The Dog Father Hot Dogs

A lot of the best times I've had in recent years have been in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny... While some places can tolerate the carry on of me and my comrades, the people of Thomastown actively encourage it. It's not first time a Thomastown musician has featured on this blog (see Nathan Conway's Sandwich) and I doubt it will be the last.



Joe Glynn, drummer with one of my favourite bands Neon Wolf, has set up a business that brought a tear to my eye, I caught up with him for a slightly drunken (me, not him) chat when I spotted him set up side stage at a recent John Martyn tribute concert in Carroll's of Thomastown. The reasons a simple hot dog stand has brought a tear to my are two-fold; Firstly this is not a simple hot dog stand... It's the Rolls Royce Phantom of hot dog stands, it's the size of an average Manhattan appartment, and secondly is his passion for a great product; he refuses to use cheap or inferior ingredients, he simply believes there is no point selling hot dogs if they're not gonna be the best... I'll be the judge of that!

Now given that my primary purpose for being in the venue was music and beer, and being bound to the rule of "Eating Is Cheating" I restricted myself to 2 hot dogs (most would only manage one of these bad boys), any more and I would have been having an early Saturday night instead of the early Sunday morning it transpired to be.



First off I had a traditional and delicious hot dog topped with ketchup, mustard and onions. Top marks on that one. I went back to the gig very happy, had a few more beers, listened to a few more tunes and decided there was room for one more. This time I left it up to Joe as to how to top it off, and top it off he did! Ketchup, mustard and sauerkraut, it was like being back in New York...



Hands down the best hot dog I've ever had in Ireland.

Simple as that.

Listen to and download Neon Wolf's brilliant tunes here

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Cheese on Crackers? Yep that's all...

"Well this is just plain lazy!"... Things aren't always gonna be elaborate and fancy round here ("When were they ever" says you)...

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to try to force myself to be a little bit more adventurous in the shite that I eat, now cheese on crackers might not seem adventurous to you but for me anything outside of standard red cheddar on cream crackers (and microwaved for 15 seconds) was none of my business up to recently.

The Dempsey family, who have "tolerated with great patience" (being the most appropriate term) myself and the rest of my band for about 8 years now, are never ones to shy away from trying different types of cheeses and are constantly in their infinite generosity, or maybe pity, trying to get me to taste them.
In fairness it's very rare that they have gotten me to taste something I haven't liked and I've decided to start seeking out these nice things for myself for my own home.
Now I didn't have any red wine to properly acompany this posh snack but I did have some red lemonade.

The crackers are Jacob's Mediterraneo Olive Oil and Oregano and the cheese is Marks and Spencers Cornish Cruncher, Extra Strengh Cheddar with a Strengh of 7 and it won a gold award in 2009 if you wouldn't mind!



Now this is grand stuff altogether, tasty aul crackers and the cheese is the kind of cheese that that girl off the Calvita packets, after presumably growing up and getting a degree in something pointless in Trinity, should now be putting her face to. Try this stuff, it's grand.

Now if I could only figure out how to deep fry 'em!

Boozey x

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The BLT Hot Dog

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions... To have a hot dog or a BLT sandwich?... A question surely posed somewhere at sometime... I present the solution to the problem you didn't know existed:
The BLT Hotdog.
I won't for a second claim that I came up with the idea, all kinds of weird and wonderful hot dogs exist in the U.S.A if you're willing to seek them out; I came across this in New York earlier in the year, I just want to show that you don't have to be restricted to the standard hot dog toppings.

What you'll need:
Lettuce
Tomato
Hot dog Rolls
Mayo
Streaky Rashers
Hot dogs; I used jumbo size ones for this, regular are just as good

I haven't figured out a decent way of doing this better or easier other than using a George Foreman Grill, I wouldn't advise trying this without one or something similar. You're gonna need some of those wooden cocktail/tooth picks to hold the rashers onto the hot dog, I suppose you could staple the rashers on but I would seriously advise against that.

Break the sticks up, start at one end and roll the rasher around the hot dog using the sticks to hold that precious bacon in place, it takes about one and a half rashers for a jumbo hot dog, one will do for a regular size dog.

Now it's time to get it on the George Foreman, heat it up to the hottest temperature and fire the dog on.

