Friday, June 29, 2012

Pigs and eggs.

Three little pigs, potatoes and eggs. © Ryan Schierling



Austin may call itself the live music capital of the world, but it's actually the breakfast taco capital of the world. I'm also pretty sure there are more solid Mexican restaurants and taco trucks than there are music venues and bands in the ATX. Some of my favorite breakfast tacos, ever, have been doled out of a soft-sided cooler from the back of a mini-van driven by a little Hispanic lady with some bad-ass homemade hot sauce to drizzle over the foil-wrapped deliciousness. They're everywhere – ubiquitous and cheap enough that you would never even have to think about making them at home.

And I never did, until our "taco lady" that got me hooked on her amazing picadillo, her tangy nopales and creamy homemade refritos, her handmade tortillas that would leave a kiss of flour on your lips, her rippin' hot homemade salsa, stopped showing up in her mini-van at the shop every morning. I'd been cut off, cold turkey, and it hurt.

Six months is enough of a morning mourning process, and I simply can't abide the new "taco man" that pulls up in his green Chevy Blazer, honking his horn and passing off hard-scrambled eggs with Jimmy Dean sausage in a gummy, sweaty, store-bought flour tortilla. Today, I made two dozen breakfast tacos with pork, potatoes and chorizo in red chile, bacon and soft-scrambled eggs and took them to work.

When the "taco man" pulled up, no one bought… and I got a hearty "Hombre vato!" from the guys, which I take as "not too bad for the white guy of Russian/German heritage."

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Zydeco salad.

Zydeco salad, a lovely mess. © Ryan Schierling

I used to think there was no excuse for the unusually sweet, faintly acidic melange of pale green beans, even paler wax beans, and kidney beans that is three-bean salad. It always seemed to be a covered-dish dinner culinary cop out – open a few cans of the stuff, dump contents into Tupperware and stick a spoon in it.

There's a curious item on the menu at B&C Seafood in Vacherie, Louisiana called Zydeco Salad that goes like this – a bed of lettuce, some chopped tomato, olive salad (the kind that goes on a muffaletta sandwich), and three bean salad. After seeing it on a famous-teevee-food-personality's-motorcycle-road-tripping-the-length-of-the-Mississippi-mini-series, I tried to work out the flavor profile in my head, repressing any childhood trauma associated with three-bean salad. The lettuce would be crisp and fresh. The tomatoes would be earthy, acidic and a little sweet. The olive salad would have a complex, rich piquancy. The three bean salad would be a little sweet, a little tart, and have a slight tooth. Somehow, it seemed to work, and the more I considered it, the more I thought that maybe there was a singular, solitary purpose for three-bean salad after all.

This is another one of those charmingly-oddball and acutely-regional Southern dishes that fascinate me so, and as it turns out, it's a great throw-together summer salad. Make your own olive salad the day before or buy a jar of it at the grocer if you've got a favorite brand.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Don't call it a comeback / I've been here for years.

Homemade Mississippi Comeback Sauce. © Ryan Schierling
Twenty years ago, in Fort Collins, Colorado, I was a store manager working for the clown. Say what you will about McDonald's Corporation, they were my first job and an invaluable life lesson in the business end of food. When it was time to move on, I took the good, left the bad and haven't really looked back since.

Until a few weeks ago, that is, when I developed a single-minded focus on Mississippi's mother of all condiments, Comeback Sauce. I've taken a shine to some specific regional Southern specialties, especially ones that aren't often found outside their culinary stomping grounds.

Comeback Sauce (née Kumback Sauce, Cumback Sauce) is a Jackson, Mississippi (that's MS, Jackson if you're nasty) original from the 1930s, widely credited to Greek immigrant Alex Dennery at his restaurant The Rotisserie. Used as a "house dressing," comeback seems to be closely related to 1000 Island, Russian, Catalina and French dressings in spirit. A British Marie Rose? Parallel invention, perhaps.

The only differences in these very similar sauces are in the… subtleties. A bit of grated horseradish there, some minced onion here, tomato paste instead of chili sauce, yogurt instead of mayonnaise, a touch of white vinegar or pickle juice; like every sauce or dressing the whims of the cook and the plenty of the pantry come into play.

But I digress. For me, this really all goes back 20 years to french fry sauce. McDonald's french fry sauce.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

That's it! The ultimate ice cream sandwich.

Homemade It's-It. © Ryan Schierling


There was a time a few years ago when I did a brief stint as an ice cream sandwich trafficker. I only had one customer, and I didn't make a nickel in profit. But, then, I would have been hard-pressed to get a whole case of this sinful confection into my little freezer had I not fobbed my good fortune onto another willing party. It's a tough habit to kick when your "customer" is equally enthusiastic about getting their hands on the good stuff.

The only way to get It's-Its in Seattle was by ordering a case from the local Cash & Carry and waiting a few weeks. Had a nearby grocery store not stepped up to the plate and started distributing, well… who knows how long I would have continued dealing. 

Precious and exclusive – it's the way some food items seem determined to remain. There's always that one food that is so regional, and so perfect, that when you find yourself located outside the reach of its geographic distribution area you come to crave it terribly. Finding It's-Its outside of the San Francisco Bay Area is about as difficult as finding a Melty Bar outside of Oshkosh or a boozy kirsch cordial outside of the European Union. You either have to know people to get them, or pay a fortune to have them shipped.

The first time I had an It's-It was as a college student living in California's Napa Valley. I'd be willing to bet that almost anyone who knows what these are have either lived in California at some point, or know someone who has. They are particularly regional and decidedly delicious. No other ice cream sandwich comes close; there's just something about the cookie that makes this treat amazing. The vanilla ice cream flavor is the classic iteration of this confection and my favorite.

After three years here in the great state of Texas, the summer heat and the hankering for an It's-It finally got the better of me. When I realized that having a case shipped to Texas 'overnight' would set me back $87, I decided it was time to work out my own version.
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