WV Gourmet

Last weekend, my accomplice and I travelled to Maryland to visit some friends.  Neither of us had eaten lunch so we had to stop and grab something to eat.  After being on the road for a little while, Megan looked in her GPS for food in the area.  One place sounded sounded very interesting: The Creamy Castle.  We pulled off I-79 just before reaching Flatwoods at Exit 62 (Sutton Exit).

We pull up and find a little ice cream stand type place with park benches out front.  Just what we were hoping for.  After a quick study of the menu, Megan goes with what they called a “walking taco” (I know a Frito pie when I see one and this was a Frito pie) and six chicken wings.  I went with a meatball sub.  My sub was pretty tasty and very filling.  It had a pretty decent tomato sauce that was not too sweet and a good dose of mozzarella cheese, and was served on a steak sandwich bun (I’d be willing to bet it was a Heiner’s bun).  Megan did not share any of her Frito pie, but it looked tasty.  For those who don’t know, a Frito pie is a bag of Fritos with chili, cheese, sour cream, etc scooped in on top of the Fritos.  In other words, a bag of tasty goodness.  I did try one of her wings, they were good and crispy, but not very spicy. 

My meatball sandwich. There would be a picture of the walking taco, but someone hasn't sent it to me.

Of course, if you stop at an ice cream place, you must get ice cream, and that’s what we did for dessert.  I went with a chocolate shake and Megan went with a chocolate shake with peanut butter syrup.  This place made shakes from real ice cream, not soft serve ice cream.  My chocolate shake was very good and just thick enough to be a shake but not so thick, it takes a shop vac to get it through the straw.  Megan’s was very tasty, kind of like a Reese cup.

If you find yourself driving up I-79 and feel the need to pull of the road and get something to eat or have a tasty ice cream based beverage, make sure to put the Creamy Castle on your radar.

I get the daily e-mail updates from Stone Brewing and their brewpub, which includes the daily specials.  Every day they have a “hummus of the day”, which I find very odd.  Often, these are variations on classic hummus, but more often than not they are bizarre abominations that I can’t wrap my brain around.  Well, The Limey and I have made fun of this many times and he once suggested ham hummus, which upon further discussion between us, became bacon hummus.  Finally, after many months of thinking about and discussing this mythic concoction, I decided to make bacon hummus for the Memorial Day Cook-in (it’s like a cookout in the respect that you grill food outside on a grill, but all social activity is inside a dark living room on a beautiful spring day).

I’m sure that you’re thinking this is some sort of over the top, profane concoction where an excessive amount of bacon is thrown into the food processor with chickpeas to form some sort of bizarre bacon/bean vomit inspiring paste.  Rest assured, bacon hummus is nothing of the sort, nor does it utilize fake bacon flavoring.  What I came up with was a way of infusing the hummus with bacony goodness without straying too far from the basic hummus recipe (which I got from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything“).  How does one do that with such a non-traditional ingredient?  Two words: bacon grease.  That’s right folks, I substituted bacon grease for some of the olive oil used in my hummus.  I also decided to use a little hot sauce to add further complexity to this smoky concoction.  I didn’t go for a lot of hot sauce, because I didn’t want the heat to overpower the star of this dish.  Since you have to make bacon in order to have bacon grease, I garnished the top of the hummus with crispy bacon crumbles.

I learned when I was telling my friends of my plan, that hummus was some sort of honored vegetarian dish.  I didn’t realize that.  I have always thought of it as a really delicious dip that happens to not have meat in it, that is no more an iconic vegetarian dish than french onion dip.  I did not intend for this to be a big “fuck you” to the vegetarians, but some say it is.  Oh well.

The most important question is “how was it?”  Well, I’ll tell you, it was outfrigginstanding!  It was subtle, smoky, spicy, and subversive.  The hotsauce and the subtle sweet smokiness from the bacon fat played well with the classic flavors we all know and love in our hummus.

The recipe is as follows:

6-8 strips of  cooked bacon*

1 can of chickpeas

1. Put the chickpeas, tahini, bacon fat/olive oil, garlic, hot sauce, and lemon juice in a food processor (or a blender for even smoother hummus), sprinkle with salt and pepper, and begin to process; add water as needed to produce a smooth purée.

The chickpeas contemplate their fate

2. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt, pepper, or lemon juice as needed. Serve, drizzled with some olive oil and sprinkled bacon crumbles.

Mouth-watering

* I use the oven fry method for making bacon.  Basically, you crank up the oven to 400 degrees, lay your bacon in some sort of oven safe pan and let it cook for somewhere around 10-15 minutes.  This method renders a good deal of fat and doesn’t require all the flipping of cooking on the stove top.

A delicious piggy payload

The Charelston Gazette is doing its “Best of the Valley 2009″ poll.  The voting is currently up for “Food & Fun.”  Some of the categories are categories where there could be some real debate, while others are set up for only one establishment.  An example of a legitimate category would be “Best Italian”: Some folks like Fazio’s, some like Leonoro’s, some like Soho’s, and all the “real Italians” like Olive Garden.  An example of a sham category would be “Best French Restaurant”.  I guess that there’s Cafe de Paris, but hell that place is still on its indefinite sabbatical.  I encourage everyone to go on there and vote for the places they like in the categories where such restaurant would fit and to subvert this stupid ass poll where appropriate by voting for Bennigan’s as “Best French Restaurant” and if you’re really feeling froggy, vote Impulse for “Best Meat Market”.

 Here’s the link to the voting: http://www.cnpapers.com/bitv/?category=food