Why Hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Castatrophes, where one man fights a never-ending battle to bring you all food, fun, and facts. I’m your alliterative arranger, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe is one I’ve been excited about for a WHILE. I’d been wanting to try this recipe for a year or two by the time I got to, and I’ve been sitting on making the recipe for a couple weeks now. Now, if you don’t want or need the details, you can jump straight to the recipe here (I warn you, it’s a little long/complicated). For everyone else, let’s go BACK IN TIME.

A Closer World Through Technology

So, as part of having a food blog, I watch a lot of food TV. I used to do it a lot MORE, but part of my cratering into anxiety has been a growing distaste for sunlight, and the wide windows of the living room sear my pallid flesh. But back in my time as a day-walker, I would watch a fair bit of food television to get inspiration for recipes. And one of the things that’s real interesting is how excited I would get about seeing places in Portland on television.

Oh, MAN, look at all those brick buildings!
(Side note, I’ve actually been here, and it’s a pretty cool place)

You see, I live a mere 3-ish hours from Portland, and often have to drive through it on the way to see my mother’s side of the family for the holidays. Thus, it’s at a strange degree of familiar and yet exotic: I’m not as excited to learn about places in Seattle, for instance, because it’s close enough for the mundane realities to drag on it. (“Sure, it sounds nice, but it’s too far to walk to from the ferries, and parking in the city is madness!”)

It kind of plays to the same divide I mentioned in our post about Oregon cuisine: Oregon and Washington culture and cuisine are both fairly CLOSE, which makes the points where they DIFFER all the more interesting. Things like the slightly greater popularity of Thai restaurants in Portland, versus Seattle’s Japanese cuisine. Even when we do the SAME thing, it someone SOUNDS cooler: Is Pine Street Biscuits (Portland) any better than Biscuit Bitch (Seattle)? I don’t know, I’ve only expended the effort to go to the first one! (They were great, but not amazing. Like, a solid 8.) Because Portland is far enough away that EVERY trip there is special/interesting, they naturally increase the appeal of restaurants.

So, years ago, I was watching…I honestly don’t know what. This place has been on SEVERAL shows: it was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives like, 10 years ago, it was on “Best thing I Ever Ate”, I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere else. (editor’s note: in between writing this paragraph and finishing the post, I saw it on an older Sorted Youtube video Sunday afternoon) But it doesn’t really matter where, because EVERYWHERE that talks about Pok Pok talks about THIS dish.

BOOM Baby! Sexy pic that I took myself!

These are Fish Sauce Wings, based on a recipe from Vietnam. We’ll talk about the components later, but as you might guess from the name, they’re chicken wings, coated in a fish-sauce-derived sauce. According to the restaurant owner’s cookbook, they ‘pay the mortgage’ on the restaurants. They’ so popular, that the rest of the menu exists so he can experiment with various dishes, while the Wings keep the lights on.

Intrigued, Pok Pok quickly entered what I think of as the “harassment queue”, and which my family seems to consider “Jon’s endless white-noise windbag”, where I have a series of restaurants we’ve expressed interest in, so when presented with an open window to potentially GO to them, I will bring up the restaurant, only to be shut down out of hand, often with later accusations that I never mentioned it, because they weren’t actually listening to me. Situations like:
 “Traffic’s much better than expected. It looks like we’ll get into Salem 2 hours early, and have nothing to do.”
“Well, we could stop in Portland and get lunch at that Vietnamese chicken place-“
“ I had half a bagel 4 hours ago, I don’t think stopping in Portland is necessary.”  

Then why even bring up the time?

Eventually, after 2 years of mentioning it every time we drove through Portland, and pissing Nate off by deciding to go to another place on the queue on my way to pick him up from HIS THANKSGIVING WEEK IN MEXICO (Yes, NATE went on a week-long trip to a (check the latitude of Mexican cities…) TROPICAL resort, and I was the bad guy for eating dumplings without him on my way to pick him up from the airport. Not the five times he shot down getting them before. Those didn’t count.  (He asserts we informally agreed to try them together, and that HE had supported my prior suggestions, it was MOTHER who refused to go, hence his anger…which I can’t prove didn’t happen, so I suppose we’ll never know))…What was I saying? Oh, right. After 2 years of anticipation, Nate and I double-dipped on a quick trip to Portland to hit Powell’s, an enormous bookstore in the city, and Pok Pok, in order to get it off “the list”.

