Another Hotdog Shot

Every country seems to have a national street dish. Here it’s the hot dog (at least in NYC). I haven’t traveled enough to know if it’s different in various states. I don’t mean a state food, but a street food.

Belgium, I saw lots of Frites stands. And not only that, but the fries were better. And more elaborate. Often double-fried, and the stands were surrounded with squeeze bottles of everything from vinegar to mayonnaise. In case you didn’t know this, the most popular topping in Belgium for Frites is mayonnaise. First time I saw that, I thought, with my American health-consciousness that this was like putting fat on fat. Which it is. But very tasty it was too.

And then in France, the obvious contender for street food would be the crepe. That’s an odd food given that it takes time to properly pour and cook a crepe, compared to a hotdog which just has to be luke warm. But those crepes were good. And they made them for any meal. You could get them with meat, berries, whipped cream, or just straight up.

London, I’d guess would be chips and fish in a bag. That sort of makes sense, seeing as it’s a big island – so there should be lots of fish, and you need something to absorb all the drinking that goes on there, which is where greasy chips come into play. Odd, but for some reason, my mom often made us fish and chips in brown paper bags with salt, vinegar and something else, and you’d shake it up and the bag would get all greasy, and we loved it as kids.

I go back far enough that we would get smaltz at my grandmother’s house. That’s right – 100% pure fat from a chicken. My grandmother (from Russia / Poland) would pour the drippings from a roasted chicken into a jar, and stick it into the fridge, and eventually it would harden and you’d have an old jam jar filled with rock hard chicken fat.

And we considered this a great treat – to put it onto a piece of stale bread – as if it were butter. It was salty, and tasty, and somehow my grandparents lived pretty long lives. My grandmother who fed us shmaltz, lived into her hundreds.

It’s all a crazy sort of world, because as you know, you walk down French streets and they’re all smoking and eating fat and bread, and they look healthy, and live longer than we do (Americans) and do all the wrong things – but scientists say that it’s because the wine thins their blood or something. Maybe those Galloise cigarettes get their hearts to beat hard enough to knock the fat off the inside of the arterial walls.

Well, that’s all my mumbling about food for now. It’s true that these hotdogs are mostly sawdust and unclean; and I’m not a big fan of them in terms of taste – but the Hebrew National ones, if they’re grilled are excellent; and we were brought up on good quality hotdogs, Chinese food, and pizza and sure enough: SPAM.

If you don’t know what SPAM is – then forget about it. Only one or two companies know exactly what they put into that, but it’s the cheapest form of pre-cooked meat around; usually in a tin, with gelatin around it. However, there is a trick to preparing it. Cut into very think slices, as thin as you can so that you can read a newspaper through it (if you use newspapers, or if not, you should be able to read your iPhone through a slice) and then fry them until they are burnt badly on both sides. This makes them crispy. Then put them between two slices of toast, with lots and lots of good quality mustard, and you’re set to go.

If you prepare it correctly, you’ll be treated to a crispy blackened shell, with a tiny bit of sweet-tasting meat inside, that doesn’t taste like anything else in the world other than Sabratt hot dogs that haven’t been fully cooked.