The Good, The Bad and the Uncooked

We had some great success last night with our pub night in. Once again the wings were fantastic. So fantastic that Tim was looking for more for tonight. The only added step I would do with these is drain off the sauce (save for dipping) and put the wings under the broiler for 2 -5 minutes to crisp them up. But the flavour from cooking them in the sauce.... fan-freakin-tastic! These are seriously a snack night regular around here.

Okay, Artistic shot.

Who knew a blooming onion could look so creative?!

Now for reality... This was the onion before it went in the oven. Not pretty or perfect but a reasonable facsimile of a blooming onion.

It was, however, bad. I dipped it in buttermilk which was just way toooooo thick for the overall structure of the cut onion. Add on the flour mixture and it was just too much for the poor thing to ever get properly cooked inside. The recipes I saw did call for egg whites, next time I'll try that a as a binder. But even just spraying with oil and then sprinkling with flour and/or bread crumbs would have worked better. The flour mixture did taste good. The seasoning was right. The dipping sauce was yummy. But we kept adding cooking time every time we checked the poor thing. This is a recipe still in the works... Anyone have any tips or recommendations?

All that being said, today we are taking the leftovers and making onion petals. There may be a beer batter involved and some light frying. I'm against it but after the blooming onion failure, I may get out voted..

We never even got to the zucchini sticks (we had a some steamed mussels too, too much food) so we'll have those today.