we were driving on I-4 heading to the beach a month or so ago and I was reading magazines (bliss right?). I saw that a semi-local place was featured in Food and Wine magazine (May issue.) It’s called the Poor Porker and while I kind of have a love – hate with their name, I am certainly chuffed too have a hipster beignet and chicory coffee food truck in the Central Florida town of Lakeland. I immediately tried to find it on my phone to see if we could swing by but we had zoomed down the road before I could find where they might be. But, a couple weeks ago we were making a quick trip to Sarasota to see my sister before she skipped town/go to the aquarium/see my parents for pre-fathers day that happened to coincide with the Lakeland curbside market so we stopped by for some fresh beignets. Their cart (because truck isn’t really what it is) is a trailer with a sort of shack cobbled together on top housing a few people pouring coffee, taking orders and rolling out and frying dough. It has that new old style of industrial reclamation of Coleman coolers, old wood and artfully rusty industrial signage. The staff/owners are cool cat types with work aprons, tats and artful dustings of flour. We ordered an iced chicory coffee and two orders of beignets. One was what I would call the original variety, shaken in a bag of powdered sugary goodness and the other was in a little tray and doused with maple, bacon and a drift of sugar. They are made to order and HOT. The dough is really great, soft and pillowy and crisp in all the right ways. While you might think I’d love the bacon I was really all about the orginal. They were just so good with that cold coffee. If you are ever in the neighborhood I would recommend this as a good detour. You get the small town vibe with a healthy dose of hipster and a darn good treat. I hope they are around a long time.
Month: June 2013
there are obscenities in here.
well, sort of. I made a burger last night and it was ridiculous bordering on obscene. Here’s why. I got an iSi thingie for my birthday. I’m celebrating my birthday this week in general. Lots of years I haven’t been all that excited about it. In fact when I was turning thirty I had negative birthdays for a few years until my sister said it had to stop. This year I can lean in to tell you that I’m just not that fussed about it. It’s not a milestone year where I feel like I haven’t achieved something and in that, I’ve achieved everything. I don’t have to worry about the haves or have nots, the I have it and you don’ts or the don’t you wish yous. I’m just me and I’m pretty great. Anyway, Z is a total joy to have buying me loot because he gets so excited about it that he can’t not give me whatever comes in the mail and a few days ago a household sized iSi cream dispenser and charges came to our doorstep. So, what to do other than pull out Richard Blais’ cookbook, Try This At Home and make a modified cheddar cheese version of this Cheese Wizard to put on sherry braised onion and bacon burgers. So, basically the long and short of it is I melted cheddar in heavy cream, chilled it and charged it with nitrous oxide into foam which I sprayed on a BURGER. Obscene. No one needs that-but it was fun and I’ll probably do it again and add cayenne so it is more like pimiento cheese because that would be awesome. Happy birthday to me!
hot dog heaven or relish the dog
I know what you are thinking. People who give up cable to have a line item in their budget for cheese aren’t all that likely to like hotdogs*. Don’t judge. I actually can’t explain it either. This isn’t to say I’m not just a touch picky about it but I like hotdogs. There, I said it. It could relate to my love for handheld food, relish or encased meat. When I actually sit and think about it-my feeling is that it is probably relish. I don’t like ketchup on dogs-ever. I find myself most often adding relish, mustard, diced onion, a little mayo and even some sharp cheddar or hot sauce. All of the above probably mask the taste of any hotdog under there. At any rate, we had yet to try the Orlando landmark, Hot Dog Heaven, so Z took me there one Saturday afternoon before we succumbed to every homeowners joy, yard work. It is roughly the size of a doublewide trailer and sits on a busy street and looks like it has been there about 25 years, which it has. A giant dog on a double pronged fork passes for what is the …skyline. We got in line and perused the menu while we waited. Vienna red-hots (a Chicago staple) topped in every way imaginable with a side of fries. I opted for standard Chicago style, a pickle, tomato, neon relish, onion and sport peppers. A boiled water dog on a steamed bun. The hot dog was standard. I didn’t expect more or less. It had that casing snap when you bit it, wasn’t over or underdressed, was a throwback to childhood and street vendors with carts. The fries I could’ve left behind-dressed with a weird cold cheese (American?)-they dropped the experience a few notches and if you go, I’d say get chips. Kind of an average hotdog experience. I didn’t even have the heart to blog about it on it’s own. But, roll it forward a month or so…
