I just saw an article on the Epicurious website about spicy honey.  Sweet and heat are spectacular together.  Some things are just meant to be…like Fred and Ginger, salt and pepper, beer and pizza (a holdover from college, I think) to name a few.  Rumor has it that those people over at Epicurious know a thing or two about cooking, flavors, and good food, in general, so I trust their ideas.  The Goddess loves to drizzle honey over fried chicken and she always puts some cayenne in the dredging flour…so sweet and heat!  This is simplicity itself; honey and red pepper flakes mixed together.  That’s it!  It’s good anytime of the year, but it just seems to beg to made around the holidays.  Think drizzled over roast turkey, on roasted vegetables, a bit in salads, drizzled over butternut squash soup or as we did here, bleu cheese and crackers.  And it will be a true hit on the appetizer buffet…chicken wings, anyone?

I’m not going to give you a proper recipe you can print, because you won’t need it.  Even The Goddess can remember this.  It’s simply:

• 1/4 cup honey, warmed slightly
• 1-2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

Stir them together, let them sit for a bit and your off to the races…you know, the Iditarod!  Isn’t that a great word?  Anyway, this can now be drizzled over brie, used as a dip for chicken fingers or coconut shrimp, and is sublime drizzled over pan-seared scallops and roast chicken with sweet potatoes.  It might make tree bark edible (or kale!).  Sorry, but The Goddess is sick to death of kale showing up in everything.  She likes kale, but everyone is running the “healthy” flag up the pole and it’s no healthier than most other greens.  It’s time to move on, please.

Back to the dish at hand, if you want to change-up the flavor a bit, substitute guajillo or chipotle chile flakes for all or part of the red pepper flakes.  Both are more nuanced and you’ll get some smoke with the chipotle.  I used part maple syrup and part honey…hey it’s New England.  I didn’t notice as as strong a maple flavor as I would have liked.  Maybe next time I will just use maple syrup.  It was very nice on salmon, but I didn’t bother with a picture, of course.  I warm the honey, not boil it, which is pretty easy to do in the microwave, about 20 seconds in mine.  I think the warm honey absorbs the chiles better…it could just be in my head.

It just hit me…wouldn’t Spicy Honey be a great nickname for The Latin Lover?  Yeah, I like it…we may need to look into that.  That’s pretty much it…how will you use Spicy Honey?  I know what I’m going to do with him…I mean, it!