I know when I say chicken wings and boba some people might think of food courts and lazy weekends strolling through multi-leveled shopping malls. Won’t lie, I really miss that favorite of pastimes– not the shopping so much as chatting with my friends while we aimlessly strolled in and out of stores. It was exercise masked as retail therapy. And retail therapy is simply not as much fun or gratifying online, no matter how convenient.

Actually, what had me ruminating on chicken wings and boba was a series of articles I read the other day in resy.com about the evolving cultural identity and diversity of Chinatowns across the country and the dire economic struggles brought on by the pandemic. In one article, Six Dishes That Tell The Story of San Francisco’s Chinatown, one highlighted dish was the chicken drummettes at The New Golden Daisy, probably the only place left in Chinatown where you’ll find an authentic rendition of the adored Chinese American fried chicken, which apparently originated with Chef Joe Jung in the 1940’s. The chicken drummettes are marinated in a ginger-scented base, then dredged in rice flour and fried. The thought of those drummettes brought back a flood of child memories about time spent in Chinatown.

There was a period a time, from age five to about seven, when I’d regularly accompany my grandparents to Chinatown to visit an import/export company Grandpa apparently invested in. I’d roam around their dusty offices while the grown-ups talked shop. To reward me for my patience (or mitigate a potential melt-down) they plied me with little rolls of candied haw flakes (one of the many items the company imported from China). Made from mashed Chinese hawthorn and sugar, the “flakes” are small rosy pink, super thin disks packaged in short cylindrical stacks.

Their dry Necco wafer-like texture give way to a softer, chewier fruit roll-up consistency once you put them in your mouth. Peeling each disk from the stack and letting it melt in my mouth was half the fun.

As I got a little older, the treat I most looked forward to getting in Chinatown were fried chicken drummettes. Before we hopped on the 30 Stockton bus to go home, sometimes Grandma or Mom would pop into this Chinese deli/cafe on Stockton St. (Gourmet Kitchen?), conveniently located in front of the 30 Stockton bus stop, to pick up a bag of fried chicken drummettes. The drummettes had a lacy thin well-seasoned crust, savory with a mere hint of sweetness, fried to a light golden brown, precisely the right size to fit into my small hands.

Anyone who has ever ridden the 30 Stockton bus through Chinatown knows it’s an odorous hot box crammed to the rivets with sweaty bodies, not quite dead fish, and freshly butchered meat. The fact that I could still smell the inviting aroma of those chicken drummettes was a testament to just how good they were. Grandma would let me sneak a couple once we transferred onto to the less crowded L Taraval streetcar home. A mixture of chicken juice and fat would dribble down my chin when I bit into the tender drummette. Heaven!

I wanted to try making a version of the drummettes without actually frying…and without drummettes. Okay, yes I know that sounds a bit sacrilegious after waxing poetic about the classic fried drummettes. But I was curious to see if I could come close to approximating the crispiness of deep-frying without actually having to pull out my box of frying oil (which is now down to 1/8 full). Also, I’m a “flats” person. I prefer the darker meat of flats to the dryer white meat of drummettes. Besides, any flats aficionado will tell you that to turn a wing into a drummette all you have to do is yank out the skinny bone before digging in.

To achieve oven baked crispiness, I consulted J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who to me is the king of YouTube gourmet cooking hacks, having written and consulted for Cooks Illustrated for years. He made buffalo-style oven “fried” chicken wings using a fairly simple method of coating air-chilled chicken with a mixture of Kosher salt, baking powder, and cornstarch, then setting the pieces on a rack and letting them dry in the refrigerator for several hours before roasting at 425F degrees for a total of 40 mins., flipping the pieces once halfway through.

For my Chinese oven-fried wings, I substituted a premixed Chinese seasoning powder I use for roast pork for white pepper. I keep forgetting to replenish my pantry with ground white pepper so this was as close as I was going to get (short of using ground black pepper which tastes totally different). Fragrant galangal powder in the mix provides a zingy sweet spice. Kenji’s method requires starting off with as little moisture on the skin as possible so I had to stick to dry seasonings, which in this case was sea salt, a pinch of sugar and the seasoning mix. Baking powder is the secret ingredient to achieving the crackled, bubbled texture in the skin. I debated whether to swap out the cornstarch in Kenji’s recipe with rice flour, which is the prefer coating in classic Chinese fried chicken. After consulting with Karen, I decided to stick with the cornstarch which Karen thought would yield a dryer, crispier texture.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I didn’t know if the flats I procured from the butcher at my neighborhood Asian market were air-chilled. Judging by their semi-frozen state, I had my doubts. To facilitate the drying process I laid them out between layers of paper towel to soak up the excess liquid before dredging them in the dry mix. I let the flats hang out in the fridge for seven hours. Twenty-four would’ve been better, but I was hungry and wanted my damn chicken wings.

