Happy Hot Dog, er, Man

Dear Lord, please do not let this strangeness become a trend. Amen.

Beltway Snacking Redux: Update Soon?

Just a very short update on my quest to go back around the Beltway: I am hoping to pick up where I left off last time, exploring what's off of southbound 95 and 295 soon. I held off when the gas prices started to sky rocket. With gas prices seemingly going down soon, I plan to resume it soon. I am just waiting for that magical number "$3.50" first. When that happens, expect a post not long after that!

Tidbits: Early June Edition

A few items that have been waiting:

* While I wrote the other week about my food truck experience in LA, I never got around to my experience the week before in DC with their food trucks (I did send out Twitter posts about them though). I was specifically seeking the fabled Red Hook Lobster Truck (Twitter: @lobstertruckdc), parked that Wednesday at L'Enfant Plaza metro along with several other food trucks. It sells - what else - lobster rolls. Okay, it also has shrimp rolls, but they're known for the lobster. $15 for a lobster roll but this is absolutely worth it. They have two kinds: the Maine-style lobster roll, which is mayo-based, and the Connecticut-style roll, which is butter-based. I went with the Connecticut-style, and it was just wonderful. I could not stop little pieces of lobster from falling out of the roll, so I just ate those with my fingers - forgetting the obligatory fork, of course. They also have whoopie pies and New England lines of craft soft drinks.

Of course, I had to try the others, but how to do so with only $5 left? Get some small bites! The Fojol Bros (of Merlindia) (Twitter: @fojolbros) serve Indian plates, usually $7 or $8. Don't have that? Get one of their $2 "dingo bites" - sort of like a shot of one dish with rice. I got their silky butter chicken. After a free sample of jerk chicken from Goode's Mobile Kitchen (Twitter: @mobilekitchen), I got a massive side order of chickpeas for only $2 at the Tasty Kabob truck (Twitter: @tastykabob). I'm not kidding about the "massive" part either. This was easily as big as two lobster rolls, and as filling as two dozen of those dingo bites. If you have just two bucks, go to the Tasty Kabob truck, and you will get filled up.

* Heads up: both Baltimore and Washingtonian Magazines have similar themes this month: where to get the cool groceries, find the best butchers, peruse the nicest cheeses and sample the hoppiest beers. Read them for yourself to find out where to get the foods and shopping experiences you've been craving in the Baltimore-Washington area.

* Watching a soccer game at Sláinte Pub soon? Like, maybe, during the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2011 matches this month? (USA 2 - 0 Canada, yippee!) But you want to save some of that food money for beer or dessert? Why not sample the Sloppy Jim? For $10 (on special - it might be more at its regular price), you get a Sloppy Joe-style sandwich on an onion brioche bun, with cheese. And the Sloppy Jim isn't ground beef - it's bison sausage. Mmmm.

* Did you catch the Midday with Dan Rodricks show last week, with the big fried chicken smackdown between Gertrude's John Shields and the Baltimore City Paper's Henry Hong? No??? Check it out on the WYPR website here.

ADDENDUM: Speaking of food on the radio: today's Kojo Nnamdi Show featured a large segment on military food. Watch below as Kojo samples a delicious MRE:

* The last of my bacon-pancetta wot that I made for last year's Great Grapes bacon cook-off (info about this year's Great Grapes festival is here) has been sitting in my freezer - in a freezer ziploc bag - for almost exactly a year. Now? Still good.

Honey Pig

My friends Eric & Alan and I finally hit up the Honey Pig! No, it's not what you think: it's the restaurant in Ellicott City.*** We were quite impressed and I am sure we will head back there again some time. We did it this past weekend, making the long slog from Hampden out to Rte 40 on a pleasant Sunday evening. The place is busy and dizzying, and it's clearly not "homey" and "cozy" like the restaurants you find in Little Korea. Everything is shiny and industrial, with metal siding on the walls all covered with adverts about their sale items and area Korean businesses. I have generally enjoyed all the Korean BBQ experiences I have had as of late, so some comparisons and contrasts are the easiest way to talk about Honey Pig:

• The selection is quite large at all of these places, but Honey Pig's menu is rather streamlined, so you can easily find what you want. I ignored the many signs all over the walls.
• The prices were amazingly reasonable, considering how much we ordered and ate: three types of BBQ (spicy pork belly, beef, and chicken, each about $12-$15), pajeon (didn't catch the price) and a large bottle of Hite beer for each of us. This all totaled a mere $65 for the three of us (about $21 per person). We threw in a generous tip, and we still all put in less than $30.

• The BBQ was on par with what I have had elsewhere, though they cook it with propane and not the wood and charcoal you may find at some places.
  
