Food for Thought: Hot Dogs

First, a brief history. Sausages were the precursor to hot dogs, and may have originated in Frankfurt, Germany. They started being sold as hot dogs around 1870 on Coney Island in New York. In case you are an alien, hot dogs are tubes of meat (typically beef, or a combo of other meats) served on a bun with a variety of toppings available Also check out this wiki page of hot dog variations by region.

Hot dogs are like a good pair of jeans - they are easy to accessorize. Different color denim - different types of meat. A belt? Ketchup. I like hot dogs because the flavor in them is basic, but they are easy to dress up, and stylize with a pair jacket or any number of other toppings. Okay, that’s enough of that metaaphor.

Instead of a metaphor, let me tell you about a mountain of gluttony that I scaled late last year. I was on vacation in Phoenix, Arizona and on one of our last nights in town, we went to Alice Cooperstown restaurant near the stadium downtown. Co-owned with Randy Johnson, the pitcher who exploded a fucking bird during Spring Training in 2001, the restaurant features a menu item named for Johnson, the Big Unit. (FYI, the video incorrectly identifies the bird as a duck. It was actually a dove. And his name is Johnson, not Jackson. I think they might be mislabeled because the MLB has removed every other video of the incident.)

Weighing in at one full pound and measuring 22 inches and served on a full baguette, this meal is also served with two sides. This daunting dog was featured on Man versus Food as the fully loaded Big Unit. Plus sides. I’m not totally insane, and I wasn’t high, so I stayed safe with the sides of chili and fries.

Because I’m The Man, I managed to finish my Big Unit and it’s accompanying side dishes. My two friends that I was competing against did not fare as well as I did. B ate about half of his monster, and K chickened out. He peeled the casing off of the meat, didn’t work on the bread, and still didn’t finish the Vienna Beef.
Above is a picture of me holding my portion of the Big Unit. If you should chose to eat something this size, I would recommend hot sauce or ketchup because the dog got bland after a while.

I was inspired to write this post because hot dogs for me are a good stand by food when you aren’t sure what you want to flavor your food with. It’s easy to go sweet (ketchup), salty (cheese), or spicy (Siracha). I made two unique hot dog blends recently and wanted to share them. Today’s selection, show immediately below,
was on a bed of baked beans, with corn and American cheese and Siracha and ketchup. Below is my other design, a chili cheese dog with a Mexican cheese blend and salsa.
As I leave you with this information to digest, I want to know what makes your perfect hot dog, and how you try to accessorize it.

Smoke well,
XY

PS. hot dogs are also known as wieners. WIENERS I SAY!

Lasagna

I'm planning to make lasagna this weekend and, if all goes as planned, you can follow along through the steps. I usually go "off-book" (as in recipe book...obvi) when I cook and eyeball the amounts of ingredients that I add, but I'll try my damnedest to keep up with what I add and/or document it all photographically so that we know exactly how to re-make the dish if it's good and so anyone else who accesses this page can try to make it to.

First, the ingredients. Now, this is only what we're planning on putting in it right now but I usually raid the spice cabinet a few times when I'm in the middle of recipes so this is subject to change. Also note that I'm making the sauce from scratch so many of these ingredients are for that.

1 29 oz can tomato puree
1 29 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 6 oz can of tomato paste
4 large hot Italian sausages (it's okay if it's in the casing...we can cut off the part we don't want pretty easily)
1/4-1/2 lb ground beef (we're going with 85/15 because we like the flavor)
medium-large Spanish or yellow onion
1 medium shallot
1 head of garlic (okay, that's a lot...but we haven't decided how much to use or whether or not to roast it first so we're keeping our options open for now)
1 green bell pepper
1 fresh Serrano chili pepper (this is a shot in the dark - we know we want spicy but we don't know peppers well enough to figure out which variety will give us what we want)
1 box no-boil lasagna noodles
1 small container ricotta cheese
1 cup grated mozzerella cheese
1 cup parmesan/romano cheese blend
2 medium-small zucchinis
1 lb frozen spinach
2 fresh tomatoes
~2 tbsp olive oil
salt
pepper

It looks like a lot of ingredients but they're all relatively inexpensive, especially considering the sheer volume of food that it will produce.