As Kenji promised, his oven-fry method produced wings that were light golden brown with a noticeably crisp light outer coating. I would’ve liked a bit more umami that say soy sauce might’ve provided. Nevertheless, I’d deem this experiment a tasty success.

If the fried chicken drummette harkens back to Chinatown’s past, then boba represents, for me, the present. I’m not suggesting that Chinatowns are overrun with bubble tea shops. Rather, I think boba symbolizes the entrepreneurial spirit of more recent (by that I mean within the last fifteen years or so) immigrants galvanizing the modern Chinatown economy–immigrants from Taiwan for example, who introduced the culture and language of bubble tea to the US.

One could argue that for some Taiwanese and other East Asian immigrants, boba has been a gateway to economic grown and success–through tea shops, smoothie joints and dessert cafes. Consider how many different variations one can find of these bulbous tapioca pearls–suspended in milk tea, hidden inside creme cakes, layered in frozen desserts and shaved ice concoctions, or garnishing cocktails.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Boba is not a hard sell. Those who embrace its characteristically chewy, bouncy, gelatinous texture–called the QQ factor–are often more than willing to embrace less mainstream, Instagram-worthy iterations like bubble tea with cheese foam, even if purely for the cool factor.

Although I love tapioca, I wouldn’t consider myself a boba fanatic. I will on occasion grab a bubble milk or Thai iced tea at the mall. I will say, though, I have a deep appreciation for the craft of making boba, especially after having had to cook more than twenty pounds of it for a holiday event.

It was my one only time preparing boba…until this past weekend that is. Looking to embark on an out of the ordinary cooking project I decided to try hand-rolling brown sugar boba. Karen’s son Henry started making them at home a couple of months ago and has yet to become disenchanted with the process. I had tapioca starch and brown sugar so I figured why not?

Let me just say right off the bat, this was almost about as time consuming as making dumplings. Now I know why Karen always ended up helping Henry roll the boba–it’s tedious! It doesn’t seem like that much dough, but divided into about a hundred tiny pieces, that’s a lot of balls. As if one set of boba wasn’t enough, I made two types–plain brown sugar and black cocoa brown sugar. Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment. I was intrigued by look of the two-tone boba in the Cooking Tree YouTube video, which seemed easy enough. What I didn’t count on was the time it took to make the dough, form the balls, cook the balls, and simmer them in brown sugar syrup. Start to finish the whole process took a little under two hours–relatively labor intensive…for a beverage. Still, I’ll admit I did have fun making the bobo, false start notwithstanding

Here’s what I learned from the experience. Boba dough needs to be firm enough for the balls to maintain a spherical shape during cooking. My first failed batch of plain dough was too soft and pliable which spelled disaster because they completely lost their shape in the boiling water, becoming bloated and mushy. On my second go around, I made sure the dough was firm, similar to the texture of fondant. Once I sectioned off the dough, formed them into skinny ropes, and cut them into tiny pieces, I had to work fast to roll all of it before the dough got too stiff. I recommend keeping the portioned out dough covered. I rolled the formed tapioca balls in more tapioca starch to prevent stickage.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I repeated the same method for cooking the brown sugar and tapioca starch “roux” for the black tapioca pearls. Instead of the regular cocoa powder used in the Cooking Tree recipe, I substituted black cocoa which gave the dough a more intense, darker color. I did find that this dough felt much softer than the plain one, so I kneaded in more tapioca starch, fearful for the repeat of the first failed attempt. Its slightly more pliable texture made it easier to form into balls, which fortunately retain the spherical shape once cooked.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I transferred the tapioca balls into an ample amount of boiling water, stirring them around to keep them from sticking to each other and bottom of the pot. Once they floated to the surface I reduced to heat to medium heat, periodically gave them a stir, cooked them for twenty minutes., then turned off the heat, covered the pot, and let the tapioca sit for twenty more minutes before straining out the liquid. I rinsed the tapioca pearls under cold running water before transferring them to a bowl of ice water.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The last step was to simmer the tapioca in a thick brown sugar syrup. Cooking Tree’s recipe uses a dark brown muscovado sugar for both the dough and the syrup, which I didn’t have. I used regular golden brown sugar for dough but for the syrup I used a combination of red date brown sugar (which I found at the Asian market) and golden brown sugar. This combination imparted a deeper, more complex flavor to the finished boba that I quite liked. It reminded me of flavors found in other traditional Chinese desserts.

