Chicago Hot Dog – sort of

 
 

I've already attempted a New York Hot Dog.  This time I decided to do a Chicago version.

 

Ingredients:

 

Hot Dogs and buns

Fresh tomato

Pickle

Hot Peppers

Sweet relish

Celery salt

 

Method:

 

Prepare the hot dogs as per the New York ones.  Load the buns with slices of fresh tomato, pickles, chilli peppers, sweet relish (I used piccalilli) and season with celery salt.

 

And no ketchup is allowed!  The taste was fresher than the New York version but I missed the onion.

 

New York style Hot Dog (with a tweak)

 
 

I haven't tried to make any American style Hot Dog before.  Hot Dogs here in New Zealand are quite different – just a short sausage with a stick in it dipped in batter then fried and doused with ketchup.

 

So having bought some American style frankfurters I decided to start with a New York style hot dog.

 

Ingredients:

 

Frankfurters

Hot Dog buns

Sliced onions

Oil

Tomato paste

Spicy American mustard

Small amount of red chili

 

Method:

 

I started a few hours early with slicing the onions and slow frying them in oil and quite a bit of tomato paste.  I also added some chopped red chilli (not authentic but I tweaked it)

 

After your onions are ready, the rest is very quick.  Just heat some water to a boil – the pan needs to be big enough for the frankfurters.  Turn it down once it has boiled and pop in the frankfurters to heat through.  Don't boil them or their skins will burst.

 

Make up the hot dog with the onion mixture, the frankfurter and generous squirts of mustard.  No ketchup is allowed in a New York hot dog.

 

The flavour was ok but I found the bun a bit soft.

Cider Braised Chorizo

 

 

This would make a good finger food for a party.

 

Ingredients:

 

Chorizo (raw and soft)

Can of apple cider

 

Method:

 

Cut the links between each sausage and then cut the chorizo into about 1in lengths (I got about 4 pieces out of each sausage)

 

Put the chorizo into a saucepan together with the cider.  Bring this to the boil.  Reduce to a simmer for about 25 minutes til the chorizo is tender.

 

Take out the chorizo and reduce the cider to about half.

 

Serve with toothpicks. Brush with the reduced sauce.

Pigs in Blankets

Ingredients

Full sized pork sausages

Bacon – thin

Method:

I tied knots in my pork sausages with string and left it there while I pre-fried them.  I wanted the insides to firm up a bit so I could take the string off before doing the next stage.

Heat your oven to moderately hot.

Cut off the string. Wrap each partly cooked little sausage in part of a thin slice of bacon.  Wrap around 1 ½ times.  Secure with a toothpick with the overlap of bacon on the bottom.

Bake for about 20 minutes – keep checking till the bacon is done to a nice crispiness.  I put the oven fan on in the end.

Delicious just as they are – hot.  And also nice to eat the next day cold.

Stovetop Spinach & Sausage Frittata

Normally I cook frittatas in the oven but this time I wanted to see if one could be done on the stove top – and it did work.  The texture of the eggs was very soft and silky – but it took 35 minutes to cook – which I felt was a long time.

Ingredients:

Spinach

Leftover cooked sausage

6 eggs

Reduced cream (or fresh cream)

Salt & Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Nutmeg – freshly grated

Feta cheese (crumbled)

Oil/butter

Method:

Slice the sausage and heat it through in some oil/butter in a heavy pan. 

Add the spinach and wait a moment or two for it just to start wilting.

Pour in your whisked together eggs, cream and salt and pepper and cayenne.

Sprinkle the crumbled feta over the top.

Grate some nutmeg onto the top.

Don't stir.  Put a lid on the pan and leave it on a low heat.  Serve when the top is just set.

If your pan was able to be used in the oven, you could finish the top off in there which would be quicker – but kind of defeats the purpose of just using the elements.

Chorizo Burger

These Chorizo Burgers were so simple to make, it's ridiculous!  I got the idea for them from Nigel Slater's book Eat.

All you need to make the burger patties is more or less equal quantities of chorizo sausage and pork mince (ground pork).  You take the skins off the chorizo and then just mix it and the pork mince together with a pit of pepper and salt and then form up into patties.  How easy is that!

When you are choosing your chorizo try to get some that are softish rather than salami hard.

Fry your patties gently and then finish them off in a moderate oven.  You could just fry them until they are cooked through but I like to make sure they are cooked right through.

Then just split and butter some burger buns.  Pop some salad leaves onto the bottom (I used baby cos (romaine)).  I also added a thin slice of tomato (which Nigel Slater didn't). 

I didn't heat the buns at all.  These burgers were amazingly tasty given how few ingredients went into them!

Leftover Chorizo with Tomato Based Sauce

We had some leftover chorizo so I made up a sauce to go with them.

Ingredients:

Leftover braised chorizo 'balls'

Olive oil

Onion

Tomato paste

2 bacon rashers

Pickle juice

Tomatoes

¼ orange capsicum

Cream

Method:

Finely dice a little onion and fry it off in a little olive oil.

Add cut up bacon rashers to the onion.

Then add the capsicum (bell peppers).

Once the onion, bacon and capsicum is cooked, add the pickle juice.  Add chopped tomatoes and cook slowly for 30 minutes minimum

To finish add cream and then the chorizo till reheated.

PS - sorry about the awful photo