Fun with Chicken wings, Spicy Sweet and Sour Sauce, Peanut Butter Sauce

  So I was wanting a wide mouth deep cooking tool (it helps avoid grease splatters all over the stove).  A wok is soooo versatile.  I found this one for $5.  I don't like the wooden handles (they tend to deteriorate fast), but it might work out just fine over the long haul.

     It was so much fun cutting up the chicken wings and coating them with a mixture of corn starch, all purpose flour (I think self-rising flour would have produced an even crispier crust) to which I should have added baking powder but I forgot, salt, and pepper.

     I fried the wings twice.  Yes!  Fry for about 6 minutes on each side, remove, then fry the whole batch a second time for about 5 - 10 minutes... to add to the crispiness!

     

     I've been anxious to try this homemade spicy, sweet, and sour sauce.  In a food processor, I chopped nectarines, apricots, ginger, red pepper flakes, and raw honey.  I let the mix chill in the fridge for a few days.

     I put about a cup of the mix and about 1/8 cup of brown sugar into a sauce pan and placed it on medium heat.  When the mix came to a simmer, I added a corn starch paste I made with apple cider vinegar (about 1/4 cup).  The mix thickened as I stirred slowly but thoroughly.  I poured the mix into a cereal bowl and added some chopped peanuts.  It came out perfect.  Not too hot, not too sweet, not too sour.  Coated on the chicken.... Wow!

     I mixed a bit of the sauce above into a batch of peanut butter sauce I made.  Oh God!

     How did I make the peanut sauce?  I made it up as I went by doing this.  I used the layer of drippings from the fried wings.  I added a teaspoon of butter, 1/2 cup of peanut butter, and about 1/8 cup of raw honey to the drippings.  Stirred all that while heating to a simmer.  Then I added a corn starch past made with a table spoon of the cooking oil I used to fry the chicken.  It thickened as I stirred.  When I felt it was thick enough, I removed it all from the stove, and added about 1/8 cup of chopped peanuts.  It thickened some more as it cooled.  Later I added what was left of the spicy-sweet-n-sour sauce to the peanut butter sauce.  I poured all that into a 2 quart sauce pan and added what was left of the fried chicken... stirred it all together and let sit on the stove (turned off) so we could snack on it.