Close the lid down so it applies pressure which will bond the 2 pig products together, about every 2 to 3 minutes rotate the dog a quarter, after 4 of these turns it should be ready. After this check that all parts of the rasher are well cooked and crispy, give it an extra few minutes if you're not sure, it's much better to overcook this than undercook it because the rasher should almost be brittle and break away easily with each bite, it should look something like this when done.

While this is cooking you'll wanna get the rest of the shite ready, lightly toast the bun or warm it in the oven, I threw it under the grill for a couple of minutes, and chop up the lettuce and tomato into small pieces.



Mayonnaise up your roll and add some of the lettuce and tomato.

Put on that double dose of meat and top off with more lettuce and tomato.

Enjoy... It's obviously delicious, the rasher and the hot dog are fused together into a kind of a super meat, the toppings are a cool and refreshing contrast to the dog. Mess around and add more ingredients to your taste if you like.

Boozey x

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Aoife's Cheesy BLT Bagel!

My good buddy Aoife Byrne finally tells all about her favourite bagel...

I've been meaning to share this little beauty for a long time now. Finally, I felt today was a good time to do it due to the hangover after a brilliant night of music with friends in Flanagan's. I knew as soon as I woke up that I wanted this in my belly asap.
So here it goes...

What you need:
Bagels (sesame or plain, just make sure they're fresh)
Rashers (I prefer the streaky ones, they work well in this bad boy)
Tomatoes (big juicy vine ones)
Lettuce (iceberg, it's gotta be iceberg)
Cheese (Charleville cheddar is my cheese of choice here)
Mayo

The great thing about this baby is that you can get the ingredients in Centra without having to drag yourself into Tesco, which can be an awful experience when you're hungover.
So first off, grill the rashers. I like mine nice and crispy. While they're grilling, chop up the lettuce and slice the tomatoes.
When the rashers are done half the bagel and throw it under the grill on a low heat. The trick here is not to overdo the bagel. It's better when it's just warmed. If the bagels are nice and fresh they only need to be warmed.
Next, slap the crispy rashers onto one half of the bagel and grate some cheese over it. Stick it back under the grill until the cheese is melted (again, don't overdo it. Burnt cheese is manky).
I don't grill the tomatoes because I like when they're really juicy. It's a good combo with the crispy rashers (I really do like crispy rashers!)
Ok so after that it's just a matter of layering all the rest of it up. Whack a load of mayo on the other half of the bagel, followed by the lettuce, tomatoes and the other half of the bagel with the rashers and cheese. I really didn't need to tell any of you how to do that, just slap it all together. It's going to be amazing anyway.

So that's it. I love this bagel because it's so quick to put together  (it took me longer to write this yoke) and it's tasty as bejaysus.
This creation goes particularly well with a nice cuppa scald, chili heatwave doritos and an episode of Breaking Bad. (Although today I'm finishing it off with a choc chip cupcake that I made myself!)
Enjoy!

Ps. Here's a pic of Sushi my dog enjoying some of the crispy rasher!!

 Aoife Byrne

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J.J's Jambons

J.J Fleming...

He could ruin me and this blog if he wanted to; The food ideas that this gentleman that I'm lucky to call my friend has going around his head far exceed anything my pickled brain could ever come up with. But he's a nice guy and is gonna use his powers for good and contribute to this blog on a regular basis... Much to my relief!






Here's his first post:

"Patatas Bravas Mince Jambons"

Ingredients:
Patatas Bravas paste
Shop bought puff pastry
200gms mince
Suitable melty cheese (I used Port Salut and Cheddar)

Method:

First fry up the mince until cooked.



Put the Patatas Bravas in a suace pan and simmer for 2 minutes, as per the instructions add the mince and 100mls of water and reduce the mixture down. Add cream to suit your taste.

Here's the mixture you're left with being left out to cool.

Next unroll your puff pastry and cut up to suit how many Jambons you'll require, I cut up 15 squares.

Spoon the mixture into the centre of the square.

Plonk your cheese on top...

And another dollop of mixture on top...

Brush the corners with milk or beaten egg and fold the corners to get something that looks like this.

Here's the 15 brushed with milk and ready to be boxed off into the oven.

Heat your oven to 200 degrees and put them in the bottom rack for 12 minutes and then move to the middle rack for another 6 minutes.

