Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hot meat dip.

Hot meat dip - queso with smoked beef brisket. © Ryan Schierling
You've all certainly heard of the Great Velveeta Shortage of 2014 by now. "Increased seasonal demand" and a shifting of production lines from one plant to another led to a shortage of the famous pasteurized prepared cheese product, especially the more moderately-sized eight- and sixteen-ounce loaves. Moderately-sized... how cute. Your Super Bowl party is screwed. 

Thankfully, here in Texas, every grocer worth their inflated sodium content has a year-round endcap with nothing but #10 cans of Ro*Tel and five-pound chubs of Velveeta. No man, woman or child will ever go without queso here because, in The Great Republic of Texas, queso is a birthright

Back in the Ghetto Melrose days of Seattle, hot meat dip mysteriously became a party staple. I'm not sure how it all started, but browned ground beef, Velveeta, a tin of tomatoes with green chiles and a secret mix of spices would bubble away in an ancient, volcanic crock pot next to a gigantic bowl of tortilla chips. It was easy, and it was always a hit. 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Cornbread Florentine Benny

Cornbread Florentine with sour cream hollandiase. © Ryan Schierling
One of my favorite breakfasts is Eggs Florentine with hash browns. I developed this strong affection when we were in Seattle and lived walking distance from The Shanty Cafe, whose straight-forward Florentine Benny and hash browns were delicious comfort on many a chilly Northwest morning. I'll resist making this a diatribe about the rarity of finding really good, crispy, diner-style shredded hash browns in this town (no, really, it's invariably "home fries" in these parts), because today I'm all about sharing another way to enjoy runny eggs and spinach greens.

There's something all sparkly-sawdust about living in Austin that causes us to eventually give all of our favorite dishes a Texas twist. In this instance, a not-too-sweet cornbread finds its place in lieu of the traditional English muffin, and the hollandaise is modified to include a touch of lime and sour cream.

The cornbread recipe is my adaptation of “Yankee Corn Bread” from Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads, but using a hot cast iron skillet method for baking. I omitted the bacon, of course. I also added some masa harina (a type of corn flour used for making tortillas and tamales) – because if you know me well, you know that I am loath to bake anything containing corn that doesn't include a bit of masa harina for the delicious flavor it imparts. Hell, I even put it in my pizza dough. Ahem... I've also reduced the amount of sugar considerably, because I don't need or want a sweet cornbread for this preparation, and the addition of frozen corn kernels naturally adds a bit of sweetness. And – to digress for the second time in this paragraph – this cornbread is also pretty awesome to use for making stuffing/dressing during the holidays.

We like the Cornbread Florentine with my Southwest Sour Cream Hollandaise because, well, how can you not offer up a bit of the rich yolky goodness that makes poached eggs happy the world around. This is essentially a blender hollandaise with lime juice in lieu of some of the lemon and sour cream in place of some of the butter. It's a little "softer" than the traditional variety and compliments the cornbread. Ryan generally doesn't dig regular hollandaise sauce, but this one he finds delightful. Go figure. That said, if busting out the blender seems like too much of an stretch on a given morning, I won't hesitate for a second to just use plain ol' sour cream and a good hot sauce drift. I assure you it is really quite good both ways.

We typically make this with cornbread that was baked the night before, so it makes for a relatively quick and easy breakfast. 

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Thank you for another delectable year.

So this is the new year. © Ryan Schierling
Happy new year! It’s hard to believe that we’ve got one more year under our belt here at Foie Gras Hot Dog. Our third annum closed out with the end of 2013, and while we slowed things down a bit blog-wise to focus on family and fun, it was still a wonderful whirlwind that we're carrying with us into 2014. Here are some of our highlights from the last 365 days...

We love cookbooks, and believe that if you truly want a comprehensive understanding of a family or community, read one of their collected cookbooks cover to cover. Find the most dog-eared, sauce-splattered pages, cook those recipes and you will know the way to their hearts. Last spring marked the publication of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance cookbook, a beautiful offering that was kind enough to include our recipes for Papaquiles and Damir’s broccoli. 

In April, we got called up to play in the big game. RL Reeves, Jr. invited us to his East Austin Salsa Shootout at Tamale House East, and our version of Margo’s salsa took home first prize. “When the smoke cleared, and all the votes were tallied Ryan and Julie of Foie Gras Hotdog had shown their Texas bona fides in a big way..."  It's taken us a few years and while we don't quite feel like Texans yet, we definitely are Austinites

Other notables: We taught a class called "Rig It," at the AFBA Photography Camp in September. A giant chub of beef bologna was smoked into Oklahoma prime rib and I turned fried baloney sandwiches into something even more crazy than fried baloney sandwiches. We're not going to talk about the scrapple. Julie made avgolemono and fried artichoke hearts so delicious we ate it for a week straight, and her lemon-chèvre-béchamel "boss sauce" may someday be added to the canon of mother sauces. 

Our top five most popular posts of 2013 – as determined by page views – were a mixed bag. Last year’s top five posts were all essentially, exceptionally vegetarian. This year, you wanted some meat, and our number one post was... 

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