Where did you rip off that recipe? It's delicious...

Eggplant, tomato and chickpea casserole. © Ryan Schierling

Thanks to the internet and the rise of the über food-conscious, there are nine trillion websites out there with the same recipes. Sure there are a lot of similar recipes, but I'm talking about different sites with the exact same recipes. This happens at both ends of the spectrum – classic, tried and true fundamentals and super-obscure exotic fare – but it mostly seems to be found when you're searching for a recipe baseline. 

For example, search for "Texas Potato Salad recipe." (I used Google for this query.) 

First hit is allrecipes.com's version of Texas Ranch Potato Salad, which lists no credit for an author. Seventh on the list is CDkitchen.com's version of Texas Ranch Potato Salad, which was apparently submitted by a Ms. Milton. These are the same recipes. Exactly the same recipes. 

Tastebook.com claims this recipe, bulletin-boarders on bbq bible thesmokering.com are offering it up ("My wife usually makes this... not sure where the recipe came from."), and it's passed off as "Memphis-style potato salad" on tasteofhome.com. All verbatim. The only place I know it didn't come from is the Hidden Valley Ranch website. I looked. Apparently, everyone's got their fingers in the Ranch potato salad, and really, this was just the first recipe that popped into my head to Google. I'm sure there are others out there if you've got the search engine wherewithal. 

I enjoyed myself as a waiter in the late 90's for a tiny cafe on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. After working there a year and helping out in the kitchen every morning, I was finally trusted to make the owner's brilliant soups per her specific instructions. But I never saw a hard-copy recipe. I later found out that she was ripping off – to the letter – Crescent Dragonwagon's wonderful "Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook." 

Now, we've all poached a recipe here and there and called it ours in the company of unknowing friends. Every new thing is just a derivation of something a little older and a little less publicized. The copy-cook could (and should) get props for artistic liberties taken if things turn out well (and a proper flogging if things turn out poorly), but I really believe creative license should remain with the original recipe preparer, and given credit where credit is due. 

That said, where do you draw the line when you modify a recipe to fit your taste and or cooking style? Or, when you're bound by the restraints of what you've got in your refrigerator? What happens if you make something that far exceeds even the limitations of The Creator? 

Carrots on the side.

Carrots, front and center. © Ryan Schierling

You want to blow someone's mind? Serve them some cooked carrots that don't taste like those bland square nodules found in frozen peas and carrot mixes. There's a good reason people don't often serve carrots as a side dish, and when they do, they're usually sweetly glazed. 

In contrast, I recently stumbled smack into a savory method for cooking carrots that has been astonishingly well received. In fact, it has actually been getting requests from carnivores, no less! Talk about surreal. 

Here's how it happened. I decided a small dinner gathering was in order for Ryan's recent half-birthday. Since he doesn't have steak very often when it's just the two of us, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to serve a hearty "steak and potato" dinner. The beef was served with a wine reduction, garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus with Gruyere. I am not a very good meat eater, so I thought it might be nice to make another simple little veggie dish so I would have at least three colors on my plate. 

Despite the fact I haven't made a side dish out of carrots in years, I honesty didn't think about this one too much, not even a cursory internet search. We had a few carrots in the crisper and I've been enamored with the fresh Mexican Mint Marigold that is thriving in our herb garden. (This herb is similar in flavor to Tarragon, but hardier and suited for growing in a hot climate.) I didn't need additional inspiration, I just made it. Between you and me, even up to the point I was about to serve these carrots, I didn't really expect anyone else to be interested in them, much less ask for seconds. 

So here it is – a recipe for cooked carrots that might just surprise you as much as it does your guests. 

TGICFS.

CFS and eggs @ Bakehouse Restaurant & Bar. © Ryan Schierling

I had high hopes for this one. 

Sunday mornings I usually spend a few moments looking over my CFS potentials list and then cross reference online to see if that particular restaurant serves a Florentine Benedict. 

