a sprinkle of chopped green onions on top.

Chicken alla Diavola

From Food and Wine magazine -- Delicious!

Chicken alla Diavola

ACTIVE TIME: 30 MIN TOTAL TIME: 3 HRS 2 days infusing
SERVES: 4

Denaro’s pollo alla diavola ("devil’s-style chicken”) is intensely seasoned. Two days prior to cooking, Denaro infuses white wine vinegar with a big bunch of dried Sicilian oregano for a marinade. Then he seasons the marinated chicken with an exotic herb mixture, or condimento, that includes Turkish bay laurel (“the only kind to use,” Denaro says) and myrtle leaves. Feel free to experiment with a variety of herbs for the condimento. Pollo alla diavola is traditionally grilled over wood embers, but the chicken may also be grilled over a charcoal or gas fire, or broiled in an oven.

ingredients

1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoons dried oregano
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Two 3- to 3 1/4-pound chickens
2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon piment d’ Espelette or Aleppo pepper, or 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

directions

In a small jar, combine the white wine vinegar with the dried oregano. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 2 days. Strain the oregano-infused vinegar into a small bowl and stir in the olive oil.
Using kitchen shears, remove the wing tips and the backbones from the chickens. Set the chickens on a large rimmed baking sheet, skin side up, and press down firmly on the breastbones to flatten them so that the legs face the breasts. Score each breast, drumstick, thigh and wing halfway to the bone in two places per part. Drizzle all but 2 tablespoons of the vinegar-oil mixture over both sides of the chickens and rub the mixture into the meat. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
In a small bowl, combine the dried sage with the kosher salt, piment d’ Espelette, dried rosemary and ground black pepper. Rub the seasoning all over the chickens. Let the seasoned chickens stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 425°. Roast the chickens in the upper third of the oven, skin side up, basting both chickens with the remaining vinegar-oil mixture half way through, until the chicken is just cooked, and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh registers 165°, about 45 minutes.
Preheat the broiler. Pour the pan juices into a small saucepan. Broil the chickens about 4 inches from the heat, rotating the pan, until browned and crisp, about 3 minutes. Carve the chickens. Reheat the pan juices and serve with the chicken.

MAKE AHEAD The oregano vinegar can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.

WINE This variation on pollo alla diavola is less fiery than the classic version, and definitely more exotic. Yet at its heart it’s still a luscious roast chicken, making it an ideal match for a medium-bodied red wine—especially one with a touch of exoticism itself, such as Paolo Bea’s organically farmed, peppery 2001 Montefalco Rosso, an idiosyncratic blend of Sagrantino, Montepulciano and Sangiovese.

Leo and Space Go to the Rocket Wash

Editor's note: This is the second installment of Riley's potboiler about Leo and rodent friend, Space.

One day Leo and Space noticed a lot of moon, space, and star dust on the spaceship and the rocket. They decided to take them to the rocket wash to get clean.

Before they landed at the rocket wash, the wheels came out of the bottom of the rocket and the spaceship. They lined up to drive through the rocket wash; Leo went first in the rocket and Space followed him in the spaceship.

As Leo drove the rocket through the rocket wash, jets sprayed the rocket all over with water. Just before he drove the rocket out, mechanical arms waved back and forth all around the rocket and sprayed it with wax. Now it was all shiny and clean. No more space dust!

Leo waited for Space outside the rocket wash, and then they flew together back to Mars.

A Story by Riley

Editor's note: The following is an edited transcription of an oral tale related by Riley Pickenpaugh. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Leo with red hair and glasses. Leo's best friend was a blue mouse named Space. His name was Space because he lived in outerspace.

One night Space flew in his spaceship to Leo's house. Together, they snuck back out of the house to go for a ride. Space flew his spaceship and let Leo use his rocket. When they took off, fire came out of the bottom of the rocket. They flew to Mars, the red planet.

When they reached Mars, Leo told Space he had to turn around and go home before his parents woke up. Space told Leo he could use his rocket to go back to Earth because it goes really fast. Space told Leo he would come see him again soon.

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of Leo and Space.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

I've been a fan of Jodi Picoult's for several years now after first reading The Pact.

