Chestnut Report Part XI - Wings & Tacos

TONIGHT:

Baked vs Fried - we look into the pro's and con's of cafeteria wings.
Pro means good, right? Because I know Cons are criminals.

THEN:
Speaking of criminal, we'll continue our look at how Honey Garlic wings
are destroying lunch. If we don't watch out, dinner might be next.
WATCH OUT!

AND:

Jaco's Tacos - the perfect non-wing food?
No, that wasn't a sexual metaphor.


"Nation, It's time to grab the bull by the horns!
If there are no horns, you're grabbing a cow, stop it!
This is the Chestnut Report!"

Welcome back to Part XI of a XX part series, 'Better Know a Chestnut Wing'


Once again we look at the Chestnut Wing, The Fight'n Chestnut, and will continue until I live at another residence that makes chicken wings, or eat at a restaurant called Chestnut. Really the only options I have here.

The great debate brings us to how a chicken wing should be made. Cooked really, we all know how they are made even if we don't yet know if the egg or the chicken came first. Baked or Fried is the question at hand. Chestnut Bakes. Most restaurants fry. Why the bake? Well I don't know for sure, but I FEEL that its due to the fact they need to feed over 900 people wings, and you can bake a whole lot more in a giant ovens as opposed to deep frying a few in two deep fryers. That must be it, because I don't need facts. I go by how I feel. And I feel from the gut.

So which is better? Well they both have their pros and cons. Baked wings are healthier and you can cook more at a time. While this is all and good for some, what baking doesn't give you is the same crispy consistency that the deep fryer does. While Chestnut wings are better than many restaurants best attempts at frying a wing, they are easily soggy combined with the fact that the batter falls off because there is very little to keep it attached to the wings. Battered wings make for more crunch and puffed up size, but the texture and consistency of a baked wing doesn't hold up to a fried wing.

Now, this didn't stop me from having lots of baked wings. What did nearly stop me from enjoying my meal was the attack on decency and morality. Yes friends, I'm talking about the Honey Garlic attack on chicken.




I went up for another round of BBQ wings, only to be told all that was left was Honey Garlic. Frustrated but not defeated, I marched over to the condiment counter and concocted my hot sauce medley to defend against good taste. What I cannot understand is the people around me who willfully grab these sticky sacrilege. When you eat the Sweatinestas food, you are letting the terrorists win. Well that's it Honey Garlic: Your Dead To Me. I don't think you even exist anymore. Now you don't. And they shouldn't for you either.

I had to clean my palate and my mouth from something. I don't know what. If I had to say what it was, I would say Honey Garlic Wings, but they don't exist, so I don't know what it was in my mouth. But I still needed to have something relatively vegetable, so I took a bowl, filled it with carrot sticks from the salad bar, and put a drizzle of dressing to make a classic wing accompaniment.

It was a good meal. I was full but not stuffed - which was good because supper turned out to be a bonanza for my taste buds.

Jaco's Tacos, so named after the head Chef here at Chestnut. Tacos, like most Americanized or Tex-Mex Mexican food, are loved by almost all. This culinary enterprise that the people twice South of our border gave the world seriously makes me question the desire of Americans to build a giant wall to stop this from flooding across their boarders. Tex-Mex is great: its meat, its cheese, and some spice. Who wouldn't love that?

The assortment laid out includes the choices of meat or vegetarian mixture, refried beans, lettuce, 2 types of cheese, tomatos, salsa, guacamole, onion, green onion, sour cream, hot sauce and soft or hard shell tacos. That's a lot of choice. I don't think choice is good - it allows people to make wrong decisions, such as having vegetarian mixture instead of ground beef or choosing Honey Garlic wings over BBQ, if there was such a thing. No, choice only allows our enemies to win. Our only choice should be victory. And victory means we would all be eating tasty wings. Maybe the occasional taco too.

Good Night Wing Nation.

St Louis moving into my neighbourhood

Passing through the Atrium on Bay, I noticed a new addition
where Taste of India used to be:

I've heard good things, experienced mediocrity at another location

The website is also being remodeled as well.

Hopefully I will get to review this place before I move out of the neighborhood!
http://www.stlouiswings.com/

RECIPE: LOTW Pizza v1.0

Last week I had a lot of guests. Dude, Bramanda, and after they left, Rick came down on his reading week.

