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Every wedding buffet needs a cheese and pineapple porcupine.
As much as I can’t stand the contrived “Oo-er I’m a Brit now” posturing of long-term American expats (alá Madonna in her Guy Ritchie years), there are certain aspects of British life that I’ve unconsciously assimilated: I can make a cup of tea that the natives find acceptable, I’ve become fully accustomed to living without a clothes dryer (when I arrived here in 1995, I thought clothes horses were solely for the purpose of hanging homemade pasta to dry – true story), I can eat Marmite on toast without gagging, I’ve acquired the somewhat less endearing British habit of using profanity as punctuation (“twat” in England is about as offensive as “ass” in the US, but it’s like dropping the c-bomb when spoken in American company), and I find the royals to be boring at best and parasitic at worst.
When my cousin in New Jersey emailed to ask if I was excited about the wedding as she was, I suppressed my urge to buzzkill and duly confirmed that I was indeed looking forward to it, and didn’t specify that “it” was the extra day off. I refrained from grumbling about the fact that the 3-day week between Easter and Wedding Weekend meant that trying to accomplish anything at work only resulted in a server-crashing barrage of out-of-office vacation replies. And don’t get me started on the stack of “Anti-Royal-Wedding” party invites clogging up my facebook invites. (That part I wouldn’t mind so much if 95% were from people I actually know.)
However, trying to pit the cynicism of a handful of trendy liberals against the enthusiasm of 2.4 billion people (24.5 million in the UK alone) is an excercise in futility, so at about 10.30am on April 29th Neil and I tuned in to BBC iPlayer “just to see the dress”. Besides, who can argue with a day of hanging up bunting, putting on a hat, and drinking Pimm’s?
General impressions and highlights:
- The dress was pretty awesome. I could have done without the dippy fashion commentary and that wretched woman shrieking about how excited she was that it was McQueen. I swear for a split second I thought her waters had broken. Vivienne Westwood would have been a surprise. British fashion icon, recently deceased? Not exactly unexpected.
- Princess Beatrice’s bunch of churros, I mean, Hat. I thought it was bad etiquette to try to upstage the bride. Besides, that’s David and Victoria Beckham‘s job.
- Best bit: the little bridesmaid with her fingers in her ears.
After the wedding, Neil and I went to Kaf and Jess’s for a Royal Wedding Patriotic Picnic, where we listened to Elgar and ate finger sandwiches and drank Pimm’s in princely proportions.
A Tudor Ruff made from sheets of photocopier paper: Royal Genius.
Watch out Philip Treacy...
This one marries two of my current obsessions: Korean chili paste and chicken wings. They’re extremely easy to make, and once you do the initial splurge on the ethnic ingredients, very cheap to make. As it is, I think the spend in the Asian supermarket was only about £10-£12, and as you only need relatively small amounts – especially of stuff like shrimp paste – it lasts forever. These are by no means authentic, but I welcome any input from those who know more than I do about Korean cooking (which is precious little).
This works equally well in both the oven and the crockpot. Oven-roasting is slightly better if you’re planning to take these on a picnic or other situation where you will be eating as a finger food without plates. If you’re using the crockpot, they will get falling-apart-tender and therefore messier, but you will wind up with a tasty sauce for putting over rice. Also, don’t joint the wings if you’re going for the crockpot. They’ll be easy enough to pull apart when they’re finished cooking.
Marinade ingredients:
- 2 generous tbsp gochujang (Korean chilli paste)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp black Chinese vinegar
- 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 1 scant tsp of sugar or honey
- 1 scant tsp shrimp paste
- 2 cloves crushed garlic
- optional – scant tsp chilli oil with shrimp paste (omit or scale back plain shrimp paste if using)
The rest:
- 10 fresh chicken wings (do not separate if slow-cooking)
- 1 large onion, sliced (if slow-cooking)
This is really just an excuse to show off my $1.99 Las Vegas tea tray.
Mix all the marinade ingredients together. Pour over chicken wings. I like to do this in a large plastic freezer bag so I can mush up the marinade into the wings, but a bowl is perfectly ok. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight. You can actually just chuck them straight into the pot without the marinade time if you’re slow-cooking, but if you’re opting for the oven, I’d go with marinating.
If slow-cooking:
Line the pot with thickly-sliced rings of onion to prevent the wings from sticking. It also makes a nice sauce for serving the wings over rice, if you’re that way inclined.
Lay wings on top, pouring over any marinade. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours. Or, if you’re like me, cook on high for 45 minutes, then switch to low and go ramble around Victoria Park for a few hours.
Optional: Give wings a quick blast under a hot grill to caramelise. I was impatient and did not do this.
If roasting:
Preheat oven to 220 C (or 200 C if you have a fan oven).
Place wings on a rack over a foil-lined grill pan (for lazy cleanup). Roast in the top half of the oven for about 30 mins, turning once halfway through. Chuck wings in tupperware, grab a blanket and some beers, and haul the lot over to Victoria Park to enjoy in the rare British sunshine.