• What was better (in my mind) than the Little Korea restaurants? The pajeon, definitely. It was crispier and not too falling apart with scallions and seafood. I could actually pick up a piece and eat it without little pieces dropping everywhere. Much of the pajeon I have eaten before is also very greasy. My friends also noted that Suzie (of Suzie's Soba) usually puts a lot more seafood into hers.
• Perhaps there are Korean reality shows going on in the background at Joong Kak, but I didn't notice. Difficult not to notice at Honey Pig, even with all that's going on.
  

Final assessment: it's far (for me) so I won't be going there often, but I will be going back. In the meantime, I will still happily go to Joong Kak and the other Little Korea restaurants.

*** Oh wait, that is what you think? Okay, um... forget that last thought.

Super Fresh is closing

Super Fresh is the latest business to fall in the recession. All but two Super Fresh stores in Maryland are closing down. I stopped by the one on Putty Hill today. What I found surreal was seeing the ubiquitous "10% / 20% / 30% Off" signs, of the kind you see in big box stores that are shutting down, next to peaches and cucumbers. It will be that way until the end of the month, or until Super Fresh's supplies are gone.

Snacking State-by-State: Indiana I - Pork in a Blanket

Finishing up with Illinois, I merely cross state lines for this next post, in the hopes of finding out just what sets Indiana's food apart from the rest of the Midwest.

Official Name: State of Indiana
State Nicknames: The Hoosier State
Admission to the US: December 11, 1816 (#19)
Capital: -Indianapolis (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Fort Wayne (2nd largest); Evansville (3rd largest); South Bend (4th largest); Gary (5th largest - let me thththay it onththth agaaaaaiinnn)
Region: Midwest, Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Wild Rice, Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Lake Michigan (northwest); Michigan (north); Ohio (east); Indiana (east); Kentucky (south); Illinois (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: water (beverage - no, seriously, I am not making this up); sugar / "Hoosier" cream pie (pie)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: American Indian (especially Shawnee) foods like buffalo, deer, turkey, corn, maple syrup and wild rice); again, Hoosier cream pie, breaded pork tenderloin sandwich; Wonder Bread; popcorn

As Marcia Adams points out in her Heartland cookbook, Indiana's is not just a monolithic Midwestern cuisine. It is a hodgepodge of Native American ingredients and cooking techniques mixed with migration from all over the country and various parts of the world. Native American peoples, from the Shawnee to the Kickapoo to the Miami, grew corn, beans and squash many generations before Indiana became part of the United States. Indiana is also wild rice country and maple country, and both were used by Native Americans here for millenia before corn ever came to the area from points west. Once European Americans started coming to the area, they brought their own regional traditions that today shape food differences within the state. Northern Indiana was settled by people from New England, and later by German (especially Amish) and Irish immigrants; Southern Indiana was settled by Southerners, and so the food there is more distinctly Southern in its style [Food Timeline.org; Adams 1991]

And yet, what seems to consistently pop up as the most quintessentially Hoosier dish is a massive sandwich from right in the state capital, but by no means just found there. This is the ubiquitous breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. I go back to Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood Sandwiches for the scoop on the breaded tenderloin: it all started back in 1904 in the town of Huntington (just west of Fort Wayne), from a street cart. When the owner, Nick Frienstein, opened Nick's Kitchen in 1908, he continued making the sandwich, this time pounding the meat flat. The Sterns point out that Nick's brother lost his fingers to frostbite, and used the stumps to pound the meat to make it more tender. Not sure what to do with this information, really [Stern & Stern 2007: 112]. Since this sandwich simply seems to scream "Indiana" as it is being pounded into deep fried delicious submission, I had to try to make this.

Any Hoosier who reads this can, will and probably should laugh at me, because I did this one kind of wrong.

The recipe: Breaded (Pork) Tenderloin Sandwich

The first thing that Hoosiers will laugh at me for doing is buying a pork tenderloin (on sale, no less), and then cooking the whole thing. That is why one should read all recipes completely before preparing a recipe. I just don't learn. Since I didn't have the money to buy a second, now not on sale tenderloin, I had to make do with pre-packaged pork loin cuts. I eventually found success with two small and tender pork loin cuts. Originally, I had planned to buy two very thick ones and pound them flat. I didn't pound them flat enough, as you will see. But in the future, while pre-packaged loin cuts will make a nice sandwich, if you want to make it the authentic way you should probably buy a pork tenderloin and cut it and pound the slices flat yourself.