I found this latest book of hers to be particularly disturbing, primarily due to the timing of its release and my own timing in reading it. In the book, 17-year old Peter Houghton takes several guns to his high school and kills ten people, injuring many others. As the story unfolds, we learn that Peter was a favorite target of school bullies, dating back to his first day of kindergarten. His attorney takes a novel approach to his defense, describing him as having acted in self-defense due to post traumatic stress and suffering from school bullying syndrome. He likens Peter to the battered woman who kills her husband.

The school violence in this book supposedly happened on March 6, 2007. Obviously, Ms. Picoult could not have known that the Virginia Tech massacre was about to occur, but the commonalities between her fictional account and real-life events left me wondering whether Seung-Hui Cho had read her book and used it as a "how-to" guide. I realize that is unlikely, but it still rattled me. I'm left asking myself whether an actual victim of school bullying would find some sort of rationalization for retaliation imbedded in these pages.

We, the Jury

We, the Jury: Deciding the Scott Peterson Case by Jury Members, Frank Swertlow, and Lyndon Stambler (2007)

Like many people, I avidly followed the Laci Peterson story and her husband's trial. I hoped this book would reveal greater detail about the evidence and the thought processes of the jurors. I was disappointed that it seemed mostly to focus upon the personal dynamics of the jury and the opinions of individual jury members. I'm sorry to say that We, the Jury may also be the worst written book I've ever read. Better books about the trial are A Deadly Game: The Untold Story of the Scott Peterson Investigation by Catherine Crier, and Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson Is Guilty by Anne Bird.

Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell (2005)

Julie & Julia came out of a year long cooking/blogging experiment by Julie Powell. Approaching 30 years old, she looks for a project to focus upon and decides to work her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year's time. I can't say it was a great book and certainly didn't capture food in the manner of Ruth Reichl, but it was a decent way to pass the time on the train to and from work.

The Grizzly Maze

The Grizzly Maze by Nick Jans (2006)

I was fascinated by Timothy Treadwell's mauling death by grizzly a couple of years ago and saw the movie pieced together from the footage he shot in Alaska. The Grizzly Maze is a nonjudgmental look at Treadwell's life based upon interviews with his supporters and his detractors alike. I still don't know what to make of him, but I know a lot more about bears now! I hope never to encounter any of the black bears that live in the mountains near my home. I must say I'm a lot less inclined to explore those mountains now.

There Are No Children Here

There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz (1991)

I don't have Chris' critiquing ability, so I won't attempt a review in his manner. I will say, however, that this is a great book. There Are No Children Here should be required high school, if not junior high, reading. I grew up not too far from Chicago, and my father once drove us into one of the projects on accident. I can't remember wanting to get out of any other place more than I did that one! This book gives true insight into what it is like to actually live in one of those projects and to try to eke a childhood and/or family life out of that bleak existence. My biggest surprise was that, in all the poverty of the Henry Horner Homes, the mother of the children featured in this book continued to have hopes of a better life for her children. Her younger boys Pharoah and Lafayette are wise beyond their years, but the essence of their childhood lives on. An eye-opening read.

Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (2003)

I was very impressed with Gibson's Neuromancer. You can't watch the Matrix Trilogy and miss the sundry notions lifted from this seminal '80s book.

To my knowledge, Gibson was the first writer to fuse the paranoid, "fluid-concurrent reality" concepts of Philip K. Dick with futurist projections of a cyber-tendrilled world. Pattern Recognition, however, is not a cyberpunk novel, the sci-fi sub-genre Gibson's credited with originating. It doesn't take place in an imagined techno-future. Rather, it poses a possible techno-present, its material extrapolated from current world content. It's speculative fiction written about today. If White Noise is a contemporary novel in the broad sense, then Pattern Recognition is one in the narrow.

Quick plot lowdown:

Time: Post 9-11. Protagonist Cayce Pollard is a cool hunter. She's hired by top ad agencies to identify popular trends on the cusp of emergence. She gets a unique assignment: find the creator of a series of anonymous video clips -- a sort of hermetic exemplar of viral marketing -- circulating the web. She takes the job. Cosmopolitan espionage ensues.

Quick thoughts:

Gibson is a great sentence spinner. You can almost forget that, like Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition is ostensibly a thriller. It's upholstered with esoteric techno reference and heady concepts like pop-market-culture-as-world-humanity-network, but still a spy tale, replete with the usual Gibson tropes (e.g., foreign mafias, Japanese fetishism, underground cabals, etc.). Those attributes weren't a detriment to Neuromancer. It helped to have a familiar framework to counterbalance the more abstruse concepts like cyber-consciousness. Pattern Recognition, without the heady, prescient futurism, however, is less compelling a read.

