The New Sliders

The Shep
The idea for this particular slider all started while thinking about one of my favorite winter time dishes. I've had all kinds of different versions of shepherd’s pie made with venison, bison, or any other variety of meat topped with cauliflower puree, parsnip mash, or any other kind of root vegetable. I had never realized shepherds corralled so many other species of animals besides lamb:) For our slider we decided to go the more traditional route. Now you may be reading this and thinking to yourself, did this guy just call a shepherd’s pie with aerated potato puree traditional? Well, you didn't let me finish. I'm talking traditional only in the sense that we are using lamb, carrots, peas, and potatoes. We started off with our meat layer by picking up some incredible looking lamb shanks at Central Market. We grabbed some red wine, onion, carrots, celery, thyme, bay leaves, stock, and a can of tomatoes to use in our braising liquid. 60 minutes on high pressure and we were shredding amazingly tender and flavor packed lamb. In our vegetable layer we decided on using dehydrated peas and carrots to add a bit of texture as well as add layers of concentrated flavor. Once we decided to use dehydrated peas, wasabi peas seemed like a logical yet more interesting choice allowing us to not only add a slightly spicy horseradish note, but to do so in a way where the horseradish flavor isn't released until you eat a bite that contains one of the peas. In lieu of the standard potato topping we modernized this version of shepherd’s pie by pressure cooking some potatoes, and then processing milk, butter, and a parmesan rind. The potatoes get riced and the strained parmesan milk gets added along with enough water to reach the correct consistency. This mixture gets funneled into an ISI gourmet whip and pressurized with a couple nitrous cartridges. We hope everyone will enjoy this special cold weather addition to the menu while it lasts.

Oh My Squash
This slider's inspiration came in the form of an ingredient at its seasonal peak. This abundance of winter squashes paired with our revived love for fritters based upon the recent success with our clam fritter special from the previous post, we started picking flavors. For the fritter we start by simmering small diced butternut squash in milk and then quickly chilling as soon as the butternut squash has become tender. To this mixture we add a beaten egg, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and a pinch of salt. It's a basic fritter base whose milk has been infused with butternut squash. The planks you see pictured below the fritter are planks of pickled butternut squash. We pickled it in apple cider vinegar to re-enforce the second flavor we picked for this special. The julienne of dried apple is also added to reinforce the fine flavor affinity of butternut squash and apples. Now that we have some a variety of flavor and texture what can we add to highlight it? We chose pumpkin pie spice and Greek yogurt. Although the name doesn’t necessarily imply, this mixture of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and ginger (a.k.a. pumpkin pie spice), pairs wonderfully with both butternut squash and apples. But what is a pumpkin really? A winter squash of course. We went with Greek yogurt for its slight tanginess and lightness to keep this fritter from weighing you down. This seasonal slider is definitely a fun way to eat your fruit and veggies.

Jalapeno Relleno
The Jalapeno Relleno slider actually conspired while watching a special on how cans of cranberry sauce were made and processed. Now our cranberry gastrique is definitely a far cry from what plops out of the can and onto your Christmas table often being carried into the dining room with ridges still intact. The decision of using cranberries led to the decision that some local goat cheese was what was called for to compliment. We also wanted to add some spice. This came in the form of our delivery vehicle for the cheese. A jalapeno. We wanted to be able to combat some of the heat of the jalapeno so we chose to mix a little organic cream cheese in with the TX goat cheese. In order to add a little more depth of flavor we went with another of our guilty pleasures during winter. Dark Beer. Since we are in Texas Shiner Bock seemed the most logical choice. The bed of fresh cut cool iceberg is there to provide a little more crunch and cooling effect. Come on down to sixth street and try a taste of Texas while this gourmet slider remains on the menu.

December 26th

Pictured is a sneak peak of the new menu we will be rolling out this week. As you can see we have a couple new creations we will be perfecting the early part of this week and implementing before 2011. We hope everyone will enjoy them as much as our previous endeavors and can't wait for everyone to give them a try. As we start serving these at the trailer we will be taking pictures and posting our thought process and cooking process on our additions to the menu this week. We are also working on an extravagent New Years Special that will be unveiled soon enough.

December 17th

This weeks special all started by wanting to do a crab cake with some of the usual tartar sauce or remoulade components but who would have known that it is hard for Central Market to keep fresh crab meat on hand during the holiday season. So we scratched that idea but I looked over and saw some awesome looking fresh clams that just called out to be bought. I already had some orange and yellow peppers in the cart and a head of celery root so rather than return these items and start with a fresh idea we decided to roll with what we had. We whipped up a basic fritter batter to which we folded in the fresh chopped clams, green onion, parsley, cayenne, and garlic. This gets fried to golden brown deliciousness and put on chip of celery root we pickled with a little rice wine vinegar. We then topped the molten clam fritters with a charred sweet pepper dressing, and garnished with a few fried capers for good measure. Next up New Years. We have lobster in mind for now.

