#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Recipes

Buffalo Wing Tacos

Recipe: Buffalo Wing Tacos

[This is post #006 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

Are you tired of burning your precious fingers on scalding hot chicken wings?

Have your health insurance premiums skyrocketed as a result of accidentally swallowing too many buffalo bones?

Is your wife threatening to leave you because your buffalo-sauce finger prints are clashing with her white herringbone throw pillows?

THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!

Every year, millions of lives are ruined as a result of unpredictable buffalo wing consumption. That’s why I recommend Buffalo Wing Tacos.

The tortilla acts as a barrier between your hands and all that is evil, while serving as the perfect transportation to your mouf. And the best part is that the integrity of the original product  isn’t lost, as it still tastes like a buffalo wing.

It’s not fusion food, it’s making the world a better place one taco at a time.

BUFFALO WING TACOS

If you’re looking for a tried and true recipe to feed your family tonight, you might want to try Google. However, if you’re looking for something to do with all those leftover buffalo wings in your refrigerator, you’ve come to the right place! Improvisation is not only encouraged, but mandatory.

Makes ONE taco. Sharing is optional.

  • 4 Buffalo Wings (preferably flappers and not drummies)
  • 1/4 Celery Stalk
  • 2 Tablespoons Ranch or Bleu Cheese Dressing
  • Two Corn Tortillas
  • Grated Cheese
  • Lettuce

1.  Warm up the chicken wings in a microwave and de-bone them. You can de-bone before heating them up, but I find the meat and skin come off easier if they’re warm.

2.  Dice the celery, mix with the dressing, and set aside.

2.  Heat up the tortillas, then build your taco.

And if you really want to make these awesome, add a little AWESOME SAUCE.

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#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Recipes

Awesome Sauce

awesome Sauce

[This is post #005 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

A couple years ago we had a Korean taco potluck at my office–Yes, I work in one of those offices where the ratio of food-to-work talk is generally 90/10. It’s fantastic.

Everyone signed up for different parts of the potluck with the usual fillings and accoutrements like bulgogi, spicy pork, tortillas, etc. I wanted to bring a sauce to top them with, but wasn’t sure what would actually be in the sauce. So, I just wrote down AWESOME SAUCE.

Not realizing that I had zero plans, co-workers began stopping by my office to inquire about this self-proclaimed sauce of awesomeness. I lied and told them I couldn’t divulge any info (’cause I didn’t have any) and that all I could tell them is that the sauce would indeed be awesome.

CUT TO:

On the day before the pot luck the mythology of the Awesome Sauce had grown so much that I started to worry that I was about to let down the entire office. I even had people calling me from The Washington Post on a daily basis. Technically it was about my cancelled subscription, but I didn’t answer all the calls, so it is entirely possible that one of the calls was a reporter calling to investigate the sauce.

By now I at least vaguely knew what I wanted the sauce to be like, but I still wasn’t sure what was going to be in it. I wanted it to be creamy, a little bit spicy, and have some sort of an Asian flair to tie into the Korean taco theme.

I considered blending a bunch of stuff up in a blender like cilantro, jalapeños, sour cream, and avocado, but then, luckily, the lazy part of my brain woke up from its daily nap and said, “Hey, why don’t you just mix central american crema and Sriracha?”

sriracha crema

Trumpets played in the background, while white doves flew past my window as the clouds parted and I was finally able to see my Awesome Sauce glowing from the heavens.

Fortunately, our extended family is not only represented by multiple Asian countries, but also a few central American places as well. So, my lazy brain soaked up some international condiments and was waiting for this very situation.

So, did it live up to its name?

It tasted like liquid awesome. Somehow it miraculously lived up to the hype. Almost every co-worker stopped me to for the recipe. Several confirmed the name was 100% accurate.

awesome sauce

The most awesome part about the sauce? It only has two ingredients and there’s no measuring involved. Central American Cream/Crema is essentially a combination of sour cream, cream cheese, and heavy cream, so it’s a rich, smooth base for your sauce. And unless you’re reading a food blog for the first time EVER, you already know what Sriracha is. Combine the two and you shall unleash ultimate condiment powers.

awesome sauce

AWESOME SAUCE RECIPE

  • 14 oz bottle of Central American Cream – You might have to go to an international supermarket to find this.
  • Sriracha

1.  Mix about half the container of cream with a few squirts of Sriracha. Taste it and adjust the Sriracha to your personal spice preference. Boom. Done. Put it on tacos, eat it with tortilla chips, or squirt into your mouf.

WARNING:  Sometimes Sriracha bottles can become a little bit pressurized, so when you open them they will explode small drops of red onto the nearest white chair.

Since everyone is awesome, let’s be email buddies:


 

awesome sauce

All of your other condiments will want to be BFFs with the sexy new guy.

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#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Travel, Videos

#DCTravelBlogger Brunch – Jaleo Crystal City

Jaleo Crystal City  

[This is post #004 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to attend a blogger meet-up, I’ve got the dirty secrets right here in this very post. Yup. It’s like General Hospital up in this crazy blogger world. Betrayal, murder, paternity tests…

Okay, aside from maybe stealing someone’s sangria, there wasn’t any soap opera drama.  And kinda hard for there to be any secrets when everything is tweeted or Instagramed the second it happens. Such is life for a blogger.

Anyway, Jessica at The Dining Traveler was kind enough to set up a brunch at Jaleo Crystal City for DC/VA/MD-based bloggers. Most of the attendees have travel blogs, but a few of us food bloggers snuck in and there were even a few fashion-focused folks as well. It was a great mix and I’m happy to have made some new friends in the local blogging community. I’ll get to Jaleo’s phenomenal food in a second, but it goes without saying that the people are what made the event successful. For fear of leaving someone out, I’m not going to attempt to list everyone, so check out the hashtag #DCTravelBlogger on Twitter or Instagram to find the folks who partook in the fun. 

