I recently I received a cookbook as a gift from Micki Connolly, mother of a good friend. She was part of a group who organized a cookbook for her Florida retirement community comprised of family recipes from resident snowbirds from around the world. It’s a fascinating treasure trove of regional specialties from folks like our parents and grandparents. I leafed through and found things like Super Bowl Chili from Edna Scipione of Wickliffe, Ohio and Scallops a la Crabtree from Dan Crabtree hailing from Lancaster, England. It goes on and on.

The chapter I am most anxious to dive into is the dessert section. Desserts that harken back to before the age of the Hostess Cupcake are the glue that have kept family gatherings fun and memorable for generations. I feel honored to have copies of Heinz and Hella Wartski’s French Sable Cookie recipe, Celeste deCapua’s Mexican Wedding Cookies and Peggy Tuffo’s Penuche Nut Fudge.

The book is from the Winterpark Community in Naples, Florida and is titled Hometown Classics. The real charm of it is that the proceeds they raise from the cookbook go toward things like fixing up the community pool, the shuffleboard courts and the clubhouse. Hometown Classics represents a small group’s big effort to preserve their prized recipes and make their community a better place. They did a wonderful job. The great test of a cookbook is if it can arouse our curiosity enough to make the recipes…and I can’t wait to try some.

Momofuku Chicken Wings

20 chicken wings with wing tips attached
8 cups lukewarm water
1 c. sugar
1 c. kosher salt
2 strips smoky bacon
1/4 c. vegetable oil
5 c. rendered pork or duck fat
1 c. mirin
1 c. sake
1 c. light soy sauce
Ground black pepper
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
5-6 pickled chiles
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced

1. Separate wings into 3 pieces (tips, wings, and drumettes) by cutting at both joints. Reserve wing tips for the tare.

2. Combine water, sugar, and salt in a large container with a tightfitting lid or a large resealable plastic bag (at least 4 quarts) and stir until salt and sugar are dissolved. Add chicken wings and drumettes to brine mixture, cover, and refrigerate for 1 to 4 hours.

3.To make the tare, heat the oven to 400°F. Combine wing tips and 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large oven-safe pan and toss to coat. Roast until wing tips are dark golden brown, about 1 hour.

4.Remove the pan from the oven, place over medium heat, and slowly add sake and soy sauce, scraping up any browned bits with a flat spatula. Simmer over medium heat until reduced by 1/2, about 40 minutes. Strain and set tare aside (discard the wing tips).

5.Once chicken wings and drumettes have finished brining, heat duck or pork fat in a large pot with a tightfitting lid over low heat until fat is 190°F to 200°F. Drain wings and drumettes from brine and pat dry with paper towels.

6.Add wings and drumettes to hot fat and cook, covered, over very low heat until just cooked through, about 30 to 40 minutes. (Don’t overcook the chicken; there should still be texture and bite to the meat.) When wings and drumettes are done, remove to a baking dish or baking sheet using a slotted spoon and reserve fat for another use.

7.When ready to finish wings and drumettes, heat the broiler to high and arrange a rack at the top. Broil wings and drumettes, rotating the pan halfway through, until skin is crisp and golden brown, about 5 minutes.

8.Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Once shimmering, add garlic and chiles and cook until softened, about 2 minutes. (Make sure the garlic does not brown.) Add mirin and cook until the alcohol smell is gone, about 2 minutes. Add tare and reduce sauce to a light syruplike consistency, about 10 minutes.

9. Add wings and drumettes and pickled chiles and toss to coat, top with sliced scallions, and serve.

Martha Rose Shulman’s new book The Very Best of Recipes for Health arrived in bookstores in August and is loaded with terrific recipes and pictures from your’s truly .  Martha’s Caesar Salad is a personal favorite.  This one is simple to make, so with a 6pm start this evening it won’t take you long to get it ready before first pitch.  Go Yanks!

Chicken Caesar

For the salad:

1 head of romaine lettuce

1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast, poached and shredded (about 2 cups shredded chicken) [editor: link shredded poached chicken breasts]

1 cup garlic croutons (see below)

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan or shaved Parmesan

Chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, chives, marjoram

For the dressing:

1 small garlic clove

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 anchovy, soaked for 5 minutes in cold water, then rinsed and drained on a paper towel

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon wine or sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 coddled egg yolk (optional: see below)

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. Remove the tough outer leaves of romaine and discard. Wash and dry the remaining leaves. Tear into medium pieces and place in a salad bowl with the chicken, croutons, and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan.

