Hot Dog Nutty Fritters

Just the name sounds ... wrong. Maybe I'm just biased against anything with the word "fritter" in it. But I made it. Yes, I did. Never let it be said that Anne is not game to make fat bombs in the name of culinary science.

There's only one thing that I can add to Alan's description: It doesn't have to be so bloody difficult! Alan must be some kind of ... bacon charmer, or something. The bacon on my hot dog (and how often do I get to write that phrase?) was unruly and kept on trying to slip away.

There's an image for you.

The mess that came out of my grill was quite tasty, and quite a visual disaster (I'll spare you the picture). Anyway, for my second attempt, I simply deconstructed the "fritterness" of the dish:

• 1 hot dog
• 1 slice bacon
• 1-2 Tablespoons peanut butter
• 1-2 slices rye bread

So, all you need to do is cook the bacon and hot dog, slather on the peanut butter on the bread, and make yourself a sandwich that will prompt many an artery to slam shut. Like Alan said, once or twice a year won't kill you ...

TOD trio

Inspiration comes from strange places sometimes — it this case, it was this post about holy-crap-awful recipes from yesteryear. The Prune "Dried Plum" Whip is probably not in the cards, but when I saw Hot Dog Nutty Fritters I knew I was on to something.

It's simple. Just take three tastes you might never have considered combining and put them together. Start with a hot dog and butterfly it, spread peanut butter on the inside and then wrap the whole package with a strip of bacon. Grill or broil (I broiled — six minutes a side). Allow the peanut butter to cool a little before eating.

They're awesome.

The salty meat junk food taste is tempered just a little by the sweetness of the peanut butter. A reviewer called it "white-trash rumaki," but I don't think that's accurate — it seems all it has in common with rumaki is the bacon wrap. So I say we call it one of America's greatest tailgate foods!

It should, of course, come with a Surgeon General's warning. By my count, two of these babies contain 530 calories, 38 grams of fat and 970 milligrams of sodium. That's pretty much a full day's worth of sodium right there and half a day's fat. (I used reduced-fat franks and peanut butter.)

They also serve up 28 grams of protein, for what it's worth. But so does a chicken breast. Bottom line — one or two a year. And savor the heck out of 'em.

So what am I supposed to do with the rest of these hot dogs?

My blogging partner is a deceitful saboteur!

So this was the simple pasta sauce Anne put forward — you take 28 ounces of tomatoes, five tablespoons of butter, one onion cut in half and salt and then follow these directions:

Plop everything into a saucepan. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, at a very slow but steady simmer, adjusting the heat if you need to, for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free from the tomato. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with the back of a spoon against the side of the saucepan. Taste and salt as needed. Fish out and throw away the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta.

So when I was done, I had a lot of tomato juice and stewed chunks of tomato. I asked Anne if that was the intent, and she said, "It's supposed to be sauce."

And then, almost as an aside, she noted that she uses a hand blender.

Oh, just happened to leave that out, did you?

Right. Setting me up to fail, so her sauce would be better than mine. Figures.

She also said women would fall at my feet if I made this sauce. Well, I made it, and there are no women on my kitchen floor. None!

Jeez. It's getting so you can't trust anyone anymore.

The sauce, though — even when made with incomplete directions — is very, very good.

50/50

I tried two recipes and they both worked out well, so my headline is a little misleading. But one was so much more tastily distinctive than the other that it's the winner.

The first one up was this recipe for "spicy" black beans and rice. I'd tried it before and didn't find it at all spicy, so this time around I doubled the spices. (Except for the onions. I left those the same.) When made that way, it is nice and spicy — for my taste, anyway. If you're not into spicy food, don't try this in your kitchen.

When combined with rice, though, that dish made for very dry eating. So I'm glad I dug up this one, which Anne also made. I used cayenne pepper instead of chili pepper and only went as hot as bell pepper in that part of the recipe, but the result was excellent — beans that went in cool and crisp and then left a nice spicy aftertaste in the back of my mouth. Highly recommended. And skip the rice.

Once You Go Black ...

Perhaps not the sexiest way to start a blog, but black beans are a dish that can cover a wide spectrum of taste from bland, mushy messes to complex splendor. Alan came up with a winner with his spicy citrusy beans (I'll let him post the link to the recipe). Black beans are such earthy little nuggets, so it's natural to think about adding cumin and onion to them, but orange juice? I never thought to add a swig of o.j. to my black beans.

By gum, it's good! I halved the recipe because I didn't want to eat beans until the spring thaw. And true, my beans did not turn out as pretty as the ones that were pictured with the recipe, but they smelled and tasted great. You get a nice, citrusy burst at first and some burn after a few seconds.

• Ease: Fairly easy; more complicated than opening cans, but if you can chop an onion, you can make this dish.
• Taste: Delicious. Orange juice lightened up and livened up the beans.
  
• Time: Longer than I'd care for, to be honest. I soaked the beans for close to 24 hours, and the cooking took more than two hours. Not something that you can just whip up.
  
• Again: Probably. It's a good dish for the winter months when you want a little reminder of sunnier tastes.

(I took pictures, but I'll have to post them later.)