Julie's taken too many to count for the team when it comes to the meatses – quietly eating sides when I'm shoving barbecue into my face or patiently picking at pancakes when I'm all about the morning chicken-fried steak hunt. She's been denied her favorite breakfast too many times in the quest for my favorite breakfast. 

She wanted Magnolia this morning. Specifically, she wanted the Florentine Benedict that they'd featured on their specials menu a while back. The menu online for Bakehouse purported to have four different Hollandaise egg dishes – with fresh, from scratch Hollandaise sauce – and it didn't take much arm-twisting before we were heading up Manchaca to try a new breakfast spot. 

The Bakehouse front of the house is bar. The Bakehouse back of the house is restaurant, with deep booths and dim lighting. Illuminated globes hang above each table and a giant map of the world adorns the north wall opposite the banquettes. Menus claim to take your taste buds on a global adventure, with dishes from cuisines in Italy, Mexico, China, France, Japan, Morroco, India, Switzerland, along with regional Cajun and Texas fare. 

That all seems a bit of a stretch for a bar/restaurant, but how hard is it to make a solid American breakfast, deep in the heart of Texas? In this case, it was a struggle. 

The CFS is hand-battered to order, and mine had the perfect texture and tenderness, but both beef and gravy were woefully under-salted. And there was something off about the battered, fried crust. Tasted by itself, it was... bitter. Bitter batter. I've never experienced anything like it with CFS, and was disappointed because the textures were so right on. The home fries were forgettable, my over-easy eggs actually undercooked. J's breakfast was, in her words, "blech, blech blech blech. Blech." 

To disappoint with 
astringent unsavory
I steered you wrong, love

Pickled ugly.

Wait for it. © Ryan Schierling

Nobody likes okra. There's no good use for it. It's unsightly, it's slimy and mucilaginous, it's a disgusting fibrous little pod that has no redeeming qualities and even less flavor. The only possible way to eat it is to batter it, deep-fry it and dip it in ranch dressing, which is (while delicious) the lowest common denominator for food. You could deep-fry poison oak leaves, dip them in ranch and they would be palatable (until your throat swelled shut).

Okay, I'll take that back. No, not the lowest common denominator part about frying vegetables and dipping them in ranch dressing, but the part about okra being completely unlovable. 

A friend with a quarter-acre garden had an okra bounty this year that was entirely unmanageable. He gave away gallon-size plastic bags of the stuff, and would have another one for you before you could even think of what to do with the last one. 

Of course, we sliced, rinsed, soaked in buttermilk, battered and fried them. We made Bhindi Masala (turns out that slime cooks away nicely). We pickled them with tons of garlic and Tabasco peppers from our garden. 

(L) Garlic and Tobasco peppers. (R) Okra, pre-pickling. © Ryan Schierling

And now, surprisingly, every time I snag a spicy, crunchy, pickled pod from one of the many, many jars in the refrigerator, I can't help but think how pretty those ugly little things are. 

Franklin Barbecue.

To be perfectly honest, I do not know anything about Aaron Franklin. I do not know where he grew up or where he honed his barbecue skills. 

Aaron Franklin, serving up Franklin Barbecue. © Ryan Schierling

I do know there are a great number of mouth-watering disciples proselytizing furiously for Franklin. Magazines (the November 2010 issue of Food & Wine heralded Franklin Barbecue as one of the best U.S. restaurant openings), newspapers (Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer have effused) and local food blogs (too many to mention) fall all over Franklin.

I have tried my best to avoid influence. 

I subscribe to the mantra of "believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."

Taste is the truth, the way and the light.

But, I want to believe. 

It's nearly 2011. "Trailer food," once heralded as the next wave of culinary adventure, is already being lambasted as played-out, from Portland to Pensacola. Too popular, too quickly, they said, and now the food-hipsters are haters. 

But, as I find out, Franklin is not trailer food. Open only a little more than a year, there are a pair of enormous propane tanks that have been converted to smoke meat, and apparently, communicate with the Gods. The white and aquamarine trailer serves only as food dispatch and cash-out, an ever-so-brief altar between the heat and the eat. 

Ah, yes. The eat.