December 15th

First off, I would like to take the time to write about our special we ran last week. I know it is a little late to be writing about something we did last week but due to the popularity of this particular slider I have decided to make an exception. We decided to do Austin's first ever scallop slider (to my knowledge) and it resulted in us running to Central Market 4 times in two days to replenish our supply of fresh scallops. The thought process behind developing this slider all stemmed from a new griddle hand-made and given to us by one of our good friends Cody. We lay it over our two burners during service to provide us with a cooking surface for our vegetarian items. We only use half of this surface for our vegetarian items so after some discussion it was decided the back half was to be used for shellfish since it is one of the more common allergies second only to nuts that we are asked about. Now that that was out of the way, we decided the perfect bivalve to break it in with would be the scallop. We let the scallop speak for itself and only seasoned it with a little salt and pepper. We paired a meyer lemon aioli, fried kale leaves, and powdered bacon with it. The powdered bacon was made using rendered bacon fat and tapioca maltodextrin along with a little sea salt to bring out the bacon flavor. It turned out to be a wonderful balance of flavors. The whole reason we decided to utilize the bacon flavor as a powder was because we did not want our slider to be heavy. The kale was already fried and the aioli also brought a little fat to the party. We used the meyer lemon to balance out the fatty components but we really wanted to include the flavor of bacon in the mix because of its strong flavor affiliations with both scallops and kale. The powder turned out to be the perfect delivery vehicle for the bacon flavor being both subtle and non invasive. Sure everything tastes better with bacon but why would we spend a small fortune on fresh scallops only to make them taste like nothing but bacon. Next slider in the works? Right now we are thinking about crawfish, celery root, and perhaps Buddha’s hand.

Changes to the Menu

We ran a Red Chile Turkey Slider as a special a few weeks back, for a couple of days, and received more positive feedback on this special than any prior. Now we don't like to repeat our specials because this is our only outlet for creativity each week and being able to come up with spur of the moment specials using whatever inspires us at the market is what it is really all about. So we decided to compromise. We will leave the Red Chile Turkey Slider on the menu until Christmas and we will continue to rotate a new special each week as well. For those of you that didn't get a chance to try it we took 5 types of chiles (ancho, guajillo, pasilla, chipotle, and arbol) and created a smoky slightly spicy tomato broth that we pressure cooked a whole turkey in. We then shredded the turkey and tossed it with some of the reserved cooking liquid. This gets topped with fresh cilantro sprigs, crispy tortilla strips and applewood smoked sweet corn foam. The foam gets its flavor from sautéing sweet corn and blending it with heated cream. After letting this mixture steep for a while we strain it through cheese cloth and pour it into an isi gourmet whip. We fire up our Poly Science smoking gun loaded with applewood dust and give the isi a little hit before quickly sealing the chamber and charging it with 2 nitrous cartridges. A couple shakes to disperse the smoke and a quick chill and we are ready to go.
Another change we will be making to the menu is removing the chicken fried roasted corn guacamole. We do realize this will probably upset a lot of its fans but we are fed up of trying to find a decent avocado in November or December. Many hours have been sacrificed driving from store to store to try to find avocados worthy of being made into our guacamole. In its place we will be serving up the all new "Magnificent Mushroom" slider. This red wine vinaigrette marinated porto gets seared on a cast iron skillet before landing home on a toasted fresh baked bun slathered in locally produced Texas goat cheese topped with cool crisp shredded iceberg lettuce and an refreshing salsa made up of kalamata olives, orange segments, zest, red onion, and parsley. This slider of course can accommodate our vegan friends by simply omitting the Texas goat cheese.
Last but not least we will be substituting the roasted corn guacamole on our black bean burger with a sweet corn relish and swapping out the chipotle mayo with our crowd favorite STR (smoked, toasted, roasted) sauce.