While he was down he wanted to judge the Pizza Sticks and the new deep fryer to himself. I had made Buffalo wing sauce and a special Spicy BBQ sauce I had concoqueded before and he seem to judge them well.

Fast forward a few days and I needed a snack. It was late, I had been doing some work, but I didn't think I had anything to snack on. I was wrong. I had left over pizza dough, sauce and some other ingredients and decided to make a pizza.

LOTW PIZZA v1.0

INGREDIENTS:

• pizza dough
• spicy pizza sauce
• hot sauce (Wing Time Extra Spicy)
• BBQ sauce
• garlic powder
• real bacon bits
• parmesean cheese
• cheddar cheese
• corn meal

INSTRUCTIONS

1. preheat oven (or in my case toaster oven) approx 250 degrees
2. stretch out pizza dough
3. roll bottom of pizza in cornmeal to form light crust
4. spread 3 sauces: 1/4 hot sauce, 1/4 BBQ sauce, 2/4 pizza sauce
5. sprinkle garlic powder, parmesean cheese
6. shred cheese, spread thick
7. add bacon bits
8. bake in oven until dough is brown & crispy, and cheese/sauce is bubbly

The Ingredients*

*NOTE: I don't give amounts for how much to use that's because in cooking like this - it all depends on personal taste. Want less spicy, you put in less hot sauce. Want a strong garlic taste? Add lots of garlic powder.

3 Sauces spread on dough - thick

Sprinkle garlic powder, cheese and bacon bits.
REAL BACON BITS, not simulated

Bake at 250 for about 10 minutes

Straight out of the oven

So ooey gooey good - all melty, mmmmm melty

This turned out to be a great snack. It was so similar to the Fresh Obsessed pizza buns, I just may have stumbled upon their secret recipe. The dough was quite thick, but with all the pizza sauce and cheese it certainly didn't dominate the flavour scene.

The bbq sauce gave it a bit of zing, and the hot sauce gave it the needed kick to make this a little party in my mouth. You have to use the Real Bacon Bits because you get real bacon taste and a bit of crunch. The cornmeal on the bottom adds a nice crisp to the crust BUT it also helps prevent the dough from sticking to the pan.

So if you need a late night snack, and happen to have pizza dough and similar ingredients, check this out. The smell, texture and taste were all here for a great make-shift pizza.

WING NIGHT GUIDE 2.0

LORD OF THE WINGS - WING NIGHT GUIDE

0112.07
I've always wanted to have this guide to quickly find out who has wing nights, what the deal was, and when. Please note that the information presented here is the wing night as posted at roughly the time of my review, and the information can change.

0503.09
This guide is just for the places that I have reviewed, but there are other websites out there you can also check for all places wing nights.

Hotwings.ca - Another great Canadian wing resource of reviews and daily updates of wings.

SpecialsToday.ca / Blog Wing Nights - Ottawa site that lists specials in general, not just wings.

Ottawaspecials.com - Ottawa site that lists specials in general, in a Facebook format.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OTTAWA WING NIGHTS

WING REVIEW GUIDE v3.0

MINI WING RESTAURANT REVIEWS v3.0

Order alphabeticall in each city/area:

TORONTO - OTTAWA - ONTARIO GENERAL - USA

(*To Be Updated to New Stystem Old Score Sysetm [OSS] V1.0, V2.0)
(More locations added as reviewed)
-------------------------------------------------------

TORONTO, ON (includes GTA)	OTTAWA, ON
TORONTO REVIEW GUIDE	OTTAWA REVIEW GUIDE
-specific guide to places in Ontario's Capital -over 20 reviews!	-Canada's capital and its wings

ONTARIO, CANADA (GENERAL)	UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ONTARIO REVIEW GUIDE	USA REVIEW GUIDE
AYLMER BELLVILLE BRANTFORD CORNWALL GUELPH ILDERTON KINGSTON LONDON MILTON NEDSTADT NIAGARA FALLS PETERBOROUGH TILLSONBURG WINDSOR	New York State Ohio State Pennsylvania State

Scientists Regrow Chicken Wing

Fears of a Chicken Wing shortage should forever be put at rest.

I love science.

SCIENTISTS REGROW CHICKEN WING
Fri, 2006-11-17 16:36


Chop off a salamander's leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. Now, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo -- a species not known to be able to regrow limbs -- suggesting that the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans.