I won’t regale you with the details of the trip, but Nate was quite impressed with the meal, and we regarded the trip as a total success, and something we would have to try and convince our mother and others to try, so we could go again. Then, a week or so into our national semi-quarantine, Powell’s (the enormous bookstore from literally 5 seconds ago) announced that it was very concerned about its ability to survive the events, and that it would likely have to lay-off a lot of people due to the reduced volume of traffic from online sales versus in-person. (Ah, the halcyon days of “the second week of quarantine”. How naïve and hopeful we were.) To help out, I personally ordered over 100 dollars in cookbooks, including Pok Pok’s!

Seen here in a glamour shot.

To really drive home the naivete of the world back then, my order was actually DELAYED several weeks due to the SURGE in online orders they got, and I was actually moderately irritated, since I didn’t get the books until something like April 8th or something, and with quarantine supposed to end around May 5th, I probably wasn’t going to have TIME to make the recipe! Haha! Hahaha! HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Sorry, briefly lost my grasp on sanity there. According to the cookbook, the wings are so popular they ‘pay the mortgage’ on the restaurants: the rest of the menu exists so he can experiment with various dishes, while the Wings keep the lights on. And we can believe it: while Nate and I were there, only THREE tables (out of the 30 or so in the restaurant) did NOT order wings.

Luckily, with the extension of stay-at-home orders for another 2 months (and maybe longer!) I was able to get around to making the dish! So let’s finally explore how this actually goes down!

Just Winging It

Nice. Anyway, the recipe is one of those “the real effort is mostly in time and shopping” deals, since most of the steps are very simple, but take a bit of time, and need some ingredients you may not have on hand, especially if you don’t want to be a lazy baby: both the garnish of pickled vegetables and the spice paste needed to make the “spicy” version of the wings have to be made by hand. Could you use a different spice paste? Probably, but when trying to replicate an awesome recipe, and one involving a lot of high heat, I try to minimize my creative flourishes. Besides, that paste’s recipe is just “ fry some dried thai chiles in oil for 10ish minutes, grind them up, and mix with a little more oil”. It’s not HARD, I just couldn’t find any dried thai chiles when I checked the stores. And I didn’t make the pickled veggies because I literally just FORGOT during the first step of the recipe, and went to bed without making them.

Speaking of, this is a recipe that you need to start HOURS ahead of time. At LEAST 4, and preferably the night before. Again, none of the steps are HARD, they’re just time-consuming. (actually, once you do the one “wait for 4 to 12 hours” step, you can do the rest of it in like, an hour and a half. And that’s IF you’re really, really, bad at it like I was.)

Step one is brining the chicken. Since these are fish-sauce wings, their brine is…fish sauce based. But it is ALSO GARLIC-WATER based. “What’s garlic-water, Jon?” you ask, in a very silly moment of ignorance. “It’s water that you’ve soaked some freshly minced and salted garlic in, and then squeezed the garlic of excess liquid, infusing its flavor into the water!”

I thought I took a picture of the yellow garlic water on its own, but apparently I only took the pic after dumping sugar into it. So…BEHOLD, Superfine Island, in a sea of piss.

Making garlic water is, again, pretty easy: mince up 1 oz of garlic (like, 8 or so cloves, I used a scale), mash a bit with 1 teaspoon of salt, and let bloom in ¼ cup of warm water. Strain, reserve the garlic for tomorrow, and mix the garlic water with fish sauce and sugar.

Now, here’s where things get a little weird. See, the recipe CLEARLY calls for wings “split at the joint”, which, by ALL the culinary training I have and can find, means (or at least implies) “cut into three pieces”.  But…The PICTURE of the wings clearly shows them intact. I have been SERVED THEM, and they were intact. (My best guess is either there was a typo, or they meant ‘split’ as in “the joints popped loose with your fingertips”, since my wings were a little stiffer than theirs.) Anywho, toss the chicken wings in HALF the sauce-water(keep the rest for tomorrow), cover, and marinate for at least 4 hours, or overnight, tossing every couple hours (or once per hour, if doing the 4 hour brine). (f you remember, now would be a good time to julienne some carrots and daikon, and submerge them in a simple brine of sugar, vinegar, salt, and water. That’s it. You made the pickles. You are ALREADY beating me.

To be fair, this is a pretty easy tier to beat.

Once the chicken’s brined, it’s time for the complicated parts. Are you ready for this? You have to fry the garlic, bread and fry the chicken, and cook them together in the sauce. Simple, right? This is where everything went wrong for me. Firstly, because of timing: I had pitched making the wings as a lunch, and Nate likes to eat at 6, noon, and 6.  And I woke up at like, 11, 11:30, thanks to some bullshit I can’t remember. (The most likely reason is that, thanks to the heat, I’ve been sleeping with my window open. And thanks to our lawn mower dying, the lawn grass has gotten quite tall, and is scaring the chickens, who scream for help outside my bedroom window hours before my alarm goes off, utterly fucking my morning routine.) So I was bleary-eyed, on a time limit, and when I looked around, I couldn’t find one of the ingredients I needed, so I ran to the store to buy it, assuming I had failed to get it sooner. That ingredient? COCAINE.

