Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Eggs bedevil me.

Tarragon pickled eggs. © Ryan Schierling
Ooooo! It's Halloween!! All those "deviled" eggs in the magazines and on entertaining TV decked out with selectively-sliced black olives to look like scary faces or creepy spiders for Halloween... this is not that post.

Each and every October, it seems that deviled eggs start showing up all over. I get it, because there's "devil" in the name and you can make faces with the garnish to look all gouhlish – oh, and, sure, probably  because it's a holiday for entertaining. There is that.

I'm a little picky about my deviled eggs. I think there's "one way" (my way, of course*), and then there are all the other ways I am perfectly happy to eat them when someone else is kind enough to go to the trouble. They may not really be all that difficult to make, but for some reason always seem to be the LAST thing on my priority list when I'm assembling a crudite spread. Peeling hard boiled eggs is bad enough, but removing the yolks, seasoning them and then fussing them back into place... oh, please. Despite my best intentions, I can't remember the last time I managed to get them completed in time for a party. I'm lucky if a few sliced hard-boiled eggs end up on the plate with sprinkle of kosher salt. So, I've simplified a "make ahead" strategy that hits all the same spots, but doesn't require piping my yellows back into my whites.  In fact, in the fine Southern tradition of pickling eggs, I may even like these better...

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Walk out to Winter salad.

Winter salad with Brussels sprouts. © Ryan Schierling
"I think I really just need a big salad for dinner." Occasionally ye olde comfort food of Fall and Winter can take an oppressive turn on an individual. One night too many involving something starchy with, quite likely, a little too much cheese involvement, and it's time to clear the deck, reboot the system, and give leafy green roughage its turn at the table.

A main-course salad can be a tricky one to pull off and still feel like you've delivered something respectably substantial. I love salads, but I don't necessarily want to present a plate that has no more appeal than a bowl of rabbit food and call it good. The terribly typical standby giving gravitas is the addition of chicken. Eggs are sometimes appropriate, but certainly less versatile. Bacon, well, that doesn't count. Chicken is all well and good, but I'm not much of a meat eater – much less a meat preparer – in this household, and when I'm in charge of dinner I try not to incorporate extra work for my beloved. 

I have long been fan of green salads incorporating fruit, berries and toasted nuts, but this Fall a distant memory surfaced in the form of a side dish I once had at Tom Douglas's restaurant Dahlia Lounge. It was a simple preparation of Brussels sprouts, tender and lightly caramelized, with golden raisins. The sweet counterpoint of the raisins was delicious, and one that gave me the idea that my little cruciferous friends might be the perfect warm and hearty addition atop a salad remplit with harvest fruits and bounty.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Barbecued beef bierocks.

Barbecued beef bierocks. © Ryan Schierling

I saw a lot of strange things growing up in Kansas. I saw the skies turn a deathly still, hot ochre moments before a funnel cloud dropped down and started sucking the roofs off of houses. I saw an elderly woman speaking in tongues beneath an ominous, menacing mural of abolitionist John Brown. I once saw a six-legged cow. But I ain't never seen a beer rock.

Now, I understand there are many cultural variations and spelling disparities of the bierock – a meat-filled wonder of German and Russian origin, brought to the United States by German Russian Mennonites. They call it "beer rock" in Kansas, but I'm pretty sure – even as an expat – that's got to be a successor to the horrible 90s-dance-music compilation album Jock Jams (Vols. 1-5). If beer rock is what you want, there must be a cheerleading competition on ESPN2 because of the NHL lockout. If you'd rather have a bierock, I've got your number.

Pasty or pastry, pirogi or piroshky, pirok, börek, runza, empanada, calzone… all are a regional version of stuff, stuffed into dough and baked. 

I was introduced to bierocks as a kid, probably at a Mennonite church function in Harper, Kansas. My ancestry is German/Russian, and the version I remember was filled with ground beef, onion and cabbage. If one of the church ladies got a little crazy, there might have been some caraway seed and unseemly gossip in there. 

In my early 20s, I lived in Fort Collins, Colorado and found runzas at a fast-food chain called, oddly enough, Runza. They served a delicious, fresh, beef-filled bierock facsimile that fueled my nostalgia and kept me from having to craft my own. 

If only I'd known how simple it was. 
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