1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (131 page)

The discussion will then move on to the subject of the crust. Should it be a short crust (that is, flaky, butter-enriched, Continental-style pastry), or the very thin, crisp, Anglo-American version based on lard? Bakers will forever debate the definitive answer. Meanwhile the rest of us eat.

For a savory, decadent choice that harkens to the tradition of serving a slice of apple pie with a slice of Cheddar, half of the butter can be replaced by Cheddar, as it is in the following recipe.

Makes one double-crust, 9-inch pie; serves 6

For the pastry:

4 ounces sharp, aged Cheddar cheese, preferably white

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter

1¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour, as needed

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon mace

5 to 6 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:

5 large apples (about 2 pounds), preferably Cortland or Northern Spy

2 to 3 tablespoons lemon juice

⅔ cup sugar

Pinch of salt

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

About 1 tablespoon butter, cut into tiny pieces

1 large egg yolk

2 tablespoons milk

1.
Make the pastry: Place the cheese in a food processor, and grate it to a fine meal; you should have about 1 cup loosely packed cheese. Cut the butter into small pieces.

2.
Measure out 1⅔ cups of sifted flour and resift it with the salt and mace into the food processor. Add the grated cheese and butter and process until the mixture has the texture of fine meal.

3.
Slowly trickle in the ice water, 2 tablespoons at a time, processing between each addition, until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and forms a ball. If the dough seems too sticky, add more flour 1 tablespoon at a time; if it is too dry and crumbly, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time.

4.
Place the dough on a lightly floured pastry board and divide it in half. Form each half into a ball and lightly knead each once or twice with the palm of your hand, to firm up the dough. Reshape each half into a ball and flatten them slightly into thick disks. Wrap each with plastic wrap or wax paper and chill for at least 1 hour, but preferably for 3 or 4 hours, or even overnight.

5.
About 10 minutes before rolling out the dough, remove it from the refrigerator and let it warm up a bit. Roll out each disk of dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of ¼ inch. One round of rolled dough should be fitted into the bottom of an ungreased 9-inch pie pan, leaving extra hanging over. Roll out the second sheet of dough and drape it, untrimmed, over the lined pie pan. Cover the dough snugly with wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate the pie pan and dough while you prepare the apples.

6.
Preheat the oven to 425ºF.

7.
Make the filling: Peel and core the apples and slice them vertically to ⅛-to-¼-inch thickness. Place them in a large bowl. Sprinkle the apples with a little lemon juice as you slice, to prevent discoloration.

8.
Toss the apples with the sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

9.
Remove the pie pan from the refrigerator and gently lift the top crust from the pan. Arrange a flat layer of apples that completely covers the bottom pie crust. Then heap the remaining apple slices on top and level them. Dot the apples evenly with the pieces of butter.

10.
Fit the top pie crust over the apples, trimming the edges to just cover the rim of the pie pan and crimping them to the bottom crust with the tines of a fork dipped in cold water.

11.
Bake the pie for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350ºF. Bake until the top crust begins to turn a light golden brown, another 25 minutes.

12.
Beat the egg yolk with the milk in a small bowl. Remove the pie from the oven and brush the mixture all over the top crust. Sprinkle the crust liberally with sugar and return the pie to the oven until the edges of the pie are deep golden brown, another 10 to 15 minutes. Serve warm or cold.

Note:
If you must serve this pie à la mode, the best flavors of ice cream to pair with the cheese crust would be vanilla or cinnamon. For purists, however, the pie needs no enhancement.

Where:
In San Francisco
(for a great apple pie made without Cheddar), Zuni Café, tel 415-552-2522,
zunicafe.com
.
Special events:
Applefest, Warwick, NY, October,
warwickapplefest.com
; Bucktown Apple Pie Contest, Chicago, IL, October,
bucktownapplepiecontest.com
; Dummerston Apple Pie Festival, Dummerston, VT, October,
dummerston.com
.

A former “seed and feed” store serves up Texas-style tacos.

As the Texas state capital, home to the state university and to lively arts, music, and tech scenes spurred by world-famous festivals, Austin is by all accounts the state’s liveliest and most unfettered city. And among its wide range of young-spirited diversions, food is not the least.

While Austin boasts its share of inventive haute fare, the real treasures for visitors are the time-honored food styles that reflect the history of both city and state: Hill Country barbecue, Tex-Mex, and Texas-Country Southern.

For the truest, juiciest, and smokiest example of the Hill Country style, the ultimate destination is Kreuz Market, about a forty-minute drive from Austin, in Lockhart. Pronounced “Kritze” by many and “Kroitz” by just as many others, it follows a barbecue style created by the German butchers who settled in this area in the early 1900s, smoke-curing their meats as they had back home. Thus did one Charles Kreuz begin his meat market in Lockhart in 1900, although not in its current location.

Beef is the dominant choice here, with pork and Kreuz’s hefty homemade sausages tied for second. When lines form in the parking lot at the busiest times, appetites are stoked by the sweet, burnished aroma of hickory wood in the smoke-pits. Meat here is sold by the pound, rustically sliced down onto pink butcher’s paper and priced according to cut: brisket, shoulder, prime rib, chops, ribs, and so on. The only things that accompany the meat are slices of white bread and plastic knives and forks. Although sauce is available, it’s regarded as heresy by purists, who prefer the other garnishes on display: sliced avocado, tomato, and
jalapeños among them. Only the cooked meats, however, can be ordered online for shipping around the country.