Two cocaine references in a week? Jon must be hyped.

No, actually, it was rice flour. SPECIFICALLY Rice Flour, and not Glutinous Rice Flour, which you use to make like, mochi. It’s a much finer flour, so it makes a thinner breading, and it’s gluten-free! …Which is not relevant in THIS recipe, because you mix it with Tempura batter, which DOES have wheat flour, and thus gluten (though technically, if you could find a good gluten-free tempura batter mix, maybe it would work?) Also, we did not have NEARLY enough oil. (or at least, I thought we didn’t. Since then, I’ve found another 2 bottles.) LOOK, the clear message here is “don’t try complicated new recipes first thing in the morning.”

After running to the store and buying oil and rice flour (to discover that I had missed spotting the bag I bought a week before by INCHES), I fried some garlic. Take your minced garlic from yesterday, and fry it in about 3/4” of oil for about 5 minutes. Start the oil on high, but drop it to medium-low the instant your garlic goes in. Cook until lightly golden brown. I overcooked mine, so let me tell you, THIS is TOO dark.

“Don’t make it look like wood chips, got it”

Luckily, I have also purchased several containers of fried garlic, so I just used that. Then, bread and fry your chicken. This is the second place I screwed up: the recipe said to fry the chicken in “a pot, wok, or counter-top deep-fryer” Which excited me, because I haven’t had a reason to use our deep fryer in a while! And today was NOT THAT REASON!   The problem was that our counter-top deep-fryer is made for much smaller jobs, and runs a little cool. Where I was supposed to be cooking 5-6 wings at a time for 6-8 minutes, I could only fit TWO wings into the fryer at a time, and they took 10-12 minutes to fully brown!

This is not a great return for 20 minutes of effort.

By the end of the second batch of wings, where I was now approaching 1 o’clock for a dish that should have been wrapping up around 12:15, I snapped and dumped a bunch of oil into a wok to cook the rest of the wings in one batch, a step I had avoided at first because…that’s the only wok we have, so I would have to let the oil cool and empty it out before I finished the wings. So if you’re doing this at home, use a larger pot or frying vessel to save yourself time.

Go big, or go home.

Once all that was worked out, it was time for the FINAL STEP. Stir an extra ¼ cup of water into the fish-sauce-sugar-garlic-water from the previous night: THIS is the base for your glaze. Stir in the the chili paste if you have it. If you have a big enough wok to do all the wings at once, go for it. If not, do it in batches, just portion out equal parts of the sauce per batch. Bring that portion to a boil, and reduce for 45 seconds or so. Add the wings, and toss in the sauce for around 1 minute, until the wings are coated in a caramel-like glaze. Add fried garlic (either all of it or by portion), cook another 30-40 seconds until the sauce darkens, and move to a plate.

If you scroll up and look at the restaurant’s wings, you can see the wing on the right here is a little pale, but over all, the look is SOLID.

If you’re working in batches, the cookbook says the glaze will trap heat enough that you don’t need to worry about covering the wings or anything while you handle the next batch. I did it all in one, because for all my other failings, I have a huge wok. I never get to use it, and it sometimes doesn’t get cleaned enough, but it’s big enough for basically anything. (To be clear, we are only talking about my wok. My penis is not nearly as impressive. Some have called it “disappointing”, a review that only prompted 3 weeks of weeping.) Anyway, how’s the chicken?

It is FRUSTRATINGLY close. Like, the only critique we had is we’re pretty sure the brand of fish sauce I used is saltier than the one the restaurant uses, so once you reduce it down, the wings are just hitting that “a little too salty to be great” line. But they had basically the right texture, the wings themselves turned out to be cooked almost perfectly (to my immense shock), and it all held together. It was just a LITTLE TOO salty.

Still, if you can find the ingredients, most of which are pretty easy to find (you just need to spend a little time looking through the Asian food sections of supermarkets in my neck of the woods…except for the dried Thai chiles. And you might have to check a couple baking sections for super-fine sugar), and you have a couple hours of spare time, and don’t mind your house smelling a little like feet, (Did I not mention that? Oh yeah, it turns out boiling down fish-sauce leaves a moderately pungent scent in the air for the next like, 6 hours. Good luck with that.) if you’re cool with all that, I’d honestly recommend giving them a try. Like, I would say even with the frustrations and mess-ups I made, they were basically worth it. If you can avoid being dumb like me, and think you’d like it, try it out. Or plan a trip to Portland.