The "Little Dipper"

As the cold nights begin to occur more frequently our minds begin to reminisce of all the great comfort foods associated with cold weather. Osso Bucco, Shepherds Pie, Green Chile Pork, Pot Roast, and all of the other numerous wonderful and delicious slow cooked foods made with love dominate our thoughts. For now my mind is stuck on the French Dip Sandwich. What makes for the ultimate French dip? It can be broken down to three components. 1. The Bread , 2. The Beef, 3. The Broth. The buns we receive fresh daily from The New World Bakery have a great density to them and have held up exceptionally well for all of our trials of new slider recipes no matter what kind of foam, spread, dressing, slaw, sauce, or condiment we decide to dress them up with. Now some French Dip purists may cringe of the thought of our using a slider bun in place of the traditional French bread but wait a minute. We are not calling this slider a French dip... although we are attempting to one up the original. So it will all begin on our fresh toasted bun. Now onto the beef. Our plan will be to start with a beautiful all natural cut of meat from the butchers we have befriended at Central Market. As for seasonings and flavor? This is where the almighty broth comes into play. For our broth we will be going for a total umami experience. More than likely the ingredients that will go into this broth will be toasted onions, wild mushrooms, anchovies, and roasted garlic. Perhaps we will add some fresh thyme or rosemary to compliment it all. Now we could stop here and have quite a delicious little dipper but why not take it to the next level with another condiment. We will be grating some fresh horseradish and jalapenos and adding a splash of some vinegar and salt to make a nice spicy relish for our beef. Not only will it add flavor but since spiciness is often interpreted as heat and can have a warming affect on the body it should help keep everyone just a little bit warmer when walking around on East 6th street. Stay tuned to our twitter and facebook accounts to see when this special hits the streets.

New Slider Under Development

Fall is one of our favorite times of year. As the weather starts to cool down our thoughts turn to all of the wonderful cool weather ingredients and how we will incorporate them into our concept. We have been a fan of Abita's products for some time now. Besides their great line-up of beers they also make a delicious rootbeer from which we will create a sauce for this weeks special. Abita Root Beer is made with a hot mix process using spring water, herbs, vanilla and yucca (which creates foam). It is sweetened with pure cane sugar and when reduced down becomes a wonderful sweet and savory glaze. We are using this glaze to coat a pressure cooked duck confit which we will be pairing with a lemon scented roasted pumpkin puree and toasted pumpkin seeds. 'The Great Pumpkin' slider is born.

October 15th

As my time at the Austin Marriott South is about to come to an end I find my mind dreaming of how far I can take the Along Came A Slider concept. I put in my two weeks at the Marriott last Monday and will be wasting no time trying to expand ACAS. Beginning October 25th we will be expanding our business hours, expanding our menu options, and starting to work with some excellent purveyors I have been using at the hotel who can provide us with the quality of products we have become famous for. We will be doing some promotions with 5dollarlunch.com so be sure to sign up for this free site to receive our lunch specials. Now that I can dedicate all of my efforts to ACAS we will be doing a lot more specials featuring products from all of the great local farms that Austin has to offer. I will finally have the time to keep up with this blog as well. More to come..........

We're Back!

We just got back from the Nocturnal Festival and we are ready to pick up where we left off. It was a long week of working 16 hour days but everything got executed perfectly and in the end the clients were extremely happy with how everything went. We were responsible for providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the set-up and breakdown crew in addition to pumping out our sliders to the VIP's in attendance. Everyone was thrilled with the sliders and we gained many valuable contacts that should lead to some good business down the road. We will be closed over the weekend to take care of a plumbing repair of a pipe that had a run in with a tent stake. Monday will be a prep day then we will be ready to serve Tuesday. We will be back to our normal business hours from here on out.

Eat the Heat

Eat the Heat was amazing. There was tons of great food from all of the vendors and we luckily had a booth right next to Saint Arnolds. They were kind enough to keep our glasses full with their full line up of brews throughout the night. We received many leads for the catering side of our business and hopefully earned some new customers for our trailer concept. Now back to our regular programming. We will be open at 5 tonight and we anticipate being busy as these next three days will be the premier of our new mini drive-in movie theatre. Along Came A Slider will be showcasing the crews favorite flicks for your enjoyment once a week. We are still locking down what day will be ours and will make the announcment as soon as possible. Stay tuned......

New Slider Special For This Week

While pulling up to Central Market to pick up our all natural meats and organic produce we stopped dead in our tracks halfway through the parking lot. What was that amazing smell? We then laid eyes on what was causing this intoxicating aroma to perfume the parking lot. They were roasting whole cases of fresh hatch chiles and we quickly picked up a bag opting for the hot over the mild to use for a special. We then picked up some organic cream cheese and it was all starting to come together in our heads. While picking up the duck, pork shoulder, chicken, brisket, and ground beef, we came across some beautiful bison which the butchers were more than happy to grind for us. For your enjoyment and for a limited time only: Roasted Hatch Chile and Cheese Stuffed Bison Sliders. We are serving these delicious morsels of molten goodness on our baked fresh daily buns with shredded lettuce, tomato, red onion, and chipotle mayonnaise. Get them while they last!

