Chicago-Style Hot Dog

Every Friday on my dinner planner is “Fun Food” night.

In general, I try to keep our household limited to meals that are either especially healthful (Monday’s soups, Wednesday’s salads, and Saturday’s stir-fries — based on how Scott cooked for himself all the time in Seattle, as it happens) or especially cheap (Sunday’s pastas, Tuesday’s baked potatoes, and Thursday’s beans and eggs). But you can’t be good all the time when it comes to food, or you come away feeling deprived.

Thus, every Friday, I plan on serving burgers, pizza, or some other indulgent meal that the two of us especially enjoy.

I do try to make these meals slightly better for us, don’t get me wrong. I use low-cal cheese singles and light butter on the patty melts, for example. No need to derail the diet completely.

This past Friday, the special meal was a celebration of the city where Scott and I first met — Chicago.

OK, so we actually met in Evanston, Northwestern University’s college town, but it was part of Chicagoland. The bright lights of the big city were only a few el stops or a cold swim in Lake Michigan away.

The hot dog, I have discovered, is an intensely regional dish. You might say it comes in species.

I can’t say I’ve met many hot dog species I didn’t like. I’m all for chili-cheese dogs and coleslaw dogs (though I don’t think I’ve ever tried one of the latter). I’ll only turn my nose up for sure at New York-style dogs smothered in sauerkraut and those with ketchup.

Because as anyone familiar with Chicago dogs knows, ketchup on a hot dog is a travesty.

Save the ketchup for the fries, I say. I’m always running out of ketchup for my fries anyway.

An authentic Chicago dog is a steamed Vienna Beef frankfurter (with natural casing) served on a steamed poppy-seed bun and topped with celery salt, yellow mustard, electric-green sweet relish, a kosher pickle spear, chopped white onion, sport peppers, and tomatoes (sometimes green ones).

I know, it sounds like a lot — and it is! Half the fun is fitting the thing in your mouth! — but with a good beef hot dog under it all, the meaty flavor is never overwhelmed. The toppings instead provide a spicy and acidic counterpoint to the fattiness of a beef wiener, giving the whole sandwich the perfect balance.

But as you might expect if you’ve seen previous entries here, I couldn’t make a true Chicago dog for our tribute dinner. In fact, I’ve never really seen poppy-seed hot dog buns outside of Chicago, let alone in Slovakia, where people like to eat their dogs out of something resembling a hollow breadstick filled with a squirt of mustard before the frank is inserted. It’s kind of like a pretzel dog in appearance.

Mmm, pretzel dogs. Can someone airmail me one of those?

So what had to change? The bun was switched out for a chunky garlic breadstick from the Tesco bakery. They fortunately turned out to be just about the right size to be split and filled. They also had a spicy saltiness that helped make up for the lack of celery salt.

Actually, sport peppers and bright-green sweet relish are also never-seen-outside-Chicago ingredients as well. I usually forego the peppers and substitute regular sweet relish (it tastes the same anyway), but you know what? They don’t sell pickle relish here. I had to make my own, mincing some cukes, garlic, and onion, and soaking them in a sugary brine overnight. I bought a can of whole pickled jalepenos from the Mexican section of the store (have I mentioned how popular Mexican food is getting over here?) to sub for the peppers, but as Scott tells me real sport peppers aren’t so spicy, I’d suggest getting pepperoncini or mild banana pepper rings instead.

We haven’t stumbled upon any sour pickles here yet, so I also pickled my own spears. I prefer the punchy flavor of homemade pickles anyway.

Every other ingredient is easy enough to come by here . . . but, with a certain trepidation, I did elect to go with the chicken hot dogs Scott discovered in one of the many sausage cases at Tesco rather than seeking out the genuine beefy article. Chicken dogs are much less fattening, but I once tried some Empire Kosher chicken dogs that had absolutely no spice. The experience scared me off from non-beef franks ever after.

