New York is a buzz with excitement to see the New York Giants play in the Super Bowl this weekend and one ICE alum is working hard to make sure they play their best. ICE alum Gaetano Corteo (Culinary Management ’09) will be delivering over a dozen pizzas to Indianapolis for the team. His family’s pizzeria, Umberto’s Pizzeria in New Hyde Park, Long Island, has a Friday tradition of delivering pizzas to the Giants.

Today, the Friday before Super Bowl XLVI, Gaetano will take an early Delta flight this morning, carrying the pizzas in custom-made heat-retaining bags. Reports are that special arrangements have been made with federal airport screeners to get the piping-hot pies quickly through security at La Guardia. In the New York Post, Gaetano, Umberto’s general manager said, “It’s a dream come true.” And in the Wall Street Journal, he joked that he didn’t want to risk angering lineman David Diehl,  “I don’t want David mad at me. I don’t stand a chance against him—I’m just 5-10.”

Fingers crossed the pizza makes it there safely!

It’s Super Bowl week and I find myself thinking less about the match-up on the field and more about what I’m going to eat during the game. Recently I’ve been working on the Ultimate Make-at-Home Buffalo Wings. It’s the perfect recipe for your own Super Bowl party, guaranteed not to set your oven fire (yes, there’s a story there). But as I been preparing for ICE’s first sous-vide seminar, I decided to see if technology could help us build a better chicken “wing”. Here’s the play-by-play…

Brine First
There’s nothing technologically advanced about brining, but there are some things you shouldn’t mess with. Whether you making chicken for a Tuesday night dinner or a pull-out-all-the-stops, completely-impractical-but-delicious batch of buffalo wing, brining has major advantages. An overnight soak in a brine leaves meat juicier and more flavorful after cooking. Vacuum packing (sous-vide-ing) meat in a bag with a brine helps the brine to penetrate the meat more completely. After sealing the chicken legs in a sous-vide bag, they rest in the refrigerator overnight so the brine can work its magic. The chicken may then be cooked in the bag with the brine. For very tender meat that could easily be pulled from bone, the chicken was cooked at 151˚F (66˚C) for 4 hours.

Perfect Chicken Brine
6 chicken legs
500 grams buttermilk
20 grams fine sea salt
15 grams sugar
4 grams smoked paprika

Combine the buttermilk, salt, sugar and paprika in a bowl and whisk until dissolved. Pour over the chicken and leave to marinate overnight. More…