Their study, published in the advance online edition of Genes and Development on Nov. 17, demonstrates that vertebrate regeneration is under the control of the powerful Wnt signaling system: Activating it overcomes the mysterious barrier to regeneration in animals like chicks that can't normally replace missing limbs while inactivating it in animals known to be able to regenerate their limbs (frogs, zebrafish, and salamanders) shuts down their ability to replace missing legs and tails.


"In this simple experiment, we removed part of the chick embryo's wing, activated Wnt signaling, and got the whole limb back - a beautiful and perfect wing," said the lead author, Juan Carlos Izpis a Belmonte, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory. "By changing the expression of a few genes, you can change the ability of a vertebrate to regenerate their limbs, rebuilding blood vessels, bone, muscles, and skin - everything that is needed."


This new discovery "opens up an entirely new area of research," Belmonte says. "Even though certain animals have lost their ability to regenerate limbs during evolution, conserved genetic machinery may still be present, and can be put to work again," he said. Previously, scientists believed that once stem cells turned into muscles, bone or any other type of cells, that was their fate for life and if those cells were injured, they didn't regenerate, but grew scar tissue.


Manipulating Wnt signaling in humans is, of course, not possible at this point, Belmonte says, but hopes that these findings may eventually offer insights into current research examining the ability of stem cells to build new human body tissues and parts. For example, he said Wnt signaling may push mature cells go back in time and "dedifferentiate" into stem-like cells, in order to be able to then differentiate once more, producing all of the different tissues needed to build a limb.


"This is the reverse of how we currently are thinking of using stem cells therapeutically, so understanding this process could be very illuminating," he says. "It could be that we could use the Wnt signaling pathway to dedifferentiate cells inside a body at the site of a limb injury, and have them carry out the job of building a new structure."


Members of the Wnt gene family (for "wingless," originally discovered in fruit flies) are known to play a role in cell proliferative processes, like fetal growth and cancer development, and Belmonte's lab has characterized the crucial role of Wnt signaling in limb growth. In 1995, the Salk researchers were first to demonstrate that they could induce the growth of extra limbs in embryonic chicks, and in 2001, they found that the Wnt signaling system played a critical role in triggering both normal and abnormal limb growth.


The current study was designed to see if Wnt signaling also was involved in the regeneration of limbs and included three groups of vertebrates: zebrafish and salamanders, which can regenerate limbs throughout their lives; frogs, which can only regenerate new limbs during a limited period during their fetal development; and chicks, which cannot regenerate limbs.
To manipulate animals' regeneration ability, the Salk researchers used inhibitory and excitatory factors for Wnt signaling, which they delivered directly to the remaining bulge after they cut a limb from the experimental embryos.


In adult zebrafish and salamanders, they found that blocking Wnt signaling with the inhibitory factors, prevented normal regeneration. And, conversely, when they treated mutant adult zebrafish that cannot regenerate with the excitatory agent, the ability to regenerate their fins was rescued, Belmonte says.


Using an inhibitory agent on frogs before the regeneration-enabled developmental window closed resulted in loss of that ability, but treating them with the excitatory agent after they had lost their regenerative capacity induced new limb growth.


They then performed the key experiment, successfully testing the ability of an excitatory factor to produce limb regeneration in chick embryos. "The signal restarted the process, and genes that were involved in the initial development of the limb were turned back on," Belmonte says. "It is simply amazing."


The procedure was tricky, however. Belmonte noted that if Wnt signaling is activated for too long of a period in these animals, cancer results. "This has to be done in a controlled way, with just a few cells for a specific amount of time," he says. "The fact is that this pathway is involved in cell proliferation, whether it is to generate or regenerate limbs, control stem cells, or produce cancer."


From Salk Institute





http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/scientist-regrow-chicken-wing-12031.html

BETTY'S

Guess who was back? You guessed it, Dude.

Down from Ottawa, sporting glasses and a beard and on a bit of a vacation, he and I went to the movies, played NHL 94 and of course, went for food. By Thursday night we were in the mood for some pub food, something not close to home.

We were headed for the Queen's Quay to check out one of the many pubs, when I got my streetcar/bus connections mixed up. Getting off at the wrong stop, I noticed another pub, Betty's, which I had seen positively reviewed HERE, and Dude and I decided to stop in.