But wait! These chicken hot dogs turned out to be just as spicy-tasting as American beef wieners. You have to hand it to the Slovaks; they know their sausages.

The end result was a close enough facsimile to the real thing that it was like being transported back to the days of huddling with strangers under the only two heat lamps on the el platform in the winter and pushing through the crowds on Michigan Avenue toward Marshall Field’s. And that one time when I finally talked my parents into driving us out to Superdawg.

We ate five over the course of 24 hours.

Chicago Style Hot Dog
Source: Vienna Beef
Yield: 1 hot dog

• Vienna Beef hot dog
• Poppy-seed bun
• Yellow Mustard
• Bright Green Relish
• Fresh Chopped Onions
• Two Tomato Wedges
• A Kosher Pickle Spear
• Two Sport Peppers (careful!)
• A Dash of Celery Salt

Heat in water, steam, grill or microwave to 170°F. Place the authentic Vienna Beef Hot Dog in a steamed poppy-seed bun. Then pile on the toppings in this order:

1. Yellow Mustard
2. Bright Green Relish
3. Fresh Chopped Onions
4. Two Tomato Wedges
5. A Kosher Pickle Spear
6. Two Sport Peppers (careful!)
7. A Dash of Celery Salt

Download Chicago Style Hot Dog into MacGourmet.

Blazy’s Pepperoni Studded Lasagna

Love It: Pepperoni! My favorite cured sausage, spicy with just enough grease. Plus, we’ve got here the merging of two yummy comfort foods, pizza and lasagna. Finally, it’s got Italian sausage, and Scott loves sausage.

 

Fear It: All that cheese and sausage equals diet disaster. We might have some serious self-control issues when presented with such a delightful, melty, spicy, cheesy concoction.

 

Teach It: Guy Fieri cooks the pepperoni in a skillet before adding it to the lasagna, reducing the sausage’s grease factor (no surface pools!) while releasing that spicy fat for another use (like making some extra-porky pasta sauce).

 

Eat It: I’d suggest serving alongside some salad out of a sack and Diet Rite from a two-liter, as if you’d just gotten some delivery from Little Papa Hutino’s.

Blazy’s Pepperoni Studded Lasagna
Source: Guy Fieri
Yield: 8-10 servings

• 2 lbs. lasagna sheets
  
• 2 cups hand cut 1/8-inch slices pepperoni
  
• 4 cups tomato sauce, recipe follows
  
• 1 lb. ricotta
  
• 16 ounces shredded mozzarella
  
• 2 lbs. bulk Italian sausage, cooked
  
• ¾ cup grated Parmesan
  

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Boil 6 quarts of water, add pinch of salt, and cook pasta to almost done. Remove from water and shock in ice bath.

In medium saucepan add pepperoni and saute over medium heat until crispy. Remove from heat and drain on a paper towel.

In a 10-by-14-by-3-inch baking pan or dish, pour 1 cup of tomato sauce in bottom and around sides. Layer lasagna sheets on the bottom of the pan, overlapping by 1/2-inch. Add 1/3 amount of ricotta, 1/3 amount of mozzarella, 1/3 amount of sausage, then sprinkle generously with the Parmesan, add 1/2 cup tomato sauce, and 1/4 cup of pepperoni. Repeat this 2 more times.

On the very top sheet, top with remaining ricotta, tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, and dust with Parmesan. Bake for approximately 45 minutes. Remove from oven; let sit for 15 minutes. Cut and serve immediately.

Tomato Sauce:
3 ounces extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, minced
5 medium-sized garlic cloves, crushed
6 cups skinned and diced Roma tomatoes
2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil. Add onion and cook over medium to low heat until transparent. Add garlic and cook until almost brown. Then add tomatoes and cook for 1/2 hour over low to medium heat. Add the basil and oregano and continue to cook for another 1/2 hour. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper, cool and store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Download Blazy’s Pepperoni Studded Lasagna into MacGourmet.