This begins with a story with a happy ending. My sister was in town with her family for summer vacation. We went to the Magic Kingdom for a day of thrilling and princessly rides with her four kids who range in age from 4 to 11. Eight of us in all from A to Z. While riding on the great Goofini’s Barnstormer (a short entry into roller coasters for kids) I was sitting behind my sister and oldest niece and watched the hat that not two hours before we had been told was my niece’s favorite (Z and I bought it for her) fly off of her head and past my outstretched fingers. Upon exiting the ride we found out we could pick up the hat at days end at City Hall on Main Street. Roll it forward a couple of hours to the most MASSIVE rain storm I’ve seen outside of a tropical depression and the eight of us huddling under the awning at the Enchanted Tiki Room. Two hours and two passes through It’s a Small World later it still hadn’t stopped pouring. So, wet to the skin we headed out sans hat. Cutest niece says, ‘don’t worry about my hat.’ ‘ok.’ I say. They headed off for a week at the beach. Next day, Z and I pack ourselves into the car with no less than 5 bottles of sunscreen and head to the beach, after a brief stop at Disney Lost & Found where we …GOT THE HAT… They handed it over and said, ‘sorry it’s still a bit damp.’ Of all the exceptions in the world, this was exceptional. So, we paid back their kindness by heading into the park for a Disney-taxed lunch of delightfully giant hot dogs from Casey’s Corner hotdogs. Giant dogs and mine was ridiculously covered in an oniony pickley neon relish that I loved. I had to eat it with a knife and fork. Served up with some fries and cracker jack and washed down with a Coke while sitting outside with a view of both Main Street USA and Cinderella’s Castle it was worth every penny. I also realized when pulling links for this blog that they serve mini-corndogs and have free cheese sauce as a hotdog topping so I am certain that is in my immediate future.
*true story. Before I got married I gave up cable so that I would have money I didn’t feel bad spending on triple cream brie, manchego and piave.
chowder-hound
I usually reserve the majority of my soup eating to the fall and winter because I hate to be hot. Once the temperatures outside breach 80 degrees I fall back on quicker meals – burgers, salads and things that cook in under an hour. Somehow this soup sneaked past my internal thermometer and we ate it for dinner a couple of weeks ago. It is the product of a pin from the blog, eat, live, run and can be found here. She mentions that it is made better by bacon grease and in general that seems to be the way of things. I don’t shout bacon from the highest mountain but we do seem to eat it in a variety of different ways. I think it would also do well with butter if you are not inclined to eating pork. This chow
der is differentiated by roasting poblano peppers (another thing that should be most eaten in the fall when they are fresh from New Mexico) and then cooking down the potatoes. We ate this soup for a few days and it was pretty good if not a bit standard. I’m not really jonesed for summer and am already glad to have crossed the summer solstice and heading for fall. I am planning some Southeast Asian soups for this summer that I am looking forward to though-Tom Ka Gai and Malaysian Laksas. I think their spicy heat will be cooling and right for the dog days of summer.
down in lunch lady land
excessive ingredient alert! This is only an alert. I was seduced by the cover and heft of a cookbook a year or two ago by Guy Fieri. You know him, bleached blond spikes on dark roots, bling for miles and host (former?) of Minute to Win It! He wrote and/or inspired a cookbook called Food, Cookin it, Livin it, Lovin it. It has spin of fun graffiti style art and lengthy ingredient lists and is kind of bar food that tastes good because it’s fried or has cheese in it. I have been on a only cooking stuff that is easy kick and somehow I diverted into this. 10 hundred (copyright that!) ingredients and deep frying. For the love of all that’s holy.
Anyhow, I made Guy’s Sloppy Joe’s with Maui Onion Straws. Spicy-spicy and faintly sweet ground meat simmered down to a thick paste and topped with fried sweet onions. We used Vidalia’s instead of Maui’s-it being Florida and all. We used Martin’s potato buns and the recipe fed us 3 or 4 times. We could have easily halved it but since you are going the distance on measuring and pouring ingrediants you might as well be all in. I guess all those ingredients melded together in the pan to create something better than the sum of their parts. Deep frying isn’t really my favorite and to cut down on the process I used a stovetop pot and shallow fried just to ease the mess. The onions were seriously awesome. I think that adding fried onions is roughly the same as adding bacon. Anyway, I have had the song by Adam Sandler in my head for days now and you would be well served to not go watch this link but run to the store and get the ingredients for slop-sloppy joes.
*this is my four hundredth post-who would’ve thought?
My Urban Pantry 