THURSDAY: WE TALK MORE POK. THE BOOK, THE PLACE, THE SOUND!

MONDAY: I ACTUALLY WENT ON A COOKING TEAR THIS WEEKEND, SO I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE. ALSO, SHIT, I FORGOT THIS SATURDAY WAS THE 4TH. I THOUGHT I HAD ANOTHER WEEK FOR SOME REASON.  WELL, AT LEAST FRIED CHICKEN WINGS ARE KIND OF ON-BRAND FOR THAT. MAYBE CHEESE BREAD, MAYBE GRAIN JUICE, WE’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN WE KNOW.

Recipe

Fish Sauce Wings from Pok Pok

Serves 4 as a meal, 8 as an appetizer

Ingredients

Marinade/Sauce Base

8 garlic cloves, peeled

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 cup warm water

1/2 cup Vietnamese fish sauce (Apparently, Ricker recommends Phu Quoc or Three Crabs brand)

1/2 cup superfine sugar (if you don’t have superfine, you can pound granulated sugar in a mortar and pestle, or blitz it in a food processor for 30 seconds. You’ll lose some volume (like, 1 1/8th cup granulated makes 1 cup superfine))

Chicken

2 lbs medium-size chicken wings (about 12), “split at the joint”

Breading

1 cup rice flour

1/4 cup tempura batter mix (Ricker recommends Gogi brand)

Sauce

1/4 cup water

1-2 tsp roasted chili paste (if using) (see below)

Vegetable oil (for frying) (like, probably close to a gallon)

Cu Cui Pickles (optional, for serving) (see below)

Preparation

1. Finely chop the garlic, and combine with the salt. Chop or pound with the salt for another 15-20 seconds, then place in a bowl with the warm water. Let sit 5 minutes.

2. Strain the garlic, and press excess liquid. Reserve the garlic for later frying. Mix garlic-water with super-fine sugar and fish sauce, and stir until sugar is fully dissolved. Pour half the mixture over the wings, toss to coat, and place in a bowl in the fridge for the next 4 to 12 hours, tossing every hour or two.

3. After marinating, move the wings to a colander in the sink, and let drain for 15 minutes. While wings drain, fry the garlic. Heat ¾” of oil in a wok or saucepan over high heat. Add the garlic, reduce the heat to medium-low, and fry until light golden brown, no more than 5 minutes. Remove from the oil, and move to a paper-towel-lined plate. (You can reserve the now garlic-infused oil for a later use if you want)

4. Stir together the tempura batter and rice flour, and bread the chicken wings.

5. Fill a large wok or other frying vessel with at least 2” of oil (you want enough that the wings can fully submerge), and bring to 350 degrees (use an oil thermometer). Add the wings (preferably in 2 batches), and fry for 6-8 minutes. (if your heat is closer to 300 or 325, cook for 10-12) Try not to move the wings for the first 3-4 minutes, and then move them every minute or so until golden brown. Fry the second batch.

6. Stir the water and chili paste (if using) into the garlic-water-fish-sauce liquid, and heat a wok over high-heat. If your wok is large enough, you can coat all the wings at the same time, if not, use batches. Pour a portion of sauce into the wok, and boil for 45 seconds, until reduced by half. Add the wings, and toss in the sauce for 1 minute, tossing every 15 seconds or so. Add the fried garlic, and toss together for another 30 seconds until the sauce darkens. Move wings to a plate, and serve with pickles (if making)

Roasted Chili Paste

Makes ¼ cup.

Ingredients

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 ounce dried thai chiles (roughly 1 cup)

¼ tsp or less pure sesame oil

Preparation

1. Heat oil over low heat until shimmering. Add chiles and fry, stirring frequently, until dark brown (but not black), around 12 minutes.

2. Move chiles to a mortar and pestle or food processor, and process to a coarse paste. Add frying oil (which has become chili oil, and can be stored and used as such) and stir until mixture is roughly the texture of chunky peanut butter. Stir in sesame oil.

3. Place in an airtight container. Will keep for 6 months in container at room temp.

Cu Cai pickled veggies

Serves 6 as snack or side

Ingredients

½ cup granulated sugar

6 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp kosher salt

1 cup water

½ pound peeled carrot, chopped into ½” thick, 5” long sticks.

½ pound peeled daikon radish, chopped as carrot

Preparation

1. Stir together sugar, salt, vinegar, and water until sugar has fully dissolved. Add carrots and daikon, submerge in liquid.

2. Refrigerate covered container for at least 4 hours.