Brawlin' Wings

What you need to get:

Three lbs. of chicken wings (don't even bother trying to steal these)

Salt and pepper (check your local diner, pretend you just wanted to "use the restroom")

Red salsa or salsa verde (I use red salsa after a particularly shitty day)

Butter, about half a stick (unbelievably hard to steal)

Carrots

Celery

Ranch Dressing

My sous-Angry Chef Tulip and I got in a little bit of a spat. It involved something about ethnic cooking and a mistake I made with her tofu scramble and the fact that she "accidentally" poured water all over my cell phone. It ended with rocks being thrown, one of the lamps through my TV, and the cops coming to my patio door with their guns drawn. Once we all agreed that the whole thing was a "misunderstanding", it was all good. And, the whole situation inspired this recipe, which my sous-Angry Chef Tulip thought was, after her eyes stopped blazing red, hot spurts of flames, delicious.

My best advice about this recipe is to make it when you're super pissed off. Otherwise its not the same.

First of all take the biggest knife you have, or an axe, and chop off the ends of the wings and then chop them in half at the joint. It is perfectly acceptable to scream "motherfucker" over and over again while you do this. Think "Psycho".

Then, lightly sprinkle the wings with salt and pepper, both sides dumb ass, and softly coo to them about the hell they are in for. Dante-esque heat. Sizzling fat being rendered out of their little bodies. Dipped into a sauce from a hidden valley where strange looking children devour veggies all the time.

Tulip is telling me I'm getting carried away and need to calm down. Apparently, the neighbors are starting to gather outside the front window.

So, deep breath, put the wings on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven, at 425 degrees, for about 40 minutes. Make sure the sheet is oiled, otherwise you'll end up tearing them to pieces. We want to get medieval here, but not that medieval.

My sous- Angry Chef Tulip is preparing the sauce for the wings in the meantime. All she's had to do is melt half a stick of butter and about three to five tablespoons of hot salsa in a small pan. Her rule is to use more hot sauce than you think you can handle. If you can not abide by this rule your wings will suck, and so will you.

After the forty minutes in the oven, take out the wings and paint them, on both sides dumb ass, with the salsa/ butter mixture. Do not skimp on this part. Use all the sauce you've made. This part is easy. DON'T FUCK THIS UP.

Put the wings back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

I asked my sous- Angry Chef Tulip to cut up a little cilantro, scallions, and jalapeno to toss with the wings when they're ready, but she's still a little pissed at me. Instead, she cuts up some celery and carrots into sticks and squirts a big glop of Ranch dressing on to the middle of her plate. "This'll be good enough, don't you think?" she says to me. And we both try to stare each other down and growl a little.

When the wings are done, we both toss a few on our plates and devour them while we watch the movie "Falling Down". Later we scream at the TV watching the World Cup and the local Fox News. The cops are called again, but, this time they see that we aren't killing anyone. Tulip shows them her garlic mushroom hummus recipe and everything's all good.

Every once in a while, a good brawl is all you need...