Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

World Recipe Debut #1: My Double-Mustard Dog

For my World Recipe Debut #1, I was going to go with my Sucka-Free Succotash, but there are some issues with letting the secret "trick" to that one out of the bag prematurely (don't want to bollix the book deal). So instead, prepare to feast (your eyes!) on the World Recipe Debut for My patented Double-Mustard Dog!!

(patent pending)

No not really, there's no patent involved! Just good old fashioned hot dog know-how and expertise. The ingredients for the recipe couldn't be simpler:
• a cooked hot dog (for more than one Double Mustard Dog, scale up the hot dog itself plus all the other ingredients by a factor of N, where N = the number of total Double Mustard Dogs you wish to arrive at)

• French's Mustard* by French's

• Our Mustard w/Seeds* by the Mendocino Jam Company (I think that's what they're called - you'll be able to tell once you taste that mustard! OH BABY!)

• a hot dog bun

Ok, here's where it gets a little tricky. For the foundational "cooking it" aspect of a lot of my recipes, I lean on Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Over the years I've found it to be really an excellent and reliable guide in matters culinary, but I'm so, so disillusioned now with it because - get this - I went in there looking for the details on cooking a hot dog, and came up bupkes! NOTHING! No instruction whatsoever, on one of the most basic staples of the American diet, in a book called "How to Cook EVERYTHING," no less! Can you BELIEVE IT? What does the core temperature of a done dog need to be? How hot should the pan be, to avoid that unfortunate outside sear with inner coolness? What about trickomnemnosis? Shoot, at least you'd think you'd want to have that covered at least.

For shame on you, Mr. Bittman. You let me the fuck down. I guess maybe you're saving the GOOD stuff for the sequel: How to Cook One With Everything.

Anyhow. How you get the dog to a state of cookededness is therefore a topic of some controversy. I can't advise you in these matters. But once you have completed the cooking of N hot dogs, you assemble the Famed Double Mustard Dog(s) in the following manner:

Bun. Start with bun. Gently force the bun open on the top seam (NOT the bottom seam! That will WRECK YOUR DOG irreparably, presentation-wise!).

One side of the bun, spread an even coating of French's. OPTIONAL STEP: some sweet pickle relish doesn't go amiss in this recipe. If you want some of that, put a stripe of it down the bottom of the bun. Sweet pickle relish.

Then insert the cooked dog. Next, put an even stripe of the Our Mustard w/Seeds straight down the middle of that dog - NOT TOO THICK! That's good, strong stuff already.

Then all you have to do is ENJOY! As follows:

Step 1: Eat the Double Mustard Dog.

Step 2: Burp!

*NOTE ON THE AMOUNT OF MUSTARD REQUIRED for this recipe: for most cases, one jar of each mustard will more than suffice. However, as N reaches a non-arbitrarily large number, it may be necessary to have additional jars on hand, or to purchase larger jars so that there will be mustard enough to go around. Use your head on this one.

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