Conor’s Bandon Blog

I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts at doing chicken wings over the years. Usually in the oven and usually burnt beyond all recognition. I now realise that you add the sauce afterwards as anything with sugar will burn.

Recently I spotted a bunch of blog postings about buffalo wings (mainly related to the Superbowl I think) and decided I wanted to try and do them properly. I’ve always found people raving about Elephant & Castle chicken wings to be a bit weird. I’ve had them, they’re fine but they are chicken offcuts in hot sauce, get a grip.

The simple recipe given on Slashfood seemed to fit the bill. I found a great site in the UK called Chilli World who stock Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. This is the “original” hot sauce used for Buffalo wings. I ordered a few bottles of that plus some other Caribbean hot sauces and some spices. They arrived within the week.

So on Monday, after buying 30 chicken wings in the English market for €2.10 (no, I don’t want to know where they came from), I made my first real batch of buffalo wings. I fried them in about an inch of oil in a pan (rather than going the full deep-fat frying route) and then coated them thoroughly in the mix of butter, Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and cider vinegar as quoted by Slashfood.

Well Frank’s sauce may be tasty and red but it ain’t hot. I ended up dousing each wing in the sauce from the bottle to get any sort of kick. Hell, I could put the sauce straight on to my tongue and it did not burn. I also question the butter. is it just to make the sauce adhere more? I dunno. What I do know is that they were damned tasty and I had 10 for lunch.

Next time I’ll try one of those Caribbean scotch bonnet pepper sauces and see if that works better/hotter.

Can someone do a margin analysis on buffalo wings for me? What are we talking? 1000%? Whoever came up with them has one sharp business mind.

For fans of “My Name is Earl”, the exchange between the main characters on chicken wings this week was comedy perfection. Dammit these guys can write:

Randy: You takin’ Pops’ hot dogs outta Camden County is like taking chicken out of Syracuse.
Earl: It’s Buffalo, Randy.
Randy: No, I’m pretty sure it’s chicken, Earl.
Joy: Yeah, it’s chicken. Hot chicken!

[tags]Buffalo Wings, My Name is Earl, Franks Red Hot Sauce, Chilli World[/tags]

I have written some very complimentary things about Murphy’s Ice Cream recently. In addition, Kieran’s blog has become, in a few short weeks, one of the best in the country, IMHO. I gave Kieran a few tips on blogging software recently and was gob-smacked when he sent me a fabulous gift of some ice-cream and chocolate sauce (via the very facilitative Urru).

Now that I have made that disclosure, I feel comfortable in continuing to rave about their products. The ones we got today were Irish Cream Liquer and Mint & Chocolate. Holy god, they would be banned in any communinst country for their utter gorgeousness. I had to wrestle the spoon off Catherine so we could put them aside for later when the sauce would be de-frosted.

Listening to Kieran and Seán on Winter Food, I realise that they have far too much in common with Catherine for them to ever meet. She is toying with the idea of offering to be an unpaid tester for them. She is eating for two you know.

It is usually a long process for us to come up with the final name for each of our children. Fionn was named as the epi went in. This next baby has already been named: Uachtar Reoite Ó Néill.

Whilst I am here, any ideas why the ice-cream from our cheapy ice-cream maker is really solid and dense in comparison to the lightness of Murphy’s?

p.s. Interesting factoid: If you Google “Uachtar Reoite”. the first hit is the Murphy’s Web-site.

UPDATE 1: In the interest of full and unambiguous disclosure, I should point out that my wife is a svelte and gorgeous size 10. But not for long. Ow, ow, joke, joke.

[tags]Murphys IceCream, Urru[/tags]

Months after I signed up, I finally got access to the new Yahoo Mail Beta programme. I’ve been using Yahoo mail as my “we are a web-site, give us an email address” address for over ten years now. In that time, I don’t think it has really improved one iota in usability apart from the addition of spam catching. It has always been slow, clunky and riddled with obnoxious massive ads.

The new one is a major improvement on the usability front. Full ajaxian interface with drag n drop and reasonably speedy 3-pane display. So far I like it a hell of a lot but there is no way it is ousting GMail as my favourite email system. There are far too many “please wait” messages for my liking. And the screen real estate just does not seem to be used efficiently.

But the number one problem is the continued presence of those horrible huge flashy animated ads. Let me make this clear Mr Yahoo: In ten years of using Yahoo mail, I have never, ever, clicked on one of those ads. If I suffered from epilepsy, I am pretty sure they would trigger an attack, they are so visually offensive. In a much shorter period of time, I have clicked on many Google Adsense ads. The are unobtrusive, relevant and don’t take up half the screen. If you want to beat Google, do some simple end-user surveys and see if anyone on the planet likes your current ads.

But if Yahoo mail is your primary web-mail system, you are going to love the new one.

[tags]Yahoo, Mail, Beta[/tags]

Tonight 9.00, Channel 4.

From the last series:

MAC to his surgical team: What can I tell you? A few ground rules. No bombing, no running, no petting, no diving and no inflatables. In fact, probably best to leave all swimming related activities until later ; this is after all, an operating theatre.

[tags]Green Wing, Channel 4[/tags]