Two Hot Dog Sauces

Crif Dogs was inspiring.

Ever since I ate at Crif Dogs in New York, I've been thinking of doing some hot dog sauces. When ever I have eaten hot dogs in the past, I have usually added ketchup and mustard. That's fine and all, really, if you want your entire meal to taste like ketchup and mustard. But the relatively powerful taste of the pre-fabricated sauces tend to hide the taste of the dog itself, and the entire meal ends up tasting vinegar.

So why not make your own sauce?

At Crif Dogs, I had a fantastic dog with something that resembled salsa sauce and a sour cream sauce. That's where I began.

First up was a tomato based sauce. I added garlic, basil, onion and tomatoes, everything very finely chopped. I also included salt and cayenne pepper, a tiny drop of vinegar before I ran it a round or two with the handheld blender.

Next up was the sour cream sauce. A couple of table spoons sour cream. Again with garlic, salt and a serious amount of black pepper. This one also had thyme.

And that was it. Definitely my new favorite way of eating hot dogs! Use them one at the time, or simultaneously. Enjoy your dogs!

Tomato Sauce Revisited

I'm having so much fun with tomato sauces these days. A rabid fan of customization of... anything, the endless ways of doing tomato sauces brings me delight.

I guess I'm also a bit inspired, after watching The Layover, with Anthony Bourdain. An episode where he visited Rome - a city that didn't really come off as a great place to visit, but one thing stuck: Bourdain's praise of their simple pasta with tomato sauce.

Tomatoes in Norway tastes nothing. Literally nothing. Water with substance. So there's really no other way to use them, than to add taste.

This one had a large portion of onion, maybe two fifths were onion, the rest were cherry tomatoes. I also added garlic, oregano, pepper, salt, a small spoon of sugar and a nice amount of olive oil. I let it cook for roughly an hour. Deliciously chewy, under-cooked pasta, and a few slices of salami makes the entire meal.

Fun, versatile, extremely cheap, and really the only way to use tomatoes that doesn't taste a thing.