Catching Up With David And Laurie

With our respective travels, we hadn’t seen our friends Laurie and Dave (Big Daddy Dave) for a couple of months so we invited them over for an appetizer dinner and a visit.

We started off with some focaccia bread (brought by them) dipped in olive oil flavored with fresh herbs and parmesan.

Next up was some Spicy Maple Bacon Wrapped Shrimp using the recipe from Inspired Taste.  I’m not sure how I found it but I’ve listed the ingredients below – please click on the link and go to original site for the complete recipe and some good how-to shots.

Ingredients:

10 pieces thinly sliced bacon

20 extra large (16/20) shrimp (about 1 pound)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 tablespoon sriracha hot chili sauce

Juice of half a lemon

Sliced green onion (garnish) I forgot it

We all thought the shrimp were very good even though the bacon I used was just okay.  Next time I’ll use really good bacon and a little more sriracha or make extra sauce for drizzling at the end.

The last dish we served offered an opportunity for a taste test and you know we love to do them around Almost Heaven South.  My original plan for this meal was to just grill/smoke some wings and toss in hot sauce until Heather from Rocky Mountain Cooking posted an adaptation of the wings I had cooked while visiting in Denver.  I'd planned to just try her version at some point, but could not pass up the taste test opportunity.

After a toss with canola oil, I seasoned the wings with S&P, and cooked with indirect heat in the 275* gas grill to an internal temp of 155* - apple wood chips in foil packets provided the smoke.  At this point they took two different paths as batch one got my normal treatment of cooking over direct heat to crisp the skins followed by a toss in my go-to wing sauce from Chef Dennis.  

The second batch was tossed in the sauce immediately after smoking then grilled over direct heat to achieve a little char on them, then tossed in sauce again.  I put both on the same plate but the ones on the lower right with the char are the second version.

Both versions were delicious, but version two (Heather's) was the consistent favorite and I’m not surprised as I’ve always liked my grilled chicken with a little char on it.  Next time I’ll do another test on Heather's version only by cooking one batch like the above and the second batch by basting a few times with the sauce rather than giving them the final toss in it.  Thanks Heather for posting your adaptation.

We finished off a fun evening with a nice dessert of provided by Laurie and David.

Photos best if enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/12/2013 event date