Apricot-Chili Chicken Wings

A number of cultures around the world mix hot chili peppers with sweet or sweetened fruit. I like such things, and this is one recipe I especially like. You can use peach or mango preserves too.

Ingredients:

24 chicken wing pieces, the store bought frozen wing pieces
1 tablespoon seasoned salt
1/2 of an 18 oz. jar apricot preserves
1 or 2 chili peppers, depending upon desired heat level,* chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons butter

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the wing pieces out on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Sprinkle each piece with some seasoned salt. Bake for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the preserves, garlic and chili peppers in a pan. Over medium low heat, cook until bubbling lightly, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and let gently cook for a few minutes to soften the garlic and peppers, and to mix the flavors. Turn off the heat. Pour 1/2 of the sauce into a bowl, keep the other 1/2 in the pan. Add one teaspoon of butter to the sauce in the pan, stir well to melt and mix. Add the other teaspoon of butter to the sauce in the dish, stir well to melt and mix. After 40 minutes in the oven, remove wings and toss them in the sauce in the pan to coat, return them to the baking sheet and bake another 5 to 7 minutes. Serve with remaining sauce on the side.

* The heat level of chili peppers can vary considerably, even with the same type of peppers. For the wings in the photo below, I used one mild red chili pepper, a type of pepper that is usually very mild to mild, but on occasion, I'll get one that is hotter than usual. I also used one serrano chili, a pepper type I love, and a type which usually has a fair to above average heat level. I had thought to use a second serrano, but I decided against it, fearing it would be too hot and hide the other flavors. In the end, I was disappointed, because the one serrano I used turned out to a milder pepper than usual (pretty rare by my experience), so the heat level was too low for me. I should have tasted the serrano first to see how hot it was. If you do taste hot chili peppers to check the heat level, take a small piece from near the stem end, where the pepper will be hottest, otherwise you can be fooled by tasting the end of the pepper, which can be very mild, but further up the pepper is much hotter.

WORD HISTORY:
Wing-The ancient history of this common word is uncertain. English borrowed the noun form as "wenge" from Old Norse "vaengr," circa 1200. Old Norse was another Germanic language, thus making it closely related to English, but it was from the North Germanic branch, while English is from the West Germanic branch. Old Norse spawned the main modern North Germanic languages Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. Where did Old Norse get their word "vaengr"? There are theories about a possible Old Germanic ancestor (like 'weingan'), and some theories even carrying an Old Germanic form back to an Indo European root ("we/weh," meaning "to make air move, to blow"), but I'm not completely sold on it; at least, not at the moment. (NOTE: If "wing" does go back to these Indo European and Old Germanic forms, it is related to "wind," a word from the Germanic roots of English.) The verb form came from the noun, but not until the late 1500s or early 1600s.^ Other relatives of "wing" are all from North Germanic: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all have "vinge," and Icelandic has "vaeng/vaengur." The other West Germanic languages use words related to "fly" as their words for "wing:" German "Flügel," Low German Saxon "Flögel," Dutch "vleugel." Before English borrowed "wing," the word for such was "fiðere" (equivalent to "fithere"), an old form of modern "feather."

^ The verb has a couple of common meanings: "use wings to fly" ("Many birds wing their way northward in the spring"), "wound," likely from hunters hitting fowl in the wing ("The ranch hand winged the cattle rustler as he tried to flee.") The noun also came to be used for parts of large buildings, like the "West Wing" of the White House. The use is often directional, but it can also be by a specific procedure done in a large building, like the "surgical wing" of a hospital, or the "audio-visual wing" of a library.