So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to pack a bowl and watch some Food Network to get myself revved up and then I'm going to cook the sauce. After the chopping and meat browning is done and the ingredients are assembled I'll let it simmer together for anywhere from 2-4 hours and probably do another minor cooking project which is yet to be determined and may or may not be related to this recipe. Once the sauce is finished I'll make some sort of cheese blend sauce and prep the veggies. When I finish THAT I'll go ahead and assemble the whole thing and then refrigerate it until tomorrow night, at which time the lovely boyfriend and myself will enjoy dinner, wine, and a movie.

Check back later for my progress and possibly some pictures!

Sous chef comments!

Even though I was just the sous chef for the stuffed shells and the burger experiment, I have a few quick notes of my own.

Even though our stuffed shells didn't come out too well, I do think that there is something to be said for blending recipes. I know that my co-author and head chef XY doesn't like that, but some of my best dishes have come from blending recipes. It won't work for baking (baking is all about chemistry and reactions and stuff), cooking is meant to be fun and experimental. Remember the line from Ratatouille - "Anyone can cook!"

Now on to the burgers. I made mine on the stove top and it was really good. I wouldn't recommend mixing the meats and seasonings well myself because if you handle ground meat too much it becomes tough. I would suggest just mixing them together so that it's blended just enough. We also let our patties rest at room temp for about 10-15 minutes before cooking them. Not sure if it's necessary, but my dad always does that and he makes GREAT burgers.

I cooked my burger medium/medium rare even though XY likes his medium/medium well. I think I get a better flavor that way but it really is personal preference. My toppings were fresh grated Asiago cheese and some chopped red onion and it was delicious. Asiago isn't quite as pungent as some other cheeses but the flavor compliments the beef nicely. The red onions added a nice crunch and the flavor cut through the grease well, but I wouldn't slice an onion just for this burger.

Moving on to the cheese crisps...

At a restaurant near my parents' house they top their caesar salad with these parmesan crisps that are really good and add a beautiful crunch to the texture of the dish. I saw Giada de Laurentiis made them on the Food Network once but I sort of forgot about it until last night.

This is a good example of blending recipes successfully. I went to the Food Network website to find her recipe (here it is), but I also liked Alton Brown's version (can't find the link - sorry!) and some others that I saw on ChowHound (a favorite foodie forum of mine). I ended up using Giada's basic formula but I went with Asiago cheese (we had it on hand already) and instead of lining a sheet with parchment paper I just greased it liberally with olive oil (or, as they say on TV, EVOO). I spread the cheese thinly and evenly into 6 circles and popped it in a preheated 350 degree oven for 5-7 minutes (if you try this watch closely - you want the cheese to become golden brown but not burn!). After they were the proper color I removed the crisps from the oven and used a spatula to transfer them from the cookie sheet to paper towels immediately. Be careful when you pull them from the oven - after they cool they get really, really crispy and brittle so you want to do this ASAP.

I know that's a big block with a lot of info, so I'm going to post a clearer, step by step recipe with pictures and variations the next time I make them (possibly tonight!).

-XX

Eat This: Burgers

Overall Rating: 8/10, Fast cook time, messy/greasy, easy to make



I can't say enough about Burgers. I fuckin' love them. Homemade, store bought, or from a restaurant, they are always good. Last night we made some delicious burgers, each one built from scratch and unique. Making burgers is simple and fun. You get to combine whatever you want with the meat, then just cook it.

For this recipe we bought about 1.3 pounds of 80/20 ground beef. The percent of fat doesn't matter so much if you are going to use a George Foreman type grill, but I typically get either 10% or 20% fat. For this batch of burgers we decided to flavor the beef with Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper. Once the beef is mixed well with the flavorings, I like to use my hands to cut an 'X' into the beef, so I get about 4 equally sized portions.

The first burger was made in a sauce pan. Don't use any oil or grease, let the burger cook in its own fat. It takes a little bit longer to cook this way because there is not an equal amount of heat on all sides of the burger, but it is worth the wait. Burgers cooked in this way have so much more natural flavor and don't need any extra sauces.

