Saturday Six

1. You order a plate of wings. What's your first choice: mild, hot, inferno, or teriyaki? 

Hot! All the way. With extra ranch and celery sticks please. Also an entire pitcher of water. Yeah, you can just leave that at the table. Thanks. 

2. Which makes the best base for barbeque sauce: mustard, vinegar, or ketchup? 

If it's not vinegar it's not barbeque. That's all there is to that one. Sides for today include collard greens and fried okra, with cornbread. 

3. If you could learn the eleven herbs and spices used in Kentucky Fried Chicken, how likely would  you be to attempt to make it yourself? Why? 

Highly unlikely. For starters, my buttermilk recipe is better. And as if I needed another reason, I make fried chicken all of once or twice a year, and I'm not going to waste my chicken skin on KFC. 

4. Take the quiz: Which condiment are you? 

I am barbeque sauce. "You are a social person. You enjoy cooking for other people. You are both skillful and competitive. You enjoy mastering hard tasks. You appreciate complexity more than simplicity. Your taste in food tends to lean towards interesting flavors. You appreciate exotic spice combinations. You tend to like cutting edge, fusion cuisine. You get along with all personalities from a distance. Except salsa personalities, who always seem to annoy you. 

5. Of the condiments currently in the refrigerator, which would you say you have used the least in the last year? 

Probably sweet pickle relish. It seems to be a midwestern/northern thing. I was raised on dill pickles, with the occasional bread-and-butter sneaking its way in on family holidays. My great-aunt Janet used to make them, may still do so, I'm not sure. But, sweet pickle relish is disgusting, and as you head west from Raleigh it only gets worse because once you hit Chicago it turns green. 

6. After months of unsuccessful attempts, you finally get the recipe for a food you enjoy. When making it for the first time yourself, you discover an individual ingredient that you hate in everything else. Would you still make the dish with that ingredient, or would you try it without?

I would make it with the ingredient. There's very few things that I dislike as far as food goes, but even so, the question assumes that I've not only already had the dish, but that I enjoyed it so much as to want the recipe. If another chef came up with it, I'm unlikely to change it unless it contains something I'm allergic to (or pretend to be allergic to get out of eating it: fresh tomatoes, bananas).