That said, you will need:

* pork tenderloin (note what I said above if you want to do it right; if you don't, either buy a very flat cut of pork or a thick one that you will pound flat. I mean this; it needs to be made thin)
* flour, buttermilk and egg (had themall; you will marinate the pork in this overnight)
* bread crumbs (was out of bread crumbs; a few bucks will get you all the bread crumbs you need; also note, the Sterns suggest not bread crumbs but crushed saltines, which they use at Nick's)
* oil for frying (had it; I used peanut oil in this case)
* hamburger rolls (one per cut) and toppings such as mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.

The process seems simple, but is easy to screw up if, again, you don't pound that tenderloin. I did, but not nearly enough. As a partial defense, I live in an apartment hose through which sound travels and reverberates easily, and spending a good five or ten minutes pounding my tenderloin on any surface in my apartment would bring about complaints from the neighbors (as annoying as most of my neighbors are, notwithstanding). Eventually I had to take the pork outside and pound it on the porch.

Not flat enough.

Even so, I still did not pound it nearly as long as I should have, since I only got it a little flatter than it could have been. You need to get it to about 1/4 inch. If you get an inch thick cut, you will need to pound it a lot.


Take this pounded pork tenderloin and soak it in a mixture of flour, buttermilk and egg - and mix it up, don't just throw it all together - overnight.


When ready, take your pork and dredge it in the bread crumbs or crushed saltines.


And fry away! Make sure your oil is at least 350°F before you put it in. Fry until golden brown (the Sterns say golden blond, but since I was reusing oil I never got anything lighter than brunette), for 6 to 8 minutes.

Here is why you need to pound it into roadkill:


If for some odd reason you did not see that photo, let me explain this: the center of the tenderloin was pink. Deep pink. Now I know, I know, you might point out that the FDA recently said that pork that's pink in the center is safe enough to eat. I and my Crohn's disease beg to differ. I am not eating that. So to rectify the tenderloin, I just cut it in half down the side and - GASP! - nuked it for 30 to 60 seconds.

These are the thinner ones

The much thinner tenderloin cuts I bought earlier worked much better, and were not only not pink in the center but also tender and crunchy. However, it still doesn't exactly fit the definition of the Hoosier Tenderloin Sandwich, which is usually much wider and longer than this. Oh well. I still got something that at least tasted like the actual thing, even if there was less of it to taste.


So how did it taste? Ask a guy who considers soft, juicy and tender meat covered in fried, crunchy breading to be one of the most wonderful things to eat in the whole wide world, that question again and just guess how I thought it tasted. It was absolutely lovely, the juicy pork underneath crunchy bread crumbs. I did not really taste the buttermilk, but perhaps I would have if, again, I had flattened it enough so that the marinade would have penetrated the whole cutlet. Still it is a tasty sandwich, and I will probably make it again, even if I never set foot in Indiana again.

Sources:

Adams, Marcia. Heartland: The Best of the Old and the New from Midwest Kitchens. Clarkson Potter: New York, 1991.

Stern, Jane, and Michael Stern. Roadfood Sandwiches. Houghton Mifflin: New York, 2007.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Indiana" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Indiana".

Family History through Cooking

I was just scrounging around in a room in my parents' house through a big Rubbermaid container of family recipes, both clipped and handwritten/typed. Right on top I found the cookbook that my mother's Aunt Florence wrote out in an old ledger book. It must be at least 70 years old, probably much older. Right in the front was a recipe for crab cakes (it looks as if Aunt Florence fried hers). Deep in the middle was a recipe for fried chicken. The way the recipe reads, it is clearly Maryland Panfried Chicken, with the gravy and everything. I smell another project in the works, but not until well after this State-by-State thing is done. But at least one of Aunt Florence's recipes will pop up here in the near future.

Snacking State-by-State: Illinois V - She Fed Me... with Science!

Before I started preparing this final Illinois post, I got what I have to call "Achatz-y". Those of you familiar with the famous molecular gastronome who helms Chicago's Alinea and who recently chronicled his battle with tongue cancer (which could have taken his life, much less his career), will understand what I mean.

Official Name: State of Illinois
State Nicknames: The Prairie State; The Land of Lincoln
Admission to the US: December 3, 1818 (#21)
Capital: Springfield (6th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Chicago (largest in the state and the Midwest; 3rd largest in the US); Aurora (2nd largest); Rockford (3rd largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Wild Rice
Bordered by: Wisconsin (north); Lake Michigan (northeast); Indiana (east); Kentucky (southeast & south); Missouri (southwest); Iowa (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: popcorn (snack food); GoldRush apple (fruit); white-tailed deer (animal)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: typical Midwestern foods, especially corn; Native American and pioneer foods; state-specific foods (horseshoe sandwich, shrimp de Jonghe, Chicago dog, Italian beef); also note: deep-dish pizza and hot dogs were first made popular in Illinois

Grant Achatz is one of the leading lights in the whole "molecular gastronomy" movement. Molecular gastronomy is the culinary exploration of the chemical and physical properties of food. It is not something I know much about or have ever been very interested in investigating. Now that I know a bit more about it, I am quite intrigued.