We went to the door and looked inside: it was packed. We hesitated to go in, but some woman at the second entrance yelled that it was good and we should check it out. That little encouragement got us in the door and on a hunt for seats. We found a high table in a second room.

The crowd was a mix from business suits, students and slightly older than us casuals. It was loud but not deafening, and everyone was pretty friendly. The decor of the place was coffee house meets bar. Betty's was something different and turned out to be exactly what we were looking for. We looked over the short but tasty looking menu, with Dude going for the chicken pot pie and I, well, you know.

The NEW SCORE

STYLE: they were deep fried, grilled, then Buffalo wing sauce added
SAUCES: mild/medium/hot/suicide/honey garlic/jerk
SIZE: jumbo 2/2
HEAT: hot was pretty mild, suicide a bit stronger 5/10
CRISPINESS: nice and crispy 3 /3
WETNAP FACTOR: wet, but far from floating 3 /5
PRICE: $9.95 for 10
SIDES: veggies & dips & fries 7 /7
WETNAP/NAPKINS: lots of both 8/8
WING NIGHT: none :(
OTHER: wing bowl included
TOTAL: 28/35

I was VERY happy with Betty's wings. Just about everything about them was done well. First, they were large and in charge. The skin was perfectly crispy, with a nice crunch when bitten and a juicy meaty inside that says these wings were cooked just right. The fact that they grill these wings after is very interesting, although I don't know how this act added to the wings, but the grill marks looked good.



The wings were ordered hot with a side of suicide. The hot sauce was pretty mild, but the Buffalo sauce aroma and flavour was bang on. Suicide was hotter (it should be called hot) and not as bad tasting as other places, but when I used it I felt like I was ruining the original sauce on them already.

What was also great about these wings were what they came with. Excellent cuts of celery and carrot that had a mayo-sour cream dip. The dip was ok, but I would prefer ranch or blue cheese - but kudos for trying something different. This plate also came with shoestring fries - a great addition - but the fries were a bit blah (thankfully I had suicide to dip in!)

Dude went with his traditional 'old man food' ordering the chicken pot pie. He said he enjoyed the pie, what little pie there was. To compensate for the small pie, his plate was overflowing with fries.

FINAL SCORE: great wings in almost all respects - pricier than I like, but with these jumbo flappers and all the sides, its worth it. If only they had a wing night. Or were closer to where I live. 28/35.

As for Dude, hope we will get to go out again before you head to Asia. Good luck getting chicken pot pie there!

Betty's
240 King Street East, Toronto
bettysto.com

UNWRAPPED: ATOMIC

While updating the old blog tonight, I happened to be watching the food network where a show I occasionally watch, Unwrapped came on. Each week, Unwrapped uncovers behind-the-scenes details on classic American food, from peanut butter and chocolate syrup to French fries and bubblegum. Host Marc Summers, who might be best remembered when he hosted Double Dare.

Tonight's episode was entitled "ATOMIC" and was all about spicy food. Now wings didn't make it on the explanation list, a lot of great material was covered.

Check out the American site for information on the episode and the Canadian Food Network to see when the episode will be back on again.

BRAMANDA Visit - Wings, Skins and Gator Tails

This past weekend I was visited by Amanda, who was down for the HRPAO Conference here in Toronto (apparently the second largest HR conference in the world!).

The first night she was down we went to Mr Green Jeans at the Eaton Centre. No wings were involved (I had terrible wings there many times before and stopped) and we both concurred to NEVER go to Green Jeans again. I have said this before when the waiter spilled sauce all over me the last time I was there, and we watched another waiter spill wine, beer and some cocktails on some guy this time.

Thursday we hit a food court, but by Friday night, Brad was down and I wanted to do a little cooking for my friends.

Step one was a lot of prep work. I had 5 things on the menu this night: breaded and unbreaded Buffalo wings, potato skins, pizza sticks, dill-mashed potatoes and Gator Tails.

For the Pizza Sticks, I used fresh pizza dough that I pulled out into rectangles, filled with mozzarella cheese and garlic powder, rolled them up, then tossed them in cornmeal and more garlic powder. Baked for 10-15 minutes and then dipped in pizza sauce, they were the faves of the guests.

