Wings And Hoecakes Ala Mary

Bev, her sis, Alex, and a couple more friends went off to South Pittsburg, Tn (about a 2 ½ hour drive) Sunday for the National Cornbread Festival, primarily for the crafts show, and even more specifically to buy some unique sun catchers from a vendor she knew would be there. Since I’d been there, done that, and been disappointed, they left me at home to tend the dogs and make supper - a win for everyone.

Earlier in April, Mary, from over at Deep South Dish, posted a recipe for Garlic Parmesan Wings that sounded delicious. I had some smoked wings in the freezer I wanted to eat, but since they were already cooked, I didn’t want to use the oven process. So I let the wings come to room temperature, made up the sauce in a skillet and just sauteed the wings enough to warm up the center and crisp up the skin.


While Bev was in Sint Maarten, she and the ladies ate Johnny Cakes on a regular basis and loved them. They are a deep fried cake of mostly flour with a little cornmeal . In mid April, Mary made Hoecakes to go with some greens and I thought they sounded delicious, then I decided it would also be nice to make up a batch so Bev could compare them to the Johnny cakes – although I knew they would be different. So we made them following Mary’s recipe except I only had self rising cornmeal and used it and omitted the baking powder. This also seemed like a perfect dish for folks who spent several hours at the Cornbread Festival and didn't eat any.


We added some asparagus with sesame, citrus sauce using a Paula Deen recipe and here's my plate.

We thought the chicken sauce was very good but it was overwhelmed by the smokiness of the wings. We will make them again in the oven as prepared in Mary's original recipe, but we'll stick to deep frying or grilling the smoked ones and using the highly flavorful wing sauce on them. The hoe cakes were also very good and just what we expected but, according to the girls, too different from the Carribean Johnny Cakes to make a comparison - we kicked them up with some honey, cinnamon butter I'd made the other day. The asparagus was pretty good, but now that we've had it deep fried it will be hard for another way to compare - except maybe in eggs of course. Thanks Mary for another good dinner.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry