Austin City Unlimited, Part II - Live Music City's other not-so-weird offerings

As I noted in a previous post, I visited Austin recently.  It is a food city with lots of barbecue, lots of Mexican food, and lots of Tex-Mex food.  But please don't assume that's all there is.  Oh no, there is so much more wonderful food.

I've visited a few Whole Foodses before: DC's very large one near Dupont Circle, the West Hollywood one near Fairfax, and both of Baltimore's, plus random ones in Philly and Manhattan.  I did not know this until just before I visited this proudly weird city, but Whole Foods began in Austin.  

As such, its biggest Whole Foods on North Lamar is so massive and so very comprehensive that it puts any other I have ever visited to shame (especially both of Baltimore's, which are peensy boutique markets by comparison).  

Electronic, updatable labels?  What kind of carbon footprint does that make?

This place has a few massive buffets, a barbecue station (natch), a gelato station, a taco station, walls of coffee, chocolates, tea - yes, tea - a large bakery, massive wine section, a walk-in beer freezer, bulk goods (five types of bulk quinoa alone), even a section where they sell environmentally friendly locally sourced clothing.

Just one section of The Wall Of Bulk Foods

I visited twice, once for a large Texas-shaped candy bar that I brought home as a gift for the family, and once for breakfast.

Their breakfast buffet had delicious and hearty offerings and I just took a smattering: everything from cheese grits to bacon to vegan migas and so much more.  And yes, there are recycling stations everywhere.

The same family friend who recommended Ruby's also highly recommended Trudy's, also on the north end of UT Austin, on a very residential street off Guadalupe. I was hoping for lunch, but they didn't open until 2 at all.  I hoofed it the 20 minutes onto campus to see the Texas Natural Science Museum - notable for its paleontology exhibit and native Texas animal dioramas - and came back around 2:30.  I then found out that, though open, they don't serve anything other than appetizers until 4.  Not willing to wait any longer, I hobbled together a meal from a few appetizers - the small bowl of chile con queso with chunks of chicken was doable, and came with plenty of house nachos and crackers.  The tortilla soup I ordered, also a small bowl, was clear and the restaurant kept the tortilla shreds and cheese separate so I could add them myself.  I ordered a margarita on the rocks, though in retrospect I wish I had gotten the frozen one, not because it was hot out (which it was), but because I think I would have liked it better.  It had a mild kick, and was not particularly strong.  The beer I had along with it had the kick, and with the small amount of food I started to feel it.  Not full or terribly satisfied (again, no full menu), I finally got full with a basic (large) burger at the local Whataburger down the street.

A San Antonio based burger chain, by the way, with locations throughout the Southwest.

The Austin and Houston areas have fairly sizable Vietnamese-American population, and phở is easy to find near the UT campus.  I had a good bowl of phở with thinly shaved beef, with a manageable plate of bean sprouts, Thai basil and jalapeño slices, at the Hai Ky Cafe on the 2000 block of Guadalupe street (locally known as the Drag), near the southern end of campus.  

This is a cozy, centrally located restaurant that offers many options for phở fans as well as those seeking noodles and other vegetarian and non-soup options.  The best part: the phở is not pricey at all - all bowls are under $7.  I got spring rolls for just a few dollars more.

I came to Austin for a convention, and had the chance to eat a fancy and above all free meal.  But I didn't know any of these people and didn't feel like forcing myself to make conversation with them, so I headed off on my own for lunch.  

I wound up at Frank, a "hot dogs cold beer" place that serves hot dogs, artisan sausages and so much more.  They have several types of hot dogs overloaded (sometimes to their detriment) with lots of toppings.  

They have so much more, too, including - yes, this is Austin - many vegetarian options.  They have many cocktails, many nods to sauces and even barbecues from other parts of the country (this surprised me a great deal), such as their Texalina, one of many artisan sausages they sell with Western, Southern, Southwestern, Mexican and other stylings (alas, no Old Bay there - hey, you can't have everything - but in retrospect I wouldn't have been surprised to see it).  I ordered the Sonoran dog, topped with so much stuff that I had to eat it with a fork.  A tasty dog, though the toppings almost drowned it out, and weren't as spicy as I might have expected it to be.  Along with it I got waffle fries with Buffalo blue cheese dip (though I think I would've liked the Carolina Dip better)

So satisfying, however, was the Frankencookie dessert concoction.  Get this: two small scoops of coffee ice cream, with a massive and moist chocolate chip-bacon cookie (why is that no longer surprising to see these days?), served warm, and with juicy crumbles of bacon and two pieces of bacon on a stick next to it.

Yes, there really is such a thing as too much bacon.  Seriously I could not finish it.  Anyway, if in Austin go there and order that if that alone.  I must make this some time.

I ended my trip the way any tourist to Austin would: by watching soccer (yes that's snark).  When I found out the US Men's National Team was playing football powerhouse Brazil in my own backyard I was excited!  Then I found out that would be my last night in Austin (that figures), so I sought out a place to watch it.  Fadó is (I now know) a chain of Irish pubs - there are locations in Annapolis and Washington - and one is right in downtown Austin.  

With an adequate order of boxty pancakes topped with sweet Guinness sauce and Tex-Mex ingredients (they also have a boxty quesadilla.  Could this be Celt-Mex?) and a pint of Guinness I got to watch the US team's weak first half and plucky (though still not-enough) second half loss to Brazil 4 to 1 amid other cheering, exasperated fans.  I topped that off with their brown bread ice cream, which really was not all that great: grainy crumbs of brown bread intermixed with an above-average tasting, slightly brown vanilla ice cream.  If going to a Fadó near you for Euro 2012, order something else.

Of course, I capped off dinner at Fadó across the street, at two of the city's downtown gay bars.  Oilcan Harry's is big and flashy, Rain on 4th is cozier (relatively speaking).  Neither was too full - this was midweek after all.  In this quite LGBT-friendly city in Texas, both are worth a look.  The beer is cheaper than at Baltimore's gay bars, even factoring in the increased alcohol tax.  In fact, Austin's sales tax tops ours, at 8.5%, and all the Shiner Bocks I drank (hell, I wasn't driving after all) still came out to less than they would have been here.  Also note: for those visiting my home town from Austin: you can find Shiner Bock on tap at the Hippo.

Snacking State-by-State: Puerto Rico II - Just me and mofongo, paseando por la avenida...

As Zain Deane of About.com's Go Puerto Rico page notes, a person "can't walk into a self-respecting Puerto Rican restaurant and not see mofongo on the menu. It's a must-try for first-time visitors who want to claim to have sampled the local fare" [Deane, date unknown].  I've heard the word before, but not until this project did I ever realize just how delicious and how fattening mofongo really is.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico)

Is it a state? Nope, it's a territory - the largest one in the United States

Official Languages: Spanish and English, with Spanish as the more widely spoken language

Territorial Nicknames: La Isla del Encanto (The Island of Enchantment); Borinquen (from the original Taíno name for the island, Borikén)

Cession to the US: December 10, 1898 (after winning autonomy from Spain on November 25, 1897)

Capital: San Juan (largest)

Other Important Cities: Bayamón (2nd largest), Carolina (3rd largest), Ponce (4th largest)

Region: Caribbean; South Atlantic (US Census)

Bordered by: the Caribbean Sea (all sides)

Closest land mass: Dominican Republic, a little more than 50 miles to the west

Official Territorial Foods and Edible Things: none

Some Famous and Typical Foods: Puerto Rican food (duh) - a mixture of Taíno, West African and Spanish influences, including: sofrito, tostones, arroz con habichuleas (con gandules around Christmas), mofongo, tembleque; ají dulce (sweet peppers indigenous to Puerto Rico); piña colada

Mofongo is a mash of fried plantain, garlic and some sort of seafood or meat.  It is not just a Puerto Rican dish, but common throughout the Caribbean.  Puerto Rico's particular version typically features chicharrones (what we call pork rinds) or salt pork, though bacon is a common substitute in the US.  Oswald Rivera, author of Puerto Rican Cuisine in America, further points out that mofongo is formed into little balls or occasionally bigger ones (the Cuban way to serve it), and can be eaten either on its own or served with some sort of gravy or sauce.  Likely of African origin [Rivera 2002:12], it is a quintessentially Puerto Rican food.  He suggests that more modern versions may use seafood or beef.  Even vegans have tried to make a friendly version of mofongo using fried tempeh (the recipe from 2008 is on the Vegan Ricans website).

What I found while making the following mofongo recipe, which I got from the recipe section of ElBoricua.com and which suggests either chicharrón or bacon, is that if you don't already have tostones - twice-fried plantain chips - on hand, you have to first make tostones, which is not difficult but does get to be a little tedious if doing this on your own.  It is by far the longest part of this recipe.


The Recipe: Mofongo

To make mofongo you only need:

* plantains (the greener the better.  I did buy these at Wegman's for $1 per plantain.  They weren't terribly green though)
* garlic (had it.  This is added to the balls of mofongo raw)
* salt pork, chicharrones or bacon (bacon was what I had on hand.  The fatback I had from the previous recipe was a little difficult to cut into small pieces, and I admit I just gave up and switched to good old reliable bacon, which I had on hand.)
* olive oil (to mix in with the ingredients at the end)

You also need oil to fry up the tostones.  For this, I had a big jug of rice bran oil from that poutine recipe from that food truck in Oregon.

Render whatever pork product you have on hand.  I find the microwave to be the easiest: 2/3 of a package of bacon renders after about eight minutes - start for five minutes at 100%, then one to two minute bursts until crispy.  Most bacon microwavers collect the grease for easy collecting for future use, or - God forbid - disposal.)

Meanwhile, prepare your plantains, slicing them into chips for frying.

Fry until just soft, and drain.  You will need to do this in batches.

Next, bust out your tostonera (or if, like me, you don't have one, a flat-bottomed saucer) and lightly squoosh each plantain chip.  Every. Single. One.

Before frying again, dip each squooshed plantain chip in salted water.  Every. Single. One.  Fry again until crispy and set aside.  Here you could just stop and eat them all - tostones are usually eaten with a garlicky sauce or (a favorite for kids) ketchup.  But I've got mofongo to make, so I'm not stopping here.

Crumble up your bacon, chop up your garlic and add olive oil.

Next, take your freshly made tostones and pound them in a pilón (a wooden mortar typically found in the Caribbean).  My pilón is in the shop (that is, I haven't bought one), so I busted out my old trusty marble mortar and pestle to pound each tostón.  EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

This part isn't terribly difficult, but it is particularly messy.  You just have to deal with it.  Mix everything together and get ready to form them into small little mofongo balls (or a few larger ones).

El Boricua's recipe yields about three large mofongo balls.  The way I did it, I got about a dozen small ones.

This is my first experience with mofongo.  A few things: it is delicious: sweet sticky plantain, sharp raw garlic, and bacony bacony bacon all smooshed together?  Damn, what's not to like?  Well it is pretty fattening.  It wasn't particularly greasy, but with the olive oil it was still pretty fattening.  This is not something I would want to eat a lot of all at once.  I ate about five at once, and I felt a bit full afterwards.  This isn't health food here.  Probably the fattiness would be cut in a sauce or thick soup, which is how I probably would eat mofongo the next time.

Sources:

Deane, Zain.  "Mofongo".  Go Puerto Rico (GoPuertoRico.About.com), date unknown.  Copyright 2012, About.com, All rights reserved.

El Boricua (ElBoricua.com).  "Mofongo".  Date unknown.  Coyright 2012, El Boricua, All rights reserved.

Gill, Nicholas.  "The History of the Piña Colada".  New World Review, 2009.  Copyright 2009, New World Review, All rights reserved.

Goya.  "Piña Colada: How to Make Piña Colada".  Date unknown.  Copyright 2012 Goya Foods, Inc., All rights reserved.

Goya.  "Tembleque - Coconut Pudding: Quick, Coconut Gelatin".  Date unknown.  Copyright 2012 Goya Foods, Inc., All rights reserved.

International Bartender Association. "Piña Colada".  Last accessed 2010 (archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, Archive.org)

Rivera, Oswald.  Puerto Rican Cuisine in America: Nuyorican and Bodega Recipes.  Second edition.  Four Walls Eight Windows: New York, 2002.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Puerto Rico" and "Puerto Rican cuisine" pages and other pages.

Snacking State-by-State Mashup 7: Paneer Potatoes with Bacon and Corned Beef

For my next mashup, I took a cue from the Idaho potato recipe I tackled midway through last year.  The allure of various loose ingredients in my pantry, fridge and freezer was just too tempting not to throw together.  Potatoes. Bacon. Sweet dried cranberries. Bacon. Corned beef. BBQ sauce. Bacon.

Ahem, did I mention bacon?

The mashup recipe: Paneer Potatoes with Bacon and Corned Beef

Makes 3 to 4 servings

Ingredients (state flag indicates State-by-State post where ingredient was featured. Ingredients with no flag were not specifically used for any one post.)

3 large or 6 small potatoes

1 to 2 T BBQ sauce

4 slices raw bacon, chopped

3 slices corned beef, chopped

1/4 cup milk or cream

1/4 c dried berries such as raisins, craisins (pictured), dried blueberries or huckleberries

about 1 fist-sized hunk stale or toasted vanocka Christmas bread

1 T beef tallow (not pictured)

few pats (or about 2 - 3 T) butter

1/4 to 1/2 c paneer or cottage cheese

Start a pot to boilin', and boil your potatoes for about 20 minutes, (until they are mashing consistency).  Feel free to salt it but I didn't bother.

Melt some bacon grease, oil, butter or - in this case - beef tallow into a skillet.

Fry the bacon and corned beef in the beef tallow.  My God, bacon, corned beef AND beef tallow from suet?  Honestly, I don't eat like this all the time!

But maybe I should...

Break up the vanocka or another dried fruit-filled bread (or any old bread), and throw it in the food processor.

Keep at it until you have crumbs.  Use about 1/4 cup if you just have store-bought ones.

Drain and mash the potatoes.

Next, mash some more with the milk and cheese.  It will be a little on the firm side (add a little more milk if you want.  Go on, see if I care.)

Next add the meat and berries - it's like pemmican potatoes!

Finally, add a dash or two of BBQ sauce, to taste.  Or leave it out.  Your choice.

Press it into a Corningware dish, and top with the bread crumbs.  I ended up scooping it out and putting it in a shallower dish.  Top with the butter and broil it for four minutes.

Er, three and a half minutes.  Actually, it looks worse than it was.  Only two or three berries on top were singed in the broiler.  I just plucked them off and all was good.  So four minutes will work.

If you've been following these mashups, you will note that I've had mixed results with these things.  This was probably my most successful one: the buttery crunchy bread crumbs on top of moist (YES I SAID IT - MOIST!) potatoes and the sweet craisins and bacon.  So far this is the mashup recipe I would most likely do again, proving that you gotta try pretty damn hard to mess up with a combo like potatoes, bacon, berries and butter.  And folks, I just didn't feel like putting in that sort of effort.