For the breaded wings, I dipped them in egg then rolled them in Italian bread crumbs. Into the deep fryer and they were ready in no time. After which I sauced them with my traditional Buffalo wing sauce, but I also got a chance to try out a new hot sauce: WING-TIME
super hot.

It has a rich buttery flavour, but don't think it doesn't have a bite. There is a quick punch, almost a spike of heat that stays in the mouth.

Its made with, in order: "Hot Sauce (cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt) Soybean Oil, Tomato Paste, Water, Habanero Peppers, Spices [what that is, who knows?] Red Chile Peppers, Salt, Xanthan Gum (natural thickener) Natural Butter Flavour. I was surprised because the spice is not at the first of the ingredients, but the heat makes its way fast. Its a very thick sauce, as advent by the Tomato Paste before the water.

Its good, but it is not a sauce that I would want to eat a lot of wings in. Something about it doesn't sit right with me, and it is not the pain.

Brad and I agreed the traditional Buffalo wing sauce was much better. The breading on the wings turned out ok (they were lightly breaded, so it didn't overwhelm the wing).

Above, you can see Amanda digging in to the dilly mashed potatoes. I scooped out the potato from the skins, then added sour cream and dill weed all mashed together. I wanted it to be creamy smooth, but I didn't whip it long enough. I also didn't feel the dill was strong enough, but then again, I loved my dill.

The Potato Skins are one of my own favourite wing side dishes, and I'm quite happy with my version. Take some baking/russet potatoes, rub them in oil and kosher salt (I only every cook with kosher salt). Bake them for an hour (turning once). Remove and cut in half. The skins should be nice and crispy: scoop out the insides leaving a shell. Fill with cheese, onion and bacon (I cheated here and used bacon bits, but normally I prefer cook/chopped bacon). Bake again until cheese is melted. So good.

Finally, I attempted to make Deep Fried Pickles. Instead, they turned out to what Amanda branded as Gator Tails. I followed a recipe on the Internet roughly that said to used eggs and bread crumbs etc. into a paste, but the paste would not stick to the pickles that I had cut up into spears. I tried to coat them as best I could before dropping them in the deep fryer but it turned into a mess. The batter was all-right, the pickle was good, but if it had stuck together it would have been great. Or decent anyway. We will try again, hopefully with better results next time.

The rest of the evening was spent recovering from fullness, playing Halo 2 and just enjoying the company that Bramanda always bring with them.

Chestnut Report Part X

"A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y?

Consonant or vowel, make up your mind, we're at war.
This is the Chestnut Report!"

Welcome back to Part X of a XX part series, 'Better Know a Chestnut Wing'

On tonight's blog, we are in THREAT DOWN mode. Once again, the sweetanistas have embolden the terrorists by bringing back Honey Garlic wings.

Wing Nation, we are under attack. These Honey Garlic extremists are trying to destroy all that we hold true in a wing. They are undermining our wing way of life and they might just not stop with wings.

Like any good newsman, I believe that if you're not scared, I'm not doing my job. We have to be aware of the enemy and how persuasive it can be. To best understand the enemy, I tried one. I know, I know, I know what your thinking: Wing King, have you defected? No Wing Nation, I took one of the Devil's own wing and tried it to better understand what I was truly up against.

I bit into one: I had a letter-bomb of sugar blow up in my mouth. Sticky and venomy, I almost cried at the waste of such a wing. But what the Honey Garlic extremists didn't know was that I was prepared for such an attack. They fell right into my trap.

Yes, I brought back up: home-made hot sauce. In a bowl I mixed the spiciest condiments available at the counter: Tabasco sauce, chili flakes, Red Rooster hot sauce (a Vietnamese hot sauce I don't know the name of), Trinidadian hot sauce as well as Worcestershire and HP sauce for some flavour. Mixed and spread over the wings, the Honey Garlic Insurgency was quickly defeated.

It was bold: spicy in burn both immediately and in after affect, but it also had flavour. I had worried that the kitchen-sink approach to sauces might fail miserably but victory was ours this day.

Also available on order to combat the Honey Garlic bad guys was BBQ wings. Now granted, they were not as good as the Wednesday night BBQ wings, but they were the best alternative out there the average citizen had open to them.

We must soldier on. If we stop eating spicy, flavourful wings - we are letting the terrorists win. Keep up the good fight.

Stay strong, be brave Wing Nation.