Epic Hot Dog Throwdown!

Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Swallow whatever you are sipping right now, because you're about to spew it out when you hear this.

I got into the Great Hot Dog Cookoff!!!

Thats right, your favorite food blogger will be battling 19 other hot dog enthusiasts in the GHDC this weekend. I found out late thursday, and since then my life has been a whirlwind of encased meats.

 I picked up my requisite 110 hot dogs, and have been madly  brainstorming and testing recipes, night and day. I even attended a most unusual hot dog party where I got to talk shop with the competition (overheard: "I'm gonna try to go meta with my dog"). Most importantly, I think I successfully struck fear in the hearts of the other so-called chefs with my new full sleeve "hot dogz or die" tattoo and the chefs knife I carried around all night.

So, after much debate, the current top contenders are:

The Arepa Dog:  (tentatively titled either "the Hugo Chavez" or "el Perrito Bravo")

 This is a mini arepa (venezuelan cornmeal cake) stuffed with chihuahua cheese and hot dog, topped with avocado, cabbage/pepper/gilled corn/cilantro slaw, and cotija cheese. For this to be a winner, first I would need to work on my arepa-making. The outside got a little too crispy when pan searing, and the arepas didn't souffle enough in the oven, creating (tasty) mini hockey pucks. I'm sure there is an art to arepas, which I could probably learn in a week. Also, the slaw needs to be tweaked. I really wanted a sweet/sour little punch to contrast the heavy cheese and arepa. This was a good first try, but not first place-good yet.

The Pork Bun: (no title yet, but I'm leaning toward "Bone Thugs n Kimchee")

This was a pretty fascinating experiment. It involved Lorenzo and I taking a trip to Chinatown where there was almost no way to know what I was buying in the bakery. I pointed to 3 things that looked like buns, and luckily when I got home, one of them was the right kind (the others were stuffed with a frightening goo). 

This is a riff on the wildly popular Momofuku pork bun, which is made with  super fatty pork belly (kind of like a hot dog?) which is cut by lightly pickled vegetables. This version has scallions, carrots, hoisin, and kimchee -- and whooa what an eye opener the kimchee was. It added a whole other layer of spicy, tangy complexity to the squishy bun. I think this one could benefit from more fresh vegetables, or even a watercress or cilantro on top to brighten it up. Also a concern is how to heat the 300 buns in a bamboo steamer using a grill...

So, I have to decide very soon which one I am going to make, and spend all week perfecting it. This week is all about getting my game face on.... pep talks in the morning, grilling drills every night, hot dogs at every meal.