It was great to share stories of gumbo, DC traffic, blog traffic, DC weather, cocktails, food, Tastemade, home ownership, New Orleans, food photography, day jobs that pay the bills, upcoming vacations, California, wine, dog hair, old phones, and #DCFoodPorn. 

Speaking of food porn…

So what’d we eat? I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Speak is probably too weak a word, as the food at Jaleo sang to us at every course. And the service was SPOT-ON. Our sangria glasses were never empty and the staff welcomed the insanity of our selfies, food pics, and blog videos. 

Jaleo Crystal City #DCTravelBlogger

‘Ferran Adrià’ liquid olives – Like a delicious science experiment in your mouf.

We were even lucky enough to get a demonstration on how the liquid olives were made by Head Chef, Domenick Torlucci:

Jaleo Crystal City #DCTravelBlogger

Smoked salmon on cristal bread with hardboiled egg, goat cheese and capers.

Jaleo Crystal City #DCTravelBlogger

Yes, we even ate our veggies…because Chef Torlucci and his team made them taste amazing.

Jaleo Paella Crystal City

Vegetable Paella – Fun Fact: This paella pan was bigger than my Mazda.

Jaleo Crystal City #DCTravelBlogger

Sweet-soaked Spanish toast with caramelized bananas and rum whipped cream.

There might have been a selfie stick involved…

And of course we made good use of said selfie stick…

Being a blogger and living on Twitter and Instagram, it’s easy to forget that there are REAL people behind all the pictures and tweets. It was nice reminder that the pictures and stories we share online are nothing without anyone to share it with. So, Salud! to new friends and future meet-ups.

PS:  Don’t take my word for it. Check out the links below to some of the other bloggers’ experiences at the event. There are a TON of great pics, so prepare your eyes for mucho #foodporn:

Jaleo on Urbanspoon

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#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Recipes

Beet-Pickled Deviled Eggs

Beet-Pickled Deviled Eggs

[This is post #003 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

Pickled eggs are an odd thing. Eggs. Just swimming in an unmarked glass jar. Pickling away.

And what’s odder is that I have fond memories of eating them when I was a kid. I remember going to a this small general store, and picking out pink eggs from a jar on the counter. And yes, there was also a jar of thick dill pickles on one side and a horror-film level creepy jar of pigs feet on the other.

The reason that’s odd (at least to me), is that I grew up in a decent sized suburban area. Not a small town. We didn’t have fishing holes and there was no Aunt Bee to make you lemonade. It wasn’t Mayberry by any stretch (although this general store was directly across the street from a police station…). For some reason though, this little general store existed in our community. I don’t remember getting pickled eggs from anywhere else, so had it not been for this one little seemingly misplaced store located in suburbia, I’d have zero memories of pickled eggs.

Reminiscing about pickled eggs from a general store? Oh, so this is what it feels like to be old.

Anyway, I had mostly forgotten about all those briney eggs I had eaten as a kid. At some point or another that store shut down, so I was pretty much accepting of the fact that I’d probably never get to taste them again. For most of my adult life, I hadn’t really thought much about those eggs.

But then something happened…

Last year, Tina started seeing beet-pickled deviled eggs pop up on blogs and social media.  Always wanting to make our food look prettier (and being a beet-junkie), she was adamant about trying them.  I’m more of a “deviled egg purist” and not a huge fan of beets, so I wasn’t very excited. And at this point I wasn’t thinking about my previous love affair with pickled eggs as a child.

Beet-Pickled Deviled Eggs

After tasting the the first beet-pickled deviled egg, I was instantly reminded of the giant jar of floating eggs at the general store. I could see myself sitting in the backseat of my parent’s Datsun, cramming my mouf with the tangy pink eggs. They were delicious then, and these pink deviled eggs are delicious now.

Since then, the beet-pickled deviled eggs have made their way into our regular rotation of egg-making. We’ve finally set on a recipe that seems to work well every time and is a nice change of pace from classic deviled eggs. They’re tangy, creamy, eggy, and a little bit spicy. And as a bonus, you don’t have to reach into a giant jar to eat them. Score one for sanitation!

RECIPE: BEET-PICKLED DEVILED EGGS

Ingredients:

  • 2 15 oz Can Sliced Beets
  • 1 Cup Vinegar
  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Dozen Hard Boiled Extra Large Eggs
  • 1 Cup Mayonnaise – It has to be Hellmann’s brand, no deviation allowed (trust me, we’ve tried and it makes a huge difference)
  • 1 Tablespoon Sriracha
  • 1 Tablespoon Yellow Mustard
  • Kosher Salt and Pepper to taste
  • Chives for garnish

Directions:

1.  Make Hard-Boiled Eggs. By now you should know how to do that, but no worries if you don’t. Check out our classic deviled egg post for tips!

2. Mix the vinegar, beets, and sugar in a resealable mixing bowl and stir until the sugar dissolves.

3. Place eggs in pickled beet mixture ensuring they are completely covered. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. For best results, stir halfway through.

4. Remove eggs from pickled beet mixture and allow to dry slightly. Slice the eggs in half, lengthwise and place the yolks in a separate bowl.

5.  Mash the yolks up with a  spoon until you have a fine powder, or until your arm goes numb. We like a smooth, well-blended filling without any “pockets” of dry yolk. Stir in the mayonnaise, mustard, and Sriracha until well blended. Add salt and pepper to taste.

6.  Use a pastry bag/piping tip and fill each egg up to perfection.

7.  Garnish with chives.

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