The Sunday Dinners project is a collaboration between Andrew Schloss and Cookthink.

Cooks are incessant matchmakers, coupling ingredients with the zeal of professional marriage brokers. Driven by the notion that anything can be made to taste better in the presence of its ideal mate, we are always searching for the perfect flavor combination. We wheedle and taste-test and probe, but sometimes accident does all the work for us, leaving us with nothing in the cupboard but a bottle of hot sauce and some blue cheese dressing.

Legend has it that that’s exactly what happened to Theresa Bellisimo, owner of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, who, in 1964 was delivered an excess of chicken wings and decided to serve them in a glaze of hot sauce.

No one quite remembers exactly when the balm of blue cheese dressing was added to sooth the inflamed oral tissue, nor the palate-cleansing celery stick garnish, but Buffalo Chicken Wings were an instant success, and put Northwestern New York cuisine on the map. So great was their impact that in 1977, the city of Buffalo declared July 29 “Chicken Wing Day.”

I, for one, will always be grateful, for I have found the magical elixir of equal parts butter and Frank’s Red Hot Sauce to have alchemistic powers, transforming regular old fried fish, French fries and burgers into flavor grenades. And all it takes is a quick dip.

This week’s menu owes its inspiration to the long-retired folks at the Anchor Bar. My rendition of the original wing recipe has added bacon in the blue cheese dressing and a little honey in the hot sauce mix. The celery sticks are stir-fried, and a tomato-mint salsa takes over the palate-cleansing task.

Recipe: Spicy Chicken Wings With Bacon Blue Cheese Dressing (Sunday Dinners)
Recipe: Stir-Fried Celery And Carrot Sticks (Sunday Dinners)
Recipe: Baked Potatoes With Basil Butter (Sunday Dinners)
Recipe: Tomato Mint Salad (Sunday Dinners)

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