Super Sunday Supper

I'm still behind on a post of Friday's dinner, but that will have to wait until later this week, mainly because my husband was in charge of smoking a cut of pork that night, so he has the ingredients in his head. And that is difficult to extract right now since he's preoccupied with the Super Bowl.

So, I generally use Super Bowl Sunday as an excuse to make one of my favorite foods: chicken wings. In fact, it's kind of a nod to our first few months of dating, when the husband made chicken wings for our first Super Bowl together. Tonight, I went straight to one of my favorite culinary sources: Alton Brown. Though his recipes tend to be a bit more involved than others, they are worth it. Tonight's was relatively simple and absolutely perfect. Next time around, I will add more hot sauce (Texas Pete was the choice tonight), but the texture of these was amazing. Thanks to steaming the chicken wings beforehand and letting them dry out in the refrigerator before roasting, the result is an extra crispy skin and a moist, tender, meaty inside. Perfection. Just serve with some carrots/celery and your favorite wings dipping sauce.

The main dish was Shrimp and Grits, a recipe that is, to us, the penultimate shrimp and grits. For tonight, I upped the shrimp to 1.5 pounds and used extra mushrooms. This really requires no side dish--it's filling on its own. If you feel comfortable fixing the grits and the shrimp at the same time, it's worth it to do it that way. If you want to start and complete the grits first, just set the saucepan on low when you've finished that portion of the recipe.