Preparation For This Week

We have a busy week planned. Off to Central Market to purchase our all-natural meats and organic produce then back to the kitchen to start on prep. We will be doing a special batch of our diablo duck this week in anticipation of good crowds coming to check out the drive-in movie theatre premiers for both the press and public later this week. We start with an all-natural duck and marinate it in Achiote for 2 days. Then we pressure cook it in olive oil until it is falling off the bone. The duck gets complimented with a refreshing honey mint slaw and topped off with a diablo sauce containing roasted garlic, mango, and habaneros, just to name a few of the ingredients. This is one of Along Came A Sliders personal favorites because we can't ever seem to eat enough duck.

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

It has been a good second week. Business continues to slowly build. We have managed to make a little money every night and sell out of a couple sliders. We will be open at 5:00 pm tonight and the have the next two days off. All thoughts will turn to next week as we have our drive-in premier for the press on Tuesday, Eat the Heat on Wednesday, and the public premier of the drive-in on Thursday and Friday. Today we took our all-natural free range chicken and smoked it with maple using a smoking gun. We were very pleased with the results and may make this change to our prep for the current menu. The smoky undertones complement the sweetness of waffle batter and the balsamic/red wine vinegars in the caramelized onion and jalapeno syrup.

It's been a while

It has been too long since the last post. My apologies. A lot has happened since then. We left last Monday at 1:00pm and headed to Miami to pick up the trailer. We got back Wednesday night at 9:00pm. Needless to say it was the longest time I had ever spent in a car at one time. We checked into a hotel in Miami for a quick shower and stopped a few times for food and gas but other than that we were driving. The trailer turned out amazing. We got a little sleep and showed up at the health department at 8am on Thursday and by 9:30 we had our permit. The rest of the day was spent getting the last bit of kitchen supplies we needed, filling up propane tanks, filling up with water, and getting a cord made to allow us to plug into a pole for our power. Another restless night and it was all of a sudden opening day. We got up early and headed to Restaurant Depot to pick up to-go containers, receipt tape, and a few other necesseties. After that it was of Central Market for all of our all natural meat selections and organic produce. One more stop at The New World Bakery for our baked fresh daily buns and onto the cooking. We opened at 7:00pm and were greeted by a line of about 30 people. It was a hectic night. Imagine cooking in a kitchen you had never cooked in before and being extremely busy. It went alright but by day two we made a few more purchases and we were able to streamline our processes. Now we are ready for anything.

Trailer Is Almost Ready!

We just received word that our trailer will be ready for pick-up next Tuesday. A quick trip to Miami and we will be back in time for our inspection on Thursday. We have our work cut out for us but are very excited to be opening for business soon.

Eat The Heat

Along Came A Slider will be participating in Eat The Heat!

http://www.naceaustin.com/content.php?page=Eat_the_Heat

Update

Well, everything seems to be going as scheduled. Trailer should be done and ready to pick up by the end of the month. We got the t-shirts, web-page, bumperstickers, business cards, and menu all completed. We are waiting for our Texas resale certificate to come in and then all we have left is the permit from the health department which we will get when we take our trailer downtown for inspection. We have been shopping around Austin to find where we will be purchasing all of our food items. We will proudly be serving The New World Bakery's slider buns. They are a great local natural preservative free product. We will most likely be purchasing all of our proteins and organic vegetables from Central Market as they seem to have the best prices and definitely the freshest product. 2 weeks and five days to go.

Menu

New Slider in the Works

Chicken Fried Hand Hacked Guac Slider topped with Roasted Sweet Corn Relish, Tortilla Crisps, STR Red Pepper Sauce. (Smoked, Toasted, and Roasted) 3 weeks and five days until Grand Opening.

We are developing a technique for frying guacamole that will leave a crispy exterior and molten guacamole goodness interior. The STR Red Pepper Sauce will have a well balanced blend of roasted red peppers, smoked chipotles, toasted guajillo and ancho peppers.

Sunday May 2nd

We are currently waiting to get the last bit of paperwork notarized to turn in for final reveiw to determine if we will receive our loan to purchase a trailer. It has been a lot longer process than first anticipated. Our trailer will be located on East Ceasar Chavez just east of Juan in a Million. We can't wait to get it up and running and provide a unique concept for Austin diners to enjoy.