Spicy Mango Chicken Wings or Get Naked Cooking

We've been amazingly blessed here on Culebra in so many ways. For the most part, the community has worked really hard at the boring job of staying home and sitting tight to keep the highly contagious corona virus at bay (pun not intended). There are always rule breakers, but that's life. 

While I'm not the first to suggest this, I highly recommend peeling and eating mangoes naked (if you are just eating mangoes, I recommend being in the ocean with them, naked - thank you Michael C for this 30 year old life wisdom). They WILL send juicy bits all over you and if you think red wine stains, mango stains are pretty much bullet proof unless you dunk your clothing immediately.
And then you are naked anyway, so save yourself a step. 

One of the things we've been getting in abundance is food. Canned foods, boxed foods, frozen foods and fresh foods. The hard work of loading them up and passing them out to long lines of grateful receivers has happened a lot; I've actually lost count but no one is going hungry on Culebra who isn't willing to wait in the car line, and if there is no car, the boxes have been delivered to the homes of those people. 

Prep means gathering all the goodies. I didn't have fresh ginger, but I wanted to try to use only things I had on hand. As a condiment and spice queen, I have a lot on hand.
One of my new favorites is Japanese 7 spice. It's hot without being overwhelming, it's complex, it's delicious. I didn't have plain cinnamon so I used garam marsala. Well, there are a million kinds, but this version is on the cinnamon side. 

Oops. I forgot a couple goodies. And threw in some other stuff along the way.
That's how I cook, you can stick to the rules if it makes you happier!

(Cooking side note: One thing about having delicious ingredients is that one has to try really, really hard to make something that tastes awful. Even though this had quite a few punch up the flavor ingredients, it's a pretty simple dish and simple is usually best. Err on the side of less is more seasoning wise, you can always add, but you can't take away. 

The recipe says to use olive oil, which is my cooking oil of choice but I just happened to have bacon fat and, as everyone knows, using bacon fat adds something extra to anything cooking in it. So, the onions were sautéed in bacon fat. Moving on.

With everyone having different personal tastes, things unwanted have been shared with those who do like whatever it is. There is always someone who will be glad to have x, y or z that someone else can't or won't use. 

Once the onions were translucent, I added the mango chunks. The recipe said to lightly mash them, I obeyed. The thing here is to have a very ripe mango, it makes mashing it a lot easier. Oh, by the way? This is now going to be hot, so put your clothes back on. Or a towel, or something. Aprons count.

One of the days we were given 10 pound bags of chicken wings. For a family, that would be a lot, for a single person, it is a huge amount! Because everyone had these packages and no one needs any, I keep plowing through the bag, trying to incorporate other bounty received, which is how I started doing something I really hadn't done much of in my cooking, the use of fruits. I can't say why this was never a thing for me, but it is now! Chicken with apples and lemon and tomatoes, for instance. It works!
 

Lightly mashed, all the spices and garlic and lemon juice in!

We also have been getting a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, mangoes and strawberries, pineapples and apples, broccoli and onions and potatoes. A wealth of bounty. It's not an onerous task to try to keep up before things go off, but I found myself with a mango on the verge, hence Spicy Mango Chicken Wings!

After the marinade cooled down, it went into a plastic bag, with the chicken.
You don't have to use a plastic bag, anything that will allow the chicken to be covered with the marinade and closed shut will do. My bad. Do better!

Back in the old days, when I was making mango hot sauce, I kept gallons and gallons of mangoes in the chest freezer. I'd gather them from various trees around the island all season and then have the luxury of using them all year long. Why didn't I try this then?

This is another pretty sloppy part, clothing optional depending on how deft you are at picking up very slippery wings covered with leap off the chicken and onto you mango. Except now it's all spicy and yummy but the chicken is still raw so I do NOT recommend licking your fingers. Or shirt.
The recipe recommends using a silicone mat for this. I didn't have a silicone mat so I used olive oil to coat the pan instead. Yes, all the bacon fat was gone. Damn it.

And finally, it was done. A relatively short cooking time for a relatively long prep, but well worth it - and I like prep. Obviously I used wings but you could use any chicken parts you want. Or anything else you want, it's YOUR food!

Yes, they were really good. 

I very loosely based the above on what I read here, a recipe by Sanjeev Kapoor, an Indian chef I'd not heard of before but he's apparently very famous and has the longest running cooking show in Asia, according to the blurbs. I'll be checking out more of his food. 

Have a tangible Thursday. Do something terrifically tasteful. 

Beginnings

On my way to town to check and see if work had actually started on the bridge, I came across these gulls, podded on the water. My loud engine didn't seem to alarm them much.

The pilings at Cayo Pirata were also considered party central.

Ashore, the mango trees around the island are getting loaded up with fruit. There are over 1000 varieties of mangoes in the world, and I'm not sure how many are represented on Culebra, but this is one of my very favorites (in case you wonder where I get my mangoes for Manaya Heat, now you know - thanks, people with mango trees who share them with me!)

And YES!!! The bridge work was actually started on the day that I was told, Monday! They've cleared out all the weed trees, trash and brush, and were pressure washing when I got there yesterday. Quite a bit to get done in two days and I have to say, I'm impressed.

Pressure washing

 

Pressure watching

Clean!

Clearing bush Culebra style

Cart space *sniff*

I'm still working on finding out what that boom was. Well, I'm still asking people who might know and they are reaching out to their contacts. I know it may seem a bit obsessive, but if you'd felt and heard it, you'd want to know too!

Today looks to be hazy and hot. Not warm; hot. A potential 3 shower day. I'm just really glad we don't sweat like dogs, or the front of my shirts would be a mess.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Do something that makes you say "Woohoo!!"

p.s. Gail's party has been moved to the 15th of May, rather than May 1st! More news as I get it.

A day off

Today I am staying home, not because of the rain but because of the sun! And it's Tuesday. And...well, I was inspired by CWIM.



I'll watch the chickens scratch.



And the mangos ripen.


And maybe some home type chores...

Messy Room by Shel Silverstein

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

Have an un-turbulent Tuesday. Do something torpid.

Jump on the day

We're covered in Sahara dust...most likely a couple of more days. One of the forecasts called for high winds, which I was hoping was true, to scoot the dust on out of here, but we'll see what happens. In the meantime, a certain artist I know has promised if we go to wearing masks to filter swine flu and dust particles that he will paint mine pretty. I'm sort of looking forward to that in a weird way...


Thanks, Perry & Kristi, for starting my day out with this reassuring bit of information. It's too important to just keep to myself.

Health ALERT

If you receive an email from the Department of Health telling you
not to eat pork packed in a can because of swine flu - ignore it. It's just spam.

The air is definitely thick. The upside is that rain is not likely, as the dust makes a sort of 'cap' in the atmosphere. Ok, this is not a math problem...you are hot and sticky, it's not raining = go to the beach! If you can't get to the beach, at least hang out by the water.


I was given some very special and very beautiful mangoes by Sylvia yesterday. Talk about feeling guilty, Sylvia walks into town every day, to take care of family in one way or another, either cooking for them, bringing plants, sewing...I guess at close to 70 she is the youngster in the crowd. So here she came along, towing a pull cart with a box on it, with mangoes for me (and some for her family too, so it wasn't ALL guilt producing). These mangoes are some of the great ones, and I eat as many as I actually let end up in the hot sauce. Which of course is the right thing to do! I get into the rut of mangoes / hot sauce, yet there are soooo many ways to use them. The other day I put them in my banana bread, cutting the bananas to half and using the mangoes. Very yummy. I'll play with some more ideas for tomorrow.