I cooked Burger 2 on the stove, in the grease leftover from the first one. I stuffed this burger with a mix of shredded Asiago cheese and Yellow Hungarian Wax Peppers. I tasted the pepper as a slice before cooking and it was crazy hot. Diced into the burger, the spicy pepper taste was lost. I recommend keeping the pieces bigger or just using them as a topping. I topped this burger with red onions and American cheese. I used a Vienna roll with a spread of a spicy Chipolte sauce. This burger cooked in less than 10 minutes and was SO juicy! I didn't need to use any extra sauces or anything. This was the best burger of the night.

Burgers two and three cooked on the George Foreman. Be careful when using a George Foreman! They cook fast and you can't see food while it cooks. It is useful though because you can fit 2 burgers on at once. One of these was stuffed with cheese and peppers, the other had a bit of cheese and a secret ingredient: a few drops of Liquid Smoke. It added a great smokey flavor to the burger that reminded me of pulled pork. Both of these burgers got American cheese and were served on normal hamburger buns. While neither burger needed extra sauce, I did add an 'X' of Sriracha for an intense flavor. This hot sauce is also good to marinate the beef with.

My sous chef made an extra ingredient that went great on Burger 2, the mega burger. She greased a cookie sheet with oil, then put patties of Asiago cheese. Cooked at 350 for about 5 minutes, these were great crispy toppers to the burgers. I would even eat these on their own.


Tips and Tricks:
-Wear a shirt or apron when cooking burgers on the stove. The splattering oil is hot.
-Stuff your burgers carefully. I have two techniques for stuffing meat. Sometimes I make 2 smalls patties and combine them with my extras in the middle. For this recipe I chose to mix in the stuffing with the meat. Ensure that cheese is not on the outside of the meat, keep it in on the inside.
-When in doubt, go light on the seasonings prior to cooking. It's easy to add more flavor later, but tough to get rid of what is not wanted.
-Taste stuffing or toppings prior to inclusion to ensure you like their flavors.
-When doing the clean up, let grease cool then pour it in the trash. Dumping down the drain will give you a bad smell and plumbing problems. I like waiting until the grease is dry and easy to spot.
-For a different taste, use ground turkey instead of beef.




-XY

Don't Eat This: Stuffed Shells

Overall Rating: 4/10 Edible, but not memorable or exciting.

Problem #1: We couldn’t find a recipe we agreed on for making this dish, so we decided to combine Internet recipes and the one from the back of the Shell box. Sticking to an entirely scripted menu or to an entirley improvised one works best. Mixing and matching is not easy and some essential elements of one or the other end up being sacrificed.

Problem #2: Despite writing it on TWO separate shopping lists, we forgot (whoops) to get the Mozzarella Cheese. We used fresh Parmigiano Reggiano and Ricotta Cheese. I think that the cheese stuffing we used would have been thicker and easier to manipulate with the additional cheese.----- Sub-complaint: Typing these Italian words into my browser changed my default language to Italian. Be warned

Problem #3: Messy. Getting the stuffing into the shells was messy. All I did was place the shells into the dish/sauce and my hands were covered in sauce. Putting the stuffing into the shells required patience and precision with a spoon. I can’t imagine how difficult this would have been to do on my own.

Problem #4: Taste. My sous chef really likes adding onion and bacon to most pasta dishes, so we did it this time. They took away from the cheesiness but helped make up for our missing ingredient in size. The onion was mild and so were the cheeses. The bacon came through well but it was a very mild dish. It wasn’t even sweet or salty.

Problem #5: It was better the next day. On Day 2 of Stuffed Shells they held together better. I don’t know how much of this came from the new consistency, but there was a more evident pepper flavor. When I put in almost an hour of cooking and prep time, I want a dish that will be excellent as soon as it comes out of the oven/microwave/pot as it is on Day 2 or Day 3.

If you decide to make this recipe anyway:
Get all your cheeses.
Be ready for a mess (or get help).
Use a chunky sauce to add texture.
Frozen stuff has about as much taste as this did fresh.
Add broccoli to the mix. This could have really used some fresh veggies.
Always use potholders.

-XY