Here's the finished articles:

J.J Fleming

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Brinner Bap

I've already hit on the fact on this blog that I really don't like the time of day that breakfast is served (Breakfast time. Anytime.) but now I'm gonna "sandwich up" a more traditional Irish breakfast.

But before I do I would like to take a moment to salute just about the only thing I do have for breakfast.

The 380ml bottle of Lucozade Original, and yes I can taste the difference between the 380ml and the larger bottle or the standard can. I don't know what flavour "Original" is supposed to be but it's a tasty pick me for those early mornings after a night on the pints. If anyone knows a similar product in the U.S let me know, it's about the only thing I miss when I'm over there and I'm Jonesing for a cure.

Anyway, less advertising for a huge company that'll never give me anything for it (prove me wrong Luco ya bastard) and on to the bap. The Brinner Bap to be exact, "Brinner" being a cross between breakfast and dinner, obviously, and although it is a word I would never use out loud, it serves its purpose for the sake of this post.

I must say my friends Co Brady and Sean Corcoran deserve a lot of credit for this post happening when it did, I've been messing around with these kinda breakfast sambos for a while and especially how best to construct them but lately they had gone to the back of my mind, that was until last week when Co sent me a delicious looking picture of a fry up in between some toast, something he better do up for the blog and last weekend when Sean and I had a great drunken chat about the wonderous ability waffles have of securing beans within a sandwich.

Here are tonights ingredients:

A bap, a nice white floury one is my favourite, black and white pudding, rashers and sausages,an egg, beans and a potato waffle. (Pepper optional, ignore the bananas)... Oh and some grated cheddar cheese, because why the fuck not?!



I'm gonna spare the photos of the actual cooking because using 4 different appliances at once was enough hassle without throwing a camera into the mix... I toasted the bap very lightly, microwaved the beans, grilled the rashers and fried the pudding, sausages, egg and waffle. Now I made a point of frying the waffle solely for the reason that on the box the cooking instructions mentioned grilling and oven cooking only, so in solidarity with the famous song (grill 'em, bake 'em, FRY 'em, eat 'em...) I 'm bringing back the frying option. I'd usually just give them 5 minutes in the toaster but this frying craic was far far superior.

On to the construction phase...

Butter the bap, (notice it is very very lightly toasted  so as to keep the bread really soft), build from the bottom up; waffle first, then plenty of beans...

Top the beans off with the grated cheese, place 2 sausages on top of that.

I've broken up the rasher cos I find a rasher in a sandwich like this could pull out all the other ingredients when you take a bite out of it, I sprinkled this and the pudding over everything..

Top off with the fried egg...

add a little pepper if you like, close it up, slice it in half and...

Aw sheeeit, this thing was just delicious, now I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with any kind of heart condition, this thing is not healthy eating but it is unbelievably tasty, there's something amazing about a runny egg in a sandwich... that said there's something amazing about rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, beans, a waffle and cheese in that same sandwich too...

Until next time when I make a smoothie out of fruit, vegetables and cholesterol lowering tablets.

B.S

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A "Luxury" Salami, Mozzarella and Shallot Bagel!! by Shauna O'Reilly

My friend Shauna sent me a picture of this bagel a year or so ago when she was in New Zealand, true to her word she's done a post on it. Tasty stuff...

Sesame seed bagels with salami, mozzarella, shallots, garlic mayo and a few toasted sesame seeds for taste.

I'm a big fan of the sesame seed. Big fan. I'll have it with anything I can.
So whilst wandering hungrily around Tesco this evening, I spied my old face sesame sprinkled bagels and decided to make the long promised sambo of luxury for food guru Boozey.

  

It's simple. Toast the bagel lightly first.
Layer thick slabs of fresh mozzarella and fine Italian or "eye-talian" as they call it in Kildare salami onto the warm bagel.

Sprinkle finely chopped shallots, toasted sesame seeds and some ground peppercorns.

Shtick a bit of oul garlic mayo on to moisten the whole affair up and bang it under the grill.

Serve with green leaf salad, a drizzle of balsamic, an ice cold can of diet coke and Bob's your uncle...
Well actually, he's my Dad.
Enjoy...

Shauna O'Reilly

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