More Pickle Dog Scoop

Turns out there's more to the Pickle Dog story than meets the eye.  And, if demand is high enough, we may even see the Deep Fried Pickle Dog.

Details at Ben's Biz Blog.

Enter the Pickle Dog

My beloved Charleston Riverdogs just announced their new additions to their already splendid food offering at the Joe.   Their lineup of hot dogs is already legendary (as discussed in this City Paper piece), but they've added a few more for good measure.

A couple seem insignificant: the Beantown Dog (top-sliced lobster-roll style bun with baked beans) and the Yankee Dog (w/ brown mustard, sauerkraut, and chow-chow).  Okay, so we have a lot of imported Northerners bouncing around Charleston these days, but do we really need to make them feel more at home?  Who needs more options when you already have the legendary Riverdog with yellow mustard BBQ sauce and a slice of pickled okra atop?

But wait . . . there's the Pickle Dog.  If the description and photo from the Riverdogs' web site is to be trusted,  this is a hot dog that instead of a bun uses a big fat dill pickle--slice the pickle, slather on coleslaw, and stuff a hotdog inside.  Let me repeat: a hotdog stuffed inside a dill pickle!

Could be legendary.  Could be revolting.  April 8th I'll be lined up at the Doghouse concession stand to find out . . .

Elie Interview by BBQ Jew

How's that for a melodic title?  There's a great interview with Lolis Eric Elie over at the BBQ Jew Blog.

Riding the Bacon Explosion

Aaron Chronister and Jason Day of the BBQ Addicts blog made a viral web splash with their infamous Bacon Explosion--two pounds of Italian sausage wrapped up in a basket weave of bacon strips (two pounds worth) and grilled. They posted the recipe on their blog in December 2008 and rode the 5,000-calorie pork loaf to fame, racking up more than half a million blog hits, notices in dozens of newspapers, and a Good Morning America appearance.

I was searching around on Amazon today and noticed that Chronister and Day have now parlayed that notoriety into a book, BBQ Makes Everything Better, which Scribner is bringing out in May.  The Bacon Explosion may have launched them into the limelight, but the book looks like more of a straight-up barbecue recipe book than a collection of flagrant high-calorie eating.

Still, the Bacon Explosion express rolls on . . .

Squashing Quail

I have a soft spot in my heart (and a subscription) for Garden & Gun magazine.  I know that it's a "lifestyle" magazine for a lifestyle that I'm quite a long way from embodying, but that's okay.  I like the pictures, and a lot of the articles, too.

My own tastes lean much more toward the garden than the gun.  The last animal I shot was a squirrel, and I was about 13, and it was with a BB gun, and the shot seemed to annoy the little guy rather than wounding him.  I can't conceive of paying $20,000 for a pearl-inlayed shotgun, though the things really are beautiful.  But, give me Robb Walsh writing about Gulf Coast oyster bars or P. J. Rourke and Roy Blount, Jr., writing about just about anything and I'm happy.

So, in the latest issue, there's a great looking braised quail recipe from Hugh Acheson of Athens's Five and Ten.  It particularly piqued my interest since Boone Hall Farms, which is about a half mile up the road from me, just started carrying whole quail and I've been looking for interesting things to do with it.  Scanning the ingredients list of Acheson's recipe (as reported by Francine Maroukian), I noted quail, sea salt, black pepper, leeks, and squash . . . wait . . . squash?

Upon closer inspection, the ingredient was not squash at all but rather "2 squash-ball-size yellow onions, peeled and halved."

Squash-ball sized?  It was like being in Toronto all of a sudden and trying to translate $3.75 Canadian dollars per liter to American dollars per gallon and figure out if it was a good price for gas.  How the hell big is a squash ball?  I know it's small--smaller than a tennis ball definitely, and, yes, probably smaller than a racquet ball, too.  I've seen golf-ball sized used a lot in recipes, but why would anyone choose to describe an onion as "squash-ball-size"?

Perplexed, I did a little research.

An official squash ball, as it turns out, is 40 millimeters in diameter, plus or minus .5 mm.    A United States Golf Association-approved golf ball, on the other hand, is up to 42.67mm in diameter.   I guess I have to admire the desire for precision in this recipe, for surely using an onion that is upwards of 2 mm too large might completely scotch the whole preparation, and, even if using a more common analogy like "golf ball" might make the recipe more accessible to the 99.8% of the population that's never seen a squash ball, you really don't want improperly-sized onions fouling up your braised quail.

But, "New South" measurements aside, it's a damn tasty looking recipe.

The Donut Wars are Heating Up

A new franchisee has taken over the Krispy Kreme store on Savannah Highway with plans to expand.  Meanwhile, rival Dunkin' Donuts is already underway with their own plan to add 20 more stores in the region.

Charleston Regional Business Journal.

Twitter Me this

More and more local chefs and restaurateurs are on Twitter these days, which is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on in local kitchens. Their tweets break roughly into two categories: feeds for the restaurant, which tend to announce specials and what not, and the chef's personal tweets, which I tend to find far more interesting.

Twitter is still in that early stage where people are working out what the heck the medium is good for.  I see that all the time at work (a software company), where I have clients who are insistent that they want to be doing 'Web 2.0 stuff, like Twitter," but they aren't quite sure what they should do with it.  The problem is that too many would-be-tweeters are focusing more on "what do I want to say" rather than "what would people want to hear from me?"

Restaurant and chefs tweets provide two good examples of where Tweeting is interesting and useful as well as a counterexample of where it can go bad.

I like restaurant tweets that are occasional and provide the rare piece of news that is out of the ordinary: a special guest chef dinner coming up, for example, or a particularly unusual daily special.  And by this I don't mean a tweet a day announcing "today's special: ribeye with veal demiglass."  Every restaurant has a special of the day.  I may not be in the majority here, but I'd much prefer a restaurant that tweets only once or twice a week with some really good stuff rather than every day with yet another special that blurs into the one offered the day before.

One of the most memorable meals I've had in recent memories started with a tweet, though.  I was out having beers with the food-writing gang from the City Paper and, just as we were discussing where to go get a bite to eat, a tweet came over from Mike Lata at FIG that fresh blue fin tuna was just in.  We paid the bar tab and  hopped over to Meeting Street and had some of the most incredible, melt-in-your-mouth fish I've ever tasted.  Definitely worth a tweet.

Chefs' personal twittering is something I've taken a liking to also.  As more and more local chefs gain national reputations, they're being invited to travel all over the place and cook special dinners, and I love keeping up with whose cooking where and, even more interesting, the kind of places they like to stop off and eat along the way, be it humble BBQ joints and the In-and-Out Burger or high-even places like WD-50 or the Slanted Door.  And, the non-food-related tweets are interesting too, since it helps add a little color to a chef's life--a few slightly-personal but not too personal details that help flesh out his or her personality.

So, that's my recipe for good restaurant/chef tweeting: good scoops and special information, but not too much  of it, and those little personal glimpses and details that help build more of a personal connection.

Interestingly enough, I personally like tweets that pass along the occasional tiny url link to an interesting food-related story on the web.  You don't want to do it.  If you send out a dozen of links a day and 90% of the stories aren't any good, that's a good route to getting "unfollowed."

So, I'll keep watching Twitter and looking to add more local chefs, writers, and other food-related tweeters to my list.  140 characters at a time.

TED Lectures

If you love food and haven't discovered the TED lectures, here's a nice digest of the ones on food topics:

http://www.ted.com/search?q=Food&x=0&y=0

Corn Broth & Vegetable Medleys

Back during the summer, I was interviewing Mike Lata of FIG for a Charleston City Paper article on local restaurant trends, and he talked about this fish and shrimp succotash thing that had become a regular on the menu.  The base of the succotash was something I'd never tried using before: corn broth.  But, the triggerfish with shrimp succotash was so knock-your-socks-off good, I had to start experimenting with corn broth.  It wasn't long before I was boiling up a dozen corn cobs at a time and freezing it for future use.

I was further inspired by John Ondo down at Lana, whose roasted chicken served over a bed of sauteed vegetables led me to a brief period where just about everything I cooked at home ended up being layered atop a medley of five or more veggies.  The Wife, whose vegetable intake in any given month may consist solely of onion rings and the pickle from a cheeseburger, has accused me of trying to sneak a full bushel of vegetables into her diet--but even she isn't complaining, because it's so darn good.

The corn broth is simple to make: you simply carve the kernels off of anywhere from 2 to 12 ears of corn, reserving the kernels for cooking or freezing.  Put the corn cobs in a pot with a bunch of water--at least enough to cover the cobs--bring it to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, then strain and put into storage containers for freezing.  Like chicken stock and duck fat, corn broth is a staple you should always have on hand in the freezer.

I need to come up with a snappier name than "vegetable medley", which sounds like something off the middle school lunchroom menu, but that's what it is.  The great thing about my corn broth preparation is that you can use it with just about any vegetables--whatever you see fresh at the store.   Usual suspects for mine: onions, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, corn (of course), shallots, and limas.  One of my particular favorites are previously-cooked blackeyed peas, which I goose up with onions and Benton's bacon and simmer for 45 minutes in chicken stock and white wine.  I always make these in bulk, so there's usually a big tub of them in the freezer and I can thaw out a half cup or so to use in the medley, being sure to include several good chunks of bacon to add to the flavor.

The key is to precook anything that required more than a few minutes to cook.  So, for example, I would blanche the green beans and use pre-cooked corn and blackeyed peas and get them ready ahead of time.

One of the many good things about this preparation is that it doesn't take very long to finish off once you get started.  I'm usually serving something like pan-seared fish (flounder and trigger are good candidates) or roasted chicken over the veggies, so you can get the meat all ready and in its finishing state in the oven and kick off the final veggie prep.

For that, I melt a tablespoon (or two) of butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat and add in, say, the onions.  Once they are starting to get translucent, I throw in the tender stuff like squash and zucchini and give it a couple of minutes of sauteeing.  Then, all the pre-cooked stuff, tossing it around for a minute or two until it's good and heated up.  Then, pour over it all a splash of white wine, let it bubble away for a few seconds, then pour in a cup or so of corn broth.   The pan is good and hot at this point, so the broth bubbles up pretty quickly and starts to boil, but you're not trying to create a reduction sauce here.  I let it bubble for a minute or so, so that it starts to reduce just a bit but is still definitely thin and brothy, then pour they veggie mix (broth and all) into a wide, shallow bowl and lay over the top the night's fish or meat selection.

The secret to it all is the corn broth. It has a rich, delicate flavor that really lights up the vegetables and lays a perfect foundation for a fish or poultry dish.

This is one that now has a permanent place in my kitchen rotation.

Winter Dining Downtown

The country makes me nervous. There's ... You got crickets and it-it's quiet ... there's no place to walk after dinner." -- Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall

I've had several dinners out downtown in recent weeks, and now that the weather has finally turned cold (and by cold, for Charleston that means the mercury dipping down into the 30s), I'm finding I'm enjoying dinners out even more than I usually do. Having on-premise parking is usually seen as a big plus for a restaurant, but lately I've noticed how much I enjoy that element of dining that you only get in a downtown setting: the walk to and from dinner.

There's just something wonderful about walking a few blocks to a restaurant when it's just gotten dark, and it's chilly enough outside to bite at your ears and make your toes a little cold, and the streets are just starting to pick up with the nighttime traffic.

You pick up the pace as you get within a block or two of your destination, because the wind's picking up and sneaking inside your collar, and your cheeks are starting to tingle a little. You get to the restaurant, pull open the big glass door, and step inside to a transformed world. It's a warm, well-lit room busting with people. They're laughing and enjoying themselves, swapping stories and telling jokes. And, more than anything else, there's that all-encompassing, splendid aroma of good food: roasted meats and seared fish and fresh-baked bread. It's one of the best smells in the world.

And, after dinner, that bracing four block or five block walk back to the car is delightful, too. It helps take the edge off the meal you just ate and the wine you just drank. You wouldn't want to hike several miles in the frigid night, but four or five blocks is just right. It leaves you, at the end of the night, happy and satisfied, with that peaceful sense that, for this evening at least, all is right with thw world.