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Some years back on a late, cold January night, after I told the louts I worked with to go home, and re-cleaned a supposedly clean kitchen, my old Thai employers approached me in the wee hours of the morning: ‘Weezee,’ they said, ‘Our friends are coming here tonite- could you cook for us?’ It being 1 am, and me loving my job more than anything, I gave a jubilant, ‘Yes.’ Uncle told me what they wanted, and also told me to fry some chicken wings. Easy enough. Still, in my early years of cooking, I did a whole lot of doubting. I had no idea how to make good deep fried chicken wings, besides throw them in the fryer. That was more or less it. Uncle, on the other hand, showed me how he liked them. How he wanted the batter, and how he wanted them fried. Ever since, I’ve tenderly made them the same, unorthodox way. It was a good night. Late, but happy- and some Thai doctor, no matter how many times I said no, stuffed a 50 in my pocket for doing such a good job.
Some odd seven months ago, I went out to eat with my mother at a familiar Thai-Vietnamese restaurant and ordered tamarind chicken wings. A combination I had never, up until that late moment in culinary life, heard off. They were good: sweet, tangy, tart. I liked them a lot. So much so, I bet my mom I could make the same thing, maybe even better. And, as is my mother’s job to prevent her son’s ego from getting too big, she called my bluff. After that, we more or less forgot about the whole thing. That was, at least until last night, when I was bumming around one of three fridges and found a pack of chicken wings frozen and ready to ruin. But I say ruin with total temerity. Consider it a cool kind of valley speak, ‘ruin’ meaning: elevating to a level of pure radical. The trillest tamarind chicken wings in all the land. Here for me, and here for all of you. The ingredients are easy, the process a tad time consuming if you aren’t privileged enough to own a wok stove. But if you have the patience, you can, like my real uncle says, cook no problem.
Serves 3 (or 1 hungry bro)
Ingredients
12 chicken wings (y’know? The ones you get in club packs? They’re like 2 inches long)
¼ cup tamarind concentrate
¼ honey
1 clove of garlic (minced)
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 teaspoon of chicken stock powder (I know, right?)
Enough vegetable oil and a wok to deep fry the suckers.
Lime and spring onion to garnish.
Directions
Generally, I like to fill a wok with oil and keep it on low heat so I won’t have to wait as long later to make it hot enough to fry in; when I’m closer to cooking, I change the temperature to medium high heat. Anyway, I reckon if I’m doing stuff in the meantime, I may as well be productive. Chicken wing woking takes a lot of timing and speed, after all. Also, I like to let my chicken wings sit out and reach room temperature. This ensures even cooking when fried.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Take your wings and throw them in. If they’re a little wet, even better. What makes uncle’s batter so phenomenal is that it’s tacky, doughy, and gummy. No dusting wings in flour here. That said, take your chicken wings, and mix them as much as you can in the flour. Be tough, try and get the flour wet from the wings. If the wings are covered and not sticky, but dusted, you’re missing the mark. That said, you can just dust them too. You’ll just have a lighter batter. But a good, tacky batter- not a wet one used for fixings like tempura or onion wings- enables the sauce to stick to the wings even more effectively.
After a thorough mashing, put the wings aside.
In a bowl, mix the garlic, honey, tamarind concentrate, and fish sauce. Easy peasy. Set it aside.
Check the wok’s temperature (or whatever pot you care to deep fry in- just so long as the wings are completely submerged). If you have a candy thermometer, even better. If not, just drop a piece of gummy batter in and see if it floats to the surface. If it does, you’re ready. But before that, make sure you have somewhere to set the cooked wings. I like paper towel over a wire rack. Next, gently place the wings in the oil. Don’t crowd whatever pot for the sake of not cooling the oil too much. Fry 'em.
Wings will usually sink to the bottom and anchor up. When they’re closer to being finished, they’ll puff up and float a little. To be on the safe side, let them fry another 30 seconds after that, making sure they reach a deep golden brown. Use a spider or slotted spoon to move them around and fish them out of the hot oil. Place them on the paper towel and cook the rest.
Unless you have a second wok, this next part can be tricky. When all the wings are done cooking, drain the wok of all oil into a pot- I don’t care where you get it- but move fast. Wash the wok, and thoroughly dry it. Unfortunately, none of us have the luxury of a wok stove with a hose overhead, and a wirey brush we can use to quickly rinse it with (those were my salad days).
When it’s clean, put it back on the heat and heat it to the highest setting. Conventional stoves don’t even begin to match the heat of the wok, so you never have to worry about burning a thing. What you do have to worry about is losing all that heat quickly; that’s why it’s important to stir-fry quickly and have everything at hand. If you don’t have a wok, you can just as easily use a pan.
