Duff's

Duff's brought Buffalo one of the finest versions of wings back in 1969 and has continued to do so ever since. They are hot, there doesn't appear to be a mild, but even so, despite the heat, the flavor is full on from first taste to finish. To top it all off, they are undeniably addictive.

Their hot sauce is locally made and their house beer is brewed by Rochester's CB's Brewing Company. If you visit their home base in Amherst, NY, ask for Maggie as your waitress, she's a real sweetheart!








We ordered the 1/2 pitcher of house brew, fries, and 20 wing special and Blue and Bacon Burgers. What impressed me were the crisp shoestring fries, the equally crisp bacon, and the soft rolls from Costanzo's Bakery!

Nothing destroys a perfectly good blue cheese and bacon burger than stringy under-cooked bacon or a crappy cheap roll, and as you can see pictured below this was not the case. It was a stupendous burger! If only this post was scratch & sniff.

      

Jerk Ribs and Jamaican Coat of Arms

At the last IN event, Chef Krista won the evening's competition with her Jamaican Hot Sauce. She gave me a bottle of her new Jamaican Hot Sauce. She warned me that this was an error bottle, twice the chillies had been added when it was made. New bottles were being produced but she handed a few of these out. I love hot sauce and figured a batch of coat of arms would be perfect to try this "error" sauce on.

I totally underestimated how hot this hot sauce would get!

My eyes, nose, and upper lip were on fire. It so delicious!



I used some of her jerk sauce to marinate a rack of organic ribs and grilled them. They were served up with lightly steamed broccoli and a pile of coats of arms and a tall glass of Flying Bison's Buffalo Lager.

2 (16 ounce) cans coconut milk
2 cups white rice
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
32 ounces canned black-eyed peas
1/4 teaspoon allspice

In a medium saucepan, combine the black eyed peas with the allspice and simmer on low heat. In another medium saucepan, combine the coconut milk, rice, onion and garlic. Bring to a boil over high heat and stir. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 30 minutes, or until all of the liquid has absorbed. When the rice is done, remove the black-eyed peas from the heat. Rinse and drain them very well and mix in with the rice. Serve hot.

IN - 4th Event INferno

Krista from Curly's won the evening's competition with her Jamaican Hot Sauce.


Christian from Buffalo Fire Sauce, Valerie from Headstone Heat and Chris from Lloyd's Taco Truck competed against her in a close fight last night in the INferno Hot Sauce Competition.


James Roberts' Suzumebachi was a big hit, with more than 20 folks signing their lives away on the mandatory waiver and tasted his hotter than hot sauce. I saw a whole lot of panting, sweating, and swearing! It must have been amazing to experience that much heat all at one time!

I could tell this was Christian's Buffalo Fire Sauce on the pork fried rice (pork courtesy of Schneider's via Rick Criden) that the SeaBar provided for the tastings. It was a close second for me. I liked how it maintained it's flavor from start to finish, despite it's intense heat.

Krista also provided her jerked wings to sample. They were fantastic with the hot sauce she had on hand. There will be more on that mysteriously hotter than hot hot sauce in a post coming soon!

Once again, thanks to Christa Glennie Seychew, the Feed Your Soul team, the staff at Seabar and for all who came for yet another excellent evening!

Traditional Buffalo Chicken Wings

These are wings. Notice I didn't say Buffalo chicken wings. Or chicken wings.


I'm in Buffalo. It's a Buffalo thing. Please, just call them wings.

This recipe is as simple as it gets. But in a home kitchen it's probably one of the more complicated things you could choose to make. 

First you'll want to melt two sticks of butter and then mix in 1 1/4 cup of Frank's Red Hot. Just Franks and butter. If you add anything else, then they will not be traditional wings. They'll probably be really tasty but with this you'll want to stick with the original recipe.

These 40 wings are organic, locally sourced and well trimmed. They should be rinsed and pat dry before fried.

The organic canola was heated to about 350 degrees.

Because of the size of my wok and the size of the wings, I only fried five at a time. 

They went in for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the internal temp. read 170 to 180 degrees, at which time they're pulled from the oil and drained well.

These are absolutely perfect and are ready to be tossed in the sauce.

The sauce needs to be reheated on the stove for just a moment to keep the butter melted and well blended in between batches.

When you fry in batches, use a bowl to cover the wings to keep them warm before they're served. Serve with Blue Cheese dressing, a big lush salad and stacks of napkins.


Do not save the sauce or the oil when you are done, and please dispose of the oil in a container, rather than down the drain.

Nickel City Chef Part 2 - Jamaican Sweet Potato Pudding, Jerk Chicken, and Rice with Beans and Fish

I took my daughter Samantha with me yesterday to the 2nd battle of Season 4's Nickel City Chef Competition. She was less than enthusiastic at the last moment when she heard that everyone else would be taking a trip to the NoNoo Ramen, a new Japanese noodle shop we've been talking about wanting to visit. But I strong armed her into coming and by the time we were standing in line she was excitedly chatting about the who, what, and why's of the event. 

I won these two sauces, along with the signed book. I immediately knew what we were having for dinner later that night.

The cider was perfect for this Jamaican inspired dish.

I used a mallet to flatten the chicken breasts and then marinated them for 20 minutes in the Jerk Sauce. If I wasn't serving it to my girls I would have taken a whole chicken, quartered it, bagged it and added the sauce, turning it over until fully coated, zipped it closed and refrigerated it over night. 

This saucy chicken just begs to be grilled, but with it being 17 degrees out and blowing icy pellets, that is just going to have to wait a few more weeks.

I adore Japanese sweet potatoes! So instead of a traditional Jewell or Vardaman, I used this deep purple skinned pale tan fleshed potato.

This pudding had cardamon, cinnamon, salt, pepper, ginger, sugar, butter, and cream.

The rice was fried before boiling water was added, then seasoned and then steamed flaked fish and pink beans were added during the last 10 minutes. This was so good when seasoned with Krista's hot sauce!