2. Place the garlic in a mortar and pestle with a little salt and mash to a past. Add the anchovy and mash together with the garlic. Stir in the lemon juice. Add the vinegar, mustard, coddled egg yolk, salt, and pepper. Whisk in the olive oil. Shortly before serving, toss the dressing with the salad. Sprinkle on the herbs and remaining Parmesan, and serve.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6

Notes:

To make garlic croutons, lightly toast slices of French or country bread. Remove them from the toaster and immediately rub with a cut clove of garlic. Cut into small squares or break into pieces.

To coddle the egg yolk, bring a small pot of water to a boil, slowly add the egg in its shell, and cook for 3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl of ice water, then carefully crack the egg and remove the yolk.

Advance preparation: The poached chicken breasts will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator. The dressing can be made several hours ahead.

Boggs believed that eating chicken brought him good juju with the Baseball Gods. We began posting chicken recipes during last year’s ALDS against the Minnesota Twins to fall into good favor with the supernatural forces all baseball fans pay homage to. We did so every game until they raised the trophy in their victory over the Phillies. The Yankees begin their title defense against none other that those Twins again tonight…so…here we go again.

We will open the series with a recipe from my friend and colleague Melissa Clark’s New cookbook, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite.  Melissa is admittedly not a baseball fan…but she is a New Yorker and this recipe is a cross cultural New York favorite.  My grandma made one that is almost identical when I was kid.  Make this one tonight. Go Yanks!

Not-My-Grandma’s Chicken with Lemon, Garlic, and Oregano

Time: 40 minutes

1 1/2 pounds chicken drumsticks

1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning

Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed (but use a lot)

5 garlic cloves

Freshly squeezed juice of 1 large lemon

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1. Preheat the broiler. Rinse the chicken, pat dry with a paper towel, and place in a 9 x 13 inch pan. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Broil the chicken, turning once, until light golden brown, about 3 minutes per side.

2. While the chicken is broiling, make a garlic paste by either using a mortar and pestle to pound the garlic with 1 teaspoon kosher salt, or mincing the garlic with a heavy knife, then using the flat side to smear and mash the garlic and salt into a paste. Alternatively, you can make the paste in a blender, if your blender can handle such a small amount. Stir the lemon juice and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon pepper into the garlic paste.

3. Lower the oven temperature to 425° F. Using a pastry brush or spoon, slather chicken on all sides with one-third of the garlic mixture, a sprinkling of the oregano, and a drizzle of oil. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, slathering on more of the garlic mixture, oil, and oregano in 2 more additions (approximately every 7 to 10 minutes). The chicken is done when it’s golden brown and cooked through.  Serve with the pan juices or the tasty sludge on the bottom of the pan.

Serves 2

While reading Food Rules, which took me all of about 45 minutes, I marked passages and sections that I found amusing, personally important or simply indispensible. What I found out, is that other than eating way too much restaurant food, a common hazard among people in this industry, that my diet is really healthy. I also realized that I eat too fast, often too much but that most of my habits are pretty sound. I was relieved.

I did find that I have one unfair advantage when it comes to avoiding a major culprit in making America too heavy. I am “allergic” to corn products and highly reactive to anything with anything over a trace amount of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). I use the word allergy loosely hear to describe a reaction similar to intense indigestion. Without corn and by limiting refined sugar and white flour my diet is extremely uncommon to the Western diet, as Pollan describes it.

Food Rules affirmed my beliefs that all diets are bad diets, that anything packaged needs to be looked at very carefully and the word “lite” or “low fat” usually means more sugar. Pollen really sums it all up in Rule 1, very simply…Eat Food. Food in this case meaning anything that grows in the ground or eats from it. We cooks love real food…especially the ones that are not always so great for you…pork…butter…mayo…eggs…cream…but even these, in moderation, are far better for you than what the “Food Industry” is trying to feed us and our kids.

This book is important. It’s important to understand and digest what is being said and what it means for us as American eaters. If you are not sold, as least check out some of the excerpts from the book Tara Parker Pope ran on her Well blog on nytimes.com.

I am surrounded by food…all day…all the time. It’s really hard to manage and for any of you who have seen me, you know I won’t be shopping the latest European styles at H&M or Xara this spring. But, I try to eat for the long run and my hope is that you try to do the same. Food Rules can help us all do it just a little better.