Thai Curry Chicken Wings

When cookbook editor Leslie Jonath was thinking about contributors to tap for her big-batch book, Feed Your People: Big- Batch, Big-Hearted Cooking and Recipes to Gather Around, she knew she had to include James Syhabout. The creator of the Bay Area’s Hawker Fare, Hawking Bird, and Commis restaurants, he grew up among Isan Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian immigrants in Oakland. Squeezed into subsidized housing, the tenants held epic parties. “Dinners floated from apartment to apartment,” writes Syhabout in his own recent cookbook, Hawker Fare. “The messy prep would be all spread out on last week’s free newspapers, in colorful plas- tic or enamel bowls and plates. The women cooked without recipes, using only their eyes, their tongues, and their hands, which always remembered.”

Syhabout recalls how his mother used to make this chicken dish when he was a kid, with just the tips of the wings, since they were cheap and delicious. Here he uses widely available upper wing parts instead, but the intensely aromatic (rather than hot) seasonings are the same. If you want it scorching, bite into the sauce’s whole arbol chiles, or throw dried Thai chiles into the curry paste.

Beer pairing: Ice-cold Southeast Asian lager such as Phuket or Singha

Equipment:

• 2 to 3 large (6- to 8-qt.) pots
• Roasting pan
• Large rice cooker (or pot)