To test the wok’s sizzle, drop a bit of the sauce in the pan. If it sizzles furiously and you’re afraid it’s too hot and will burn and evaporate and become gummy fast, you’re ready. Drop all the sauce in, immediately after that, all the chicken wings. Coat whatever way you can. Toss the wok, flip with a slotted spoon, just coat those things and let them caramelize. If you can char them, congratulations: you have one hot wok. This step takes you no more than a minute. If you want a wet sauce, use less wok time. If a dryer sauce, more.
Plate, garnish with a lime wedge and slivered green onions, and enjoy. Sweet, salty, tart. Fantastic. Who needs any Ben Thanh?
Love,
Weezee
Hindsight had me feeling pretty sore about the food I was leading Joey to lately. One late night it was terrible seafood chowder; one day it was bad Thai food. So, being the opportunistic dude I like to think I am, I took some suggestions, a little initiative, and looked to the supports I had spent a good 5 years fostering in food and thought I’d make it up to my broheme the only way my degenerate butt can- by cooking. So if you like riding culinary coat tails, enjoy this recipe that took two seconds to think up, but a good five hours to actually produce. Transit was slow, and I had to beg for some ingredients from old employers, but everything’s pretty accessible if you need a grocery store and have a car. If Barthes were still alive, he’d be pretty impressed.
There’s nothing authentic about this dish. You could call it fusion, but why bother? It’s a bunch of stuff mushed together, and it tastes great. It warrants enough cultural capital to create it and be taken into some charmed circle though, and it’s pretty inexpensive. For Joey’s sake, I made it mad expensive (which wasn’t really expensive), and I also rattled around in his pantry for whatever could be used to make a viable bowl of what I sloppily called Thai Beer Chowder when people asked and I was too lazy to explain the semantics of rhetoric in dish names and how they hypnotize the crap out of audiences. But again, it tastes great, and I implore you, don’t be afraid to substitute, it’s a pretty forgiving recipe. Have a shellfish allergy? Don’t use shellfish. Can’t eat flour? Forget the roux, or try gluten free. Hate butter? Use oil. You can make it work. This is a mere foundation for, in the words of my Old Mater, building high beauty.
Serves 4
Ingredients
1 medium sized carrot
1 large celery stalk
1 small white onion
½ cup of butter
¼ cup flour
1½ cups chicken stock
1 330 ml bottle of beer (Thai Singha beer for the sake of novelty)
lime leaf
3 inch knob of lemon grass
2 lobster tails (½ pound)
8 medium size shrimp (chopped)
400 ml can of coconut milk (cream for a thicker chowder)
Salt to taste
Thai basil to garnish
Directions
Mince the carrot, celery, and onion as best as you can (no pressure). Chop your lobster and shrimp and set it aside. In a heavy pot melt the butter at medium low heat. Throw in your minced vegetables and sauté those suckers. When the butter thickens and the onions become translucent and fragrant, sprinkle in the flour coating all of the vegetables. Now you’re making a roux. Keep stirring until it thickens and turns a light gold. Don’t go too dark. Not necessary. Throw in your liquids. Stock and beer only. No coconut milk yet. Throw in your lime leaf and lemon grass. Set the heat to medium high. It will be difficult to see a boil because the beer will foam. Throw in your lobster and shrimp. Simmer on medium low. When both meats become cooked (a bright supple, white flesh) shut off the heat. Pour in your coconut milk (or cream). If the milk is a solid, just dump it in and stir until it melts. Don’t you ever cook coconut cream. Salt to taste.
Plate, garnish with Thai basil, and serve. If you have any limes, feel free to squeeze ‘em in. Galanga too, if you really want to drop mad cash on all those hard bodies you’re dying to hold (but they’ll probably never eat anything so fatty. Ha).
There you have it. Thai food’s never been so easy. We came, we cooked, we concurred. And surprisingly stretched a course for 4 into a meal for 7 Italians (and a cat), 5 of which ate before hand. Fantastic. Enjoy.
Love,
Weezee
Mix the dry ingredients together. Take your wings and throw them in. If they’re a little wet, even better. What makes uncle’s batter so phenomenal is that it’s tacky, doughy, and gummy. No dusting wings in flour here. That said, take your chicken wings, and mix them as much as you can in the flour. Be tough, try and get the flour wet from the wings. If the wings are covered and not sticky, but dusted, you’re missing the mark. That said, you can just dust them too. You’ll just have a lighter batter. But a good, tacky batter- not a wet one used for fixings like tempura or onion wings- enables the sauce to stick to the wings even more effectively.
After a thorough mashing, put the wings aside. 
To test the wok’s sizzle, drop a bit of the sauce in the pan. If it sizzles furiously and you’re afraid it’s too hot and will burn and evaporate and become gummy fast, you’re ready. Drop all the sauce in, immediately after that, all the chicken wings. Coat whatever way you can. Toss the wok, flip with a slotted spoon, just coat those things and let them caramelize. If you can char them, congratulations: you have one hot wok. This step takes you no more than a minute. If you want a wet sauce, use less wok time. If a dryer sauce, more. 
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