To make the syrup I dissolved the sugars in water, brought it to a boil, then added the cooked tapioca and simmered and stirred them for about five minutes until the mixture was very thick.

• 

• 

After almost two hours later, I was finally able to spoon those luscious, glistening, fat bouncy, syrupy tapioca balls into a glass–tilting it to swirl the mixture along the sides to create “tiger stripes”–top with ice cubes and pour in some creamy Earl Grey Milk Tea. Ahhhh bodacious brown sugar boba refreshment!

• 

• 

I made way too much boba to finish by myself–not surprised. When I made the gargantuan batch for catering, I was told that the shelf life of prepared boba was at the most six hours. Apparently after six hours the texture deteriorates to a gummy mush. I hate waste, particularly when it’s something I’ve invested time making, so I transferred the remaining boba into a mason jar, added a little more brown sugar syrup to cover, then stashed the jar in the fridge. Since the boba was slightly on the firm side (not in a bad way) to begin with, I assumed it would keep for at least another day. When I checked the next the day, they were still intact. In fact, the center of the boba was actually very firm, not mushy or gummy–exact opposite of what I was expecting. With hopes of refreshing the boba, I zapped them in the microwave on medium power for about ninety seconds. What do you know…it worked! The boba was restored to its chewy, bouncy texture…ready for more milk tea.

Two-Tone Brown Sugar Tapioca Peals (adapted from Cooking Tree)

Brown Sugar Pearls:

• 45g dark brown sugar (muscovado)
• 60g water
• 90g tapioca starch
• 70g dark brown sugar (or 50% red date sugar) for syrup
• 140g water

Black Cocoa Brown Sugar Pearls:

• 50g dark brown sugar (muscovado)
• 60g water
• 85g tapioca starch, plus extra for kneading
• 5g black cocoa (or dark cocoa) powder
• 70g dark brown sugar (or 50% red date sugar) for syrup
• 140g water

• 

• 

1. Combine sugar and water in medium pot; stir to completely dissolve on medium heat.
2. *Whisk together tapioca starch and cocoa powder if making the black tapioca pearls.
3. Take the pot off heat and stir in about 2 t. tapioca to completely dissolve.
4. Return the pot to medium heat and stir continuously until bubbling and thick.
5. Take pot off the heat and stir in the remaining tapioca starch to form a shaggy mass, then tip onto a work surface.
6. Press and knead the shaggy mass into a uniform, smooth dough. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 15 mins.
7. Form the dough into a stubby log, then divide it into 5-6 portions. Keeping the unused dough covered, roll each piece into a skinny rope. Line up the ropes and cut them into small pieces (1/3″-1/2″ wide).
8. Quickly roll each piece into little balls, then roll the balls in tapioca starch to coat.
9. To cook, carefully lower the tapioca balls into pot of boiling water. Stir the tapioca balls around until they float to the surface, then reduce the heat to medium and set the timer for 20 mins., stirring the pot periodically to keep the balls from sticking together.
10. After 20 mins., turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the tapioca sit for another 20 mins.
11. Drain off the liquid and rinse the tapioca pearls under cold running water, then transfer them into a bowl of ice water.
12. Combine the remaining sugar and water in pot, stir and bring to a boil. Add the drained cold tapioca and simmer for 5-6 mins. on medium heat, stirring constantly until very thick.

Oven Fried Chinese Chicken Wings (J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method)

• 1 lb air-chilled chicken wings, pat dry
• 1 t. sea salt
• 1/4 t. sugar
• 1/2 t. ground white pepper
• 1/4 t. ground ginger or galangal powder
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1 1/4 t. cornstarch

1. Whisk together the dry ingredient in a medium bowl, then toss in chicken wings to thoroughly coat.
2. Lay the coated wings out on a baking rack set over a foil-lined sheet pan. Refrigerate uncovered for at least 12 hrs.
3. Preheat oven to 425F degrees. Place the tray of wings (rack and all) on the middle shelf and roast for 20 mins.
4. Take the wings out and flip them. Continue roasting for another 20 mins. or until golden.