Sticky Gochujang-Honey Chicken

Sticky Gochujang Honey Chicken

Sticky Gochujang Honey Chicken

What happens when you marinate chicken in gochujang (spicy Korean chili paste), honey, ginger and garlic? Deliciousness, that’s what. Sticky Gochujang-Honey Chicken is our newest weeknight favorite: a little sweet, a lot spicy and just plain tasty. 

Hey, remember us? Nerds with Knives? The cheeky duo (plus dog) with a pantry full of spice and a devil-may-care attitude to food blogging? It’s been a minute since we’ve had a chance to blog a new recipe but we’re back, and we’re ready to mumble. (I think that’s the correct saying, anyway.)

It may not strictly be the New Year any more, but since this is our first post of 2020, we’re going to pretend that it is. And we wanted to start the year’s posts off with a bang. And when we think “bang”, we think “gochujang”.

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Caramelized Red Onion and Pear Tarts with Goat Cheese and Spicy Honey Drizzle

Red Onion and Pear Tarts

These are what you want for a holiday party: buttery puff pastry tartlets topped with oven-roasted pears, balsamic-caramelized red onions and goat cheese crumbles. A drizzle of spicy chili-honey puts it over the top. 

Red Onion Jam with Wine, Honey and Thyme

Red Onion Jam with Wine, Honey and Thyme

Sweet, savory and just plain delicious, Red Onion Jam with Wine, Honey and Thyme is a perfect addition to any cheese or charcuterie board. 

Caramelized red onions are tasty in their own right, but simmered in a sweet/spicy mix of red wine, honey and herbs, they turn into a the most delicious preserves ever. We made our jam (along with Homemade Maple Mustard!) to accompany our charcuterie board, but we have big plans for the leftovers. Click the link below for ideas (and the recipe!)

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Crispy AF, Oven-Fried Sriracha-Honey Wings

Crispy AF, Oven-Fried Sriracha-Honey Chicken Wings

Seriously crispy and coated with a sweet and spicy Sriracha-honey glaze, these oven-baked wings rival fried ones any day. This is game day food done right. 

I’m pretty sure you haven’t come to a site called “Nerds with Knives” expecting sports talk because we are not sporty people. Any yelling and screaming you might hear from our house on a late Sunday afternoon is more likely to be about the crossword puzzle than the N.F.L.  – and, just an aside to Will Shortz at the New York Times, there had better not be too many sports related questions or these two bespectacled nerds will not be happy.

But just because we don’t know a touchdown from a layup doesn’t mean we don’t know game day snacks. That, we have covered.

We got your spicy meatballs, your savory meatballs, your mini shrimp cakes, your spiced and candied peanuts.  And now… these wings.

Truly crispy wings with a sticky, sweet and spicy glaze. And the best part? They’re baked, not fried.

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The Pollinator (aka Sage Bee’s Knees)

The Pollinator (aka Sage Bee’s Knees)
The Pollinator (aka Sage Bee’s Knees)

A million years ago when I lived in Williamsburg (an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn that has since become incredibly trendy) with my roommate, Paola, we set up a massive garden on the roof of our loft. Being poor artists, we couldn’t afford planters so we used … brace yourselves … caskets. Yes, there was a casket factory across the street and every couple of months, they would throw out dozens of full-size aluminum caskets (for some reason that we never bothered to question). We dragged these crazy things to our roof, filled them with soil, and grew the most amazing herbs and vegetables that ever came out of something meant for a dead person. Of course it must have looked unsettling, all these caskets lined up in rows with plants growing out of them, but we didn’t care. In fact, we had enough sweet Roma tomatoes to make “casket sauce” as we called it (mostly to horrify our dinner guests).

Now I’m a big shot and have a deck and a yard and no longer have to resort to funeral paraphernalia to satisfy my green thumb. This year we’re growing more herbs than ever and for the first time, our sage plant bloomed with the most beautiful purple flowers. Nature, man.

Flowering Sage
Flowering Sage

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