That's not to say Recognition doesn't have interesting observations. It presents our media-influended global culture from its two polar impetuses: multi-million-dollar corporate-funded, ubiquitous branding and free, grass-roots guerilla media. And it manages to merge them together in a mobius strip sort of way.

White Noise

White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)

After Seize the Day, I wanted to dig into a more contemporary narrative.

An old friend had always raved about this book. There's a section where the hero relates his transcendent well-being after conducting a successful ATM transaction. My friend found it astute and funny.

Quick plot lowdown:

Dark comedy set in the '80s. Hero Jack Gladney is a liberal arts prof who teaches Hitler studies, a curriculum he devised to colleague acclaim. After three failed marriages, he's finally settled into what feels like a happy life pillowed by suburban consumerism, pop media infusion and the ubiquity and convenience of electronic culture. Then, an industrial accident occurs. And it threatens all sense of safety these constructs once formulated.

Quick thoughts:

Not a novel with dense plot convolution; the above synopsis covers much of the story, shy its third-act thriller element. It is, however, a well-observed depiction of "comfortable" American life, saturated by technology, trivia and other cultural contrivances that detach us from mortal questions.

White noise is, of course, the indistinct wash of din that surrounds us. It's also used to mask other sounds. For example, casinos pump in white noise to cancel out room noise -- a fire-to-fight-fire kind of technique. This book tries to illustrate that the white noise that is our domestic lives is only simulacra shielding us from Real Life and Real Death confrontations.

Not really as heady as it sounds. "Fear of death" themes.

Recipe from Food and Wine magazine:

Dan Dan Noodles

TOTAL TIME: 35 MIN
SERVES: 4

Joanne Chang, owner of Flour Bakery + Café in Boston, will set aside her rolling pin to make stir-fries and noodle dishes like this peanutty dan dan at a second restaurant, due to open this summer.

ingredients

• 1/4 cup peanut oil
• 1/2 cup raw peanuts
• 1 small jalapeño, minced
• 1 small garlic clove, halved
• One 1/4-inch slice of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Sriracha chile sauce
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
• Kosher salt
• 12 ounces chow mein noodles
• Cucumber matchsticks, sliced scallions, chopped cilantro, sesame seeds and lime halves, for garnish

directions

1. In a large skillet, heat the peanut oil. Add the peanuts and fry over moderate heat until golden, about 8 minutes; let cool slightly. Transfer the peanuts and oil to a food processor. Add the jalapeño, garlic and ginger and process until minced. Add the soy sauce, water, rice vinegar, Sriracha, sugar and sesame oil and process until smooth. Season generously with salt.
2. In a pot of boiling salted water, cook the noodles until al dente. Drain and rinse under cold water; pat dry. Toss the noodles with the dressing and mound in serving bowls; top with the garnishes and serve.

WINE A dry, vibrant, fruity rosé: 2005 Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Rosado.

Seize The Day

Seize the Day by Saul Bellows (1956)

I'm on a kick to read a bunch of substantial, critically-touted novels this year. Decided to start with this one.

The guy won a Nobel, a National Medal and a Pulitzer after all. And it's novella length. Gotta warm up the gray matter.

Quick plot lowdown:

Takes place in 50s NYC. Protagonist Tommy Wilhelm, mid 40s, has made some unwise life decisions. Now finds himself under the same roof as his successful, but emotionally detached father. Over the novel's course, TW reflects on his pivotal life choices while awaiting news on what may be his most crucial path decision yet.

Quick thoughts:

Does a great job depicting generational and urban disconnect, particularly among professional males of the era.

Illustrates the fallacy of the American Dream. A man can reinvent himself, but not without cost. Approaches cautionary tale in this regard. Music is faced, as they say.

Manages to sustain a complex main character. You empathize with TW, even as you're dismayed by him and feel he suffers what he largely deserves.

A "modern" novel in the mid-20th century sense. Internal conflicts leading to transformative epiphanies. Explores existential themes (e.g., isolation among the masses, determinism, absurd inequities of life, etc.). You know the deal.