At Austin’s lively Güero’s Taco Bar, hand-shaken margaritas, straight-up and ice cold, are the right accompaniments for warm hand-made corn tortillas, cheese-filled
tamales queso
, or lushly filled tacos with black beans and red rice. As the wall posters in this informal diner setting attest, Güero’s occupies a former “seed and feed” store that operated on the site from the late 1800s through the early 1990s. The tacos have been holding down the fort since 1995.

The same historic credentials apply to the teeming, busted-out barn of a restaurant that is the original Threadgill’s, a musical landmark located in a former gas station and known as the place where Janis Joplin got her start. The menu reads like the index of a Texas cookbook, featuring such Lone Star classics as country-fried steak, fried chicken and gizzards with cream gravy, meat loaf, crispy fried oysters, syrupy-sweet baked desserts, and lots more (with several international options perhaps best bypassed in favor of local treats). There is still live music on certain nights, and if not, the jukebox never disappoints.

Where:
In Austin, TX
, Güero’s Taco Bar, tel 512-447-7688,
guerostacobar.com
; Threadgill’s, tel 512-451-5440,
threadgills.com
;
in Lockhart, TX
, Kreuz Market, tel 512-398-2361,
kreuzmarket.com
.
Mail order:
Kreutzmarket.com
.
See also:
Barbecue
.

One of the quintessential, defining aromas of the American breakfast, in recent years bacon has become so fashionable (almost ridiculously so) that it’s been used as a flavoring for everything from ice cream to vodka. But the homey pork cut’s continuing position of honor in the world of gourmandise speaks to its lasting appeal. Pigs were domesticated around 5000
B.C.
in Southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, their meat cured in China by at least 200
B.C.
and being salted, air-dried, and smoked by the first century
A.D.
in Rome, in a process not unlike what we use for pig belly today. The word
bacon
comes from the Germanic
bakkon
, meaning smoked pork, and was first used around the early twelfth century; the English quickly picked up both the term and the foodstuff, which made its way to America with the Pilgrims in 1620.

Slices of meat-striped fat cut from the pig’s belly right below the ribs become magical when cured with salt, smoked, and finally sizzled in a skillet. Bacon is an otherworldly pleasure—crunchy, salty, woodsy, earthy, and addictive as a feel-good drug at a far lower street value. The stuff beguiles when eaten all by itself, but pair it with eggs, whether creamy and softly scrambled or runny and fried, and it becomes a foil worthy of an ode. It improves almost any sandwich it is layered into, and brings interest and energy when sprinkled on top of everything from salads and baked potatoes to pasta, soups, and maybe even ice cream.

Nowadays, artisanal bacon producers are busy developing unique cures featuring ingredients like maple syrup, molasses, demerara
sugar, cinnamon-sugar, garlic, juniper, pepper, and more. Their creations can be full of character and deep, enticing flavors, but only a few choice supermarket bacons offer deliciously toothsome results that even the snootiest gourmand might cotton to.

And that’s good news, for nothing evokes Sunday mornings in America—more than church bells ringing, and even in these fat-fearing times—than the salty-smoky-fatty perfume of frying bacon accompanied by the scents of toasting bread and freshly made coffee.

Where:
In New York
, Swine, tel 212-255-7675,
swinenyc.com
; Bar Bacon, tel 646-362-0622,
barbacon.com
.
Mail order:
store.nimanranch.com
(search bacon);
applegate.com
(search bacon);
shop.bentonscountryham.com
(click Products, then search bacon).
Further information and recipes:
The Bacon Cookbook
by James Villas (2007);
Pig: King of the Southern Table
by James Villas (2010);
Beyond Nose to Tail
by Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly (2007);
epicurious.com
(search bacon twists; bacon baklava; smoky bacon mac; spicy bacon and egg).
Tip:
Look for brands such as Niman Ranch for nitrate-and preservative-free “natural” bacon. When choosing the latter, note that the color is paler and browner than bacon with preservatives, which keep the meat more brightly red.

For those who value simple pleasures, little compares to the delights of a big, oval Idaho russet potato oven-baked to perfection. High in starch, its cells separate when cooked, which renders it fluffy when baked. Once upon a time, baked Idaho russets were standard DIY fare for kids, who would roast the spuds “mickey” style by burying them in hot coals. Cooked kitchen style, their crackling brown skins are split open at the top so globs of sweet butter can melt into their soft white interiors, along with coarse salt and grindings of black pepper. Wherever they are prepared, baking them au naturel is essential—potatoes baked in foil wrappings will wind up with soggy skin.

Some dollop on sour cream, but the dash of cold will temper what should preferably be a steaming-hot potato. Uncontroversial garnishes include butter, chives, parsley, crumbles of hot, crisp bacon, minced hot chiles, or a dash of Tabasco, or, more elegantly, a spoonful of caviar—red or black, as budget permits.

What makes the classic steak house favorite so delicious alongside a well-executed steak? Science doesn’t have the answer, but the elemental combination of pure protein and starch seems to satisfy our deepest hungers, possibly because starch has enzymes that tenderize meat. Go ahead and throw in that glass of red wine for good measure—it’s been shown to mitigate the buildup of cholesterol from red meat.

Mail order:
Sun Valley Potato Growers, tel 208-438-2605,
idaho-potatoes.com
(see gift pack of potatoes); amazon.com (search famous idaho russet potatoes).
Further information and recipes:
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
, 13th edition, by Marion Cunningham (1996);
allrecipes.com
(search perfect baked potato; baked potato salad; twice baked potatoes);
idahopotatoes.com
.