Sometimes eating food for me is about packing as much flavor as you can into one bite of food. You take the bite, just sit back and have a moment as a ton of different flavors come together. I have been trying to perfect this technique for some time and have posted a couple times, showcasing small sandwiches or ‘open face’ hors d’oeuvre style snacks – where I load up with a ton of complimentary ingredients to make a killer bite. Here is an image of such a bite:
It’s small – it fits in your hand… It’s a ‘Cuban Missile Toast’ as I guess I can call it… a play on the Cuban Sandwich. Check it out:
Now, I know it looks pretty crazy, but you can build this bite. It’s not super easy – but you can do it. It just takes time, patience, and a steady hand. (in my case, some extra large tweezers too!)
Here’s everything that’s on that bite, from the bottom to the top:
- Modified Hot Dog Roll, Toasted in a Pan with Butter.
- Smear of Whole Seed Mustard.
- Slice of Smoked Pork
- Section of dill pickle – 50% the size of the pork
- Melted swiss cheese
- House Pickled Radish
- House Pickled Red Pepper
- Aged Smoked Gouda
- Italian Parsley
- Slice of Yellow Cherry Tomato
- Everything Bagel Seasoning
- Crispy Shallots.
Most of the stuff you can just buy, but some of the stuff requires some prep work.
It all starts with the pork, preferably 2 days in advance.
It gets rubbed down, and thrown on a smoker. Let’s just take a moment to reflect on all the Paprika that lost its life for this picture:
As you can see, I threw some snacks on the smoker so I could nibble on stuff as the pork made progress. I made some super spicy hot wings using some ‘Aw Shit’ Rub and Scotch Bonnet powder .. the blend was about 60/40 and it was hot!
Of course, they turned out awesome – covered in some hot sauce too- spicy!
Also, I watched some killer movies while the pork smoked:
Once the pork had about 5 hours of smoke, I took it off the smoker and dropped it into a sous vide bath over night at 158 – this is hotter than I usually sous vide stuff, but I had 24 hours to put this together. If I could make it happen right, I would have smoked it for 4 hours, then sous vide for 50 hours at 145.
Next, I had to make crispy shallots – I had never done it before, but I watched a couple videos and had a go at it. There was one video that demonstrated soaking the shallots in milk prior to frying – I had milk, so why not:
I used regular vegetable oil to fry them, and with my little wire frame scoop, it was easy! You just crank the heat and keep the shallots moving:
You keep them moving until they start to brown – it starts to happen all at the same time, it’s very obvious – and it’s just a matter of moving them out of the oil, and onto a towel – I spread them out and kind of lifted the towel to allow them to tumble and dry evenly – it was easy!
Look how scrumptious!
Once I knew they had finally dried, I put a paper towel in the bottom of a tupperware, and poured them in. They will apparently keep crisp that way for a week! Super yummy!
Next was doing the pickling. I didn’t have a recipe in mind, but I know the basics – some vinegar, some pepper corns, a little sugar, and whatever else I’m feeling.
For this batch of pickling liquid, I put a few slices of red onion, some smashed garlic, a squirt of stone ground mustard, dill, sage, peppercorns, brown sugar, white vinegar, a little apple cider vinegar, sprinkle of salt, a clove, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.
While that simmered, I prepped a tupperware with my veggies – red pepper sliced into specific sizes, and radishes – I cut the red portion off to keep it separate, then sliced the radish into geometric shapes:
Once it was all set, I poured the hot pickling liquid over the vegetables, put the lid on – and it was done. By the time the tupperware was room temp, the veggies were pickled and delicious.
Shout out to my Wet hopped IPA:
num nums – great head retention!
So it was the next day, and I had to finalize the hard part of my prep work: preparing the hot dog rolls:
I started by cutting off and saving just the bottom of the hot dog rolls. From there, it was a careful trim to clean up and flatten the surface of the roll:
(these were costanza brand hotdog rolls btw)
After that, I trimmed the edges off, and sectioned each roll base into 4 small pieces- using a similar technique to busting sushi rolls into portions.
I also prepped my swiss cheese into sections that were the same size as these bread pieces.
I also prepped the dill pickle pieces to be roughly all the same size, and what I considered to be 50% of the size of the piece of pork I intended to put on there.
The day of the tasting, the pork was done with the sous vide, and I let it get to room temp before I messed around with it.
Once at room temp, I sectioned the pork into uniform sized pieces that were about the same size as my bread slices, and put those into a tupperware with juices from the sous vide bag.
All of my items were prepared and placed into tupperware. All my yellow cherry tomatoes were cut and ready to go, the gouda was crumbled up and ready to go.. everything was all prepped – it was time to start assembling!
I started by toasting all the bread squares in a pan with butter, flipping them with my bare hand and making sure none of the pieces got burnt. I only fried about 8-10 pieces at a time, so it was manageable. Once fried, they went onto a cookie sheet.
From there, I took a jar of whole seed mustard and took a pea sized scoop on a spoon and smeared it onto all of the toasts.
When complete, I used my oversized tweezers to snatch room temp pork out of the juice-filled tupperware of pre-cut chunks, and positioned them in line with the bread.
Once in place, I used my tweezers to snatch up the small pieces of dill pickle, laying them neatly in the center of the piece of pork.
When everything was uniform, I took pieces of swiss cheese and placed them very aligned with the bread pieces then took the whole sheet of my pieces, and broiled them until the cheese was melted perfectly. Not bubbling, just melted overtop of the first layer of ingredients.
I took the pan of treats out, and pushed a small chunk of smoked aged gouda into the warm swiss cheese towards one side of the pile. On the other side of the pile, I placed a pickled radish segment – and between the two pieces, nuzzled a section of pickled red pepper, creating a division of the two elements.
From there, with my hands, I selected a small leaf of Italian parsley – held it in place on top of everything, and secured it in place with a slice of yellow cherry tomato with the aid of my tweezers. When all pieces had a tomato slice, I went through the whole gamut with Trader Joe’s ‘Everything Bagel’ seasoning.. sprinkling ample amounts onto the tomato.
To top the whole project off, I carefully applied the crispy shallots to the top of the piles.
Here they are – ready to go..
So what’s the point of this?
Why do it?
At this point in the game, it’s art my friends…
It’s knowing that every element in this ‘one bite’ concoction is purposefully and carefully placed there for a reason, and dealt with individually. It’s special. When you bite it, and you can taste each ingredient and allow the textural differences to knock around in your mouth – that’s an experience you want.
Were they enjoyed? I don’t know.. They were tasty, in that regard, they were enjoyed.. Did all the flavors work together? absolutely – it was great!
Did they taste like I had put all that time into each one? No – but I know what I did. I was proud of it.. and that’s really all I care about when I pull of snacks like these.
Try it!