Molecular gastronomy forces you to think of your pantry as a chemical lab of sorts. In his "Postmodern Pantry" section of Achatz's massive Alinea cookbook, Mark McClusky sums up the molecular gastronome's attitude towards food and ingredients:

Go into your kitchen and open your pantry. You're staring at a lab's worth of chemicals. Baking soda? That's calcium bicarbonate if you want to be technical. Cream of tartar? More accurately, it's potassium hydrogen tartrate... Cooking is chemistry. Even the techniques are the same: heating, cooling, purification, dilution, distillation, fermentation. The difference between a saucier and an Erlenmeyer flask...is one of familiarity. [McClusky, in Achatz 2008:16]

Achatz's cookbook is a good go-to source for all the typical ingredients and supplies one would ever need to do molecular gastronomy at home. And it is possible to do this stuff at home, as many websites and online communities, such as the Molecular Gastronomy Network and MolecularRecipes.com attest. But I am still a molecular gastro-noob, so instead of trying spinach foam, melon-cantaloupe caviar or right or anti-grilled anything right off the bat, I thought I would try something a bit more reachable for me, simply turning a liquid fat into a powder, using tapioca maltodextrin.

The recipe: Olive Oil Powder (Alinea-Style)

Tapioca maltodextrin is a modified food starch used by companies to put fats into powder form, but is used by molecular gastronomes to turn oils, butters, and such into powder (this video from Gourmet Magazine's Will Goldfarb shows how to make a nutella powder). There are a few purveyors of this fascinating ingredient, all of them online. You can buy it from a few places online, where it'll run anywhere from $9 to $23 for a pound, or do what I did and order a free sample from the National Starch website.

Unbeknownst to me, barely a month ago Anthony Cipolone of the blog Mr. Onion's Neighborhood did the exact same thing I am about to do, using the exact same recipe in the exact same ingredients. He loves this stuff, and I hope my olive oil powder turns out like his. Science, right?


You need three ingredients and a few supplies:

* tapioca maltodextrin (see free sample note above)
* olive oil (had on hand)
* salt (same)

Not only that, but you will need a digital scale that can display measurements in grams and/or fractions of ounces. The cheapest ones run around $30 at Bed, Bath and Beyond. You don't need a fancy one.


Measure out the ingredients: first the olive oil,


then the tapioca maltodextrin, which will fly all over the place if you're not careful (um, ahem),


and the salt.


Whisk it all together. At first I used my hand whisk but it all just gooped up inside the whisk, so I switched to a fork and then ultimately the whisk attachment on my hand blender, which worked the best.

Nope, the fork just isn't doin' it for me.

Okay, the whisk attachment. That's better.

Because I am clumsy, I had to add a little more tapioca maltodextrin at a time - yes I eyeballed it, which is not exactly scientific I admit.

In the end I came up with something very crumbly and pasty, and not in any way wet.


I did not exactly get a powdery texture, but after pushing it through a strainer (or by its more French-sounding name, a tamis) I got a more powdery substance.


When he did this, Mr. Onion literally said "Strangely enough, I ended up with what looked like grated cheese." I hear ya, brother. I got the same thing. But the taste on the tongue was clearly olive oil. The texture was very slightly grainy at first, turning to silken. It was a most strange experiment, to be sure.


And so my massive sojourn into Illinois is done, from hearty farm food to heartier sandwiches, to Polish and Italian food, to the height of food science, Illinois truly has it all. So this begs my next question: what about Indiana, which is right next door?

Sources:

Achatz, Grant, Alinea. Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, CA, 2008.

Cipolone, Anthony. "Tapioca Maltodextrin: Sprinkle on the Fat". Mr. Onion's Neighborhood, published May 5, 2011.

McClusky, Mark, "Postmodern Pantry". In Alinea, by Grant Achatz.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Illinois" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Illinois".

Mmmm. Strawberries.

Look what I got today:


All the strawberries I could pick at Brad's Produce in Churchville. I got six pounds for $9 - normally $18 for that much, but since I picked them myself it was half priced. Oh, and an extra dollar for the container. And these strawberries don't need any sugar.

Snacking State-by-State: Addendum

I've started splitting up the original MAMMOTH posts into individual posts for easy reference. To make things easier, I have given the new posts the original publish date. The first one to get split up is my original Alabama post, now into two bite-size chunks about fried fruit pies and fried catfish. Because everything tastes better when it's fried.