Specials

Falling behind on blogging about our specials. Here is what we had going on the last couple weeks. Next post will be this coming week about our newly revamped sweet stuffed slider. We will start with our most recent sliders which happen to be shot by our friend Jerry of Jerry Milton Photography. As you can see he put my phone's camera shots to shame.

I had been having a craving for fried oysters and to my dismay as I found the fresh shucked Texas oyster bin at central market to contain nothing but stainless steel. Thankfully I asked as they had just received their shipment and hadn't unloaded it yet. Doesn't get much fresher. We encrusted these beauties with blue cornmeal and drizzled them with a smoked, toasted, and roasted vinaigrette. A little lettuce and tomato and this slider was done. Simple and delicious.

This slider actually ended up being the result of an idea that didn't work and not wanting to waste product. I'm filing the idea for later use because it is still something I would like to revisit. Anyways I ended up with a mixing bowl full of cactus, queso fresco, black beans, cilantro, and some seasonings. I had tortillas in the fridge and had just made the vinaigrette to use on the oysters the following day. I began rolling up the filling in corn tortillas and frying the flautas until golden brown delicious. In addition to the STR sauce we drizzled it with a little lime infused crema as well.

We picked up some tubes and tentacles at quality seafood when we were also grabbing the certified Texas raised catfish for our Not so Po' boy. A trip to boggy creek farm netted us some delicious fresh harvested strawberries and arugula. We kept this one pretty simple soaking the calamari in buttermilk and giving them a pretty standard seasoned flour dusting before frying. We took the wonderfully fragrant strawberries and turned them into a strawberry chipotle coulis. It played nicely against the peppery arugula.

Inspired by albondigas these meatballs contain all natural ground beef, basmati rice, sweet onion, cumin, cilantro, and mint. I had never had a chance to try ghost chiles so I picked some up along with a couple cans of organic fire roasted tomatoes. Making a quick sauce I then browned the meatballs before simmering in the liquid fire. Besides the mint in the meatballs we decided to cut the spice by topping with an avocado mousse and cotija cheese.

April 6th Special

Honey Mustard Chicken Slider

The chicken for this slider was poached in a mixture of dijon, honey, and chicken stock before being shredded and reunited with the cooking liquid which we had let reduce down while the chicken was cooling. We decided to complement the resulting deliciousness with a mixture of baby celery and baby lettuce we had picked up at Boggy Creek Farm earlier that morning.

The baby celery was amazing. The stalks were bursting with vibrant celery flavor. The leaves were also delicious and had a slight bitterness that played well with the honey in the chicken. We tossed this little salad in walnut oil and added some pickled apples as well. We also added some creaminess in the form of Pure Luck chevre.

April's New Sliders

Not So Po' Boy

This slider started out with us wanting to use springs widely available local carrots as a focal point for a component to our slider. We first take a big batch of habaneros and pickle them with apple cider vinegar and sugar. Everyday, when we make a new batch of slaw, a couple habaneros get minced and mixed with the shredded Texas carrots. The dressing that adorns this mixture is equal parts of the pickling liquid and local honey with a healthy dose of cilantro. This makes a perfect base for our catfish cake. It is a basic crab cake but instead of crab we have loaded it up with Texas catfish. The catfish we use is certified Texas farm raised catfish that comes from an outstanding farm in Markham, Texas. They were named a best choice by the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Program. Read all about them at http://www.certifiedtexascatfish.com/planet.html

To bring a little more flavor to the table we went with a blackened lemon aioli. The blend of spice and citrus within highlights the cake quite nicely.

Mother Shucker!

The inspiration for this slider came in the form of "Elotes en Vaso" aka corn in a cup. Of course we don't do cups, we do sliders. However we do enjoy the flavors found in this scrumptious snack. We make a basic fritter batter to which we fold in sauteed organic sweet corn and to add a little smokiness we also add a little cumin. Fried to golden brown perfection, two little molten morsels are drizzled with mayo, dusted with ancho chile powder, spinkled with cotija, garnished with tortilla crisps, and sandwiched between one of our locally baked fresh buns. These two sliders have been becoming a lot of our long time customers favorites overnight. Come enjoy them while they last!

The New Location

3600 South Lamar Blvd 78704

SXSW

Well, SXSW is over. We survived...barely. It is amazing how little sleep you can actually function on. I wouldn't say fully function, for there were a few times even the most simplest of tasks seemed to take forever to execute. We will chalk this one up as a huge success and we are very pleased with everything we accomplished. We couldn't have been at a better locations and our experience working with first the Blackberry and Foodspotting staff, and then the PureVolume House folks was excellent. The PureVolume staff was truly a pleasure to work with and we gained some new friends throughout the week. We had a few celebrity diners and even got to feed Bam Margera while he was sitting inside the trailer. This took place while we were on full throttle accommodating a never-ending flood of about to be very satisfied customers. We moved through a ton of food this week. We are very thankful we had the opportunity to share our creativity and passion for food with so many people. We hope that this momentum continues and we can begin to really grow our business and take Along Came A Slider to new levels. We are meeting with the owner of a new location that we have pretty much locked down to go over final details and will make an announcement as soon as we know for sure. Oh yes, and the new menu. Wait until you see the new menu and specials we have in store for our fans now. I've been doing a lot of reading and have been feeling very inspired. Thanks to everyone that help made our first SXSW a success. Special thanks to: Leslie Johnson, April Hernandez, Javier Martinez, and Rick Padilla for helping us manage the crowds this week and going above and beyond our expectations. We couldn't have done it without your help.

Pics From The Test Kitchen

Chorizo Brittle and Cilantro Caviar

Late Breaking News!

It’s been an exciting first quarter of business for us at Along Came A Slider LLC. We have made a decision to not have the trailer open this month. What will we be doing you ask??? Taking something a lot of you have come to love and making it better! We will be getting our trailer wrapped with all new graphics as well as unveiling a new spring menu with a few old favorites and a few new surprises in an all new location. This month just seemed like a good time for us to do everything we wanted to do but didn't get a chance to before we opened. The cold weather paired with an abundance of caterings helped us make the decision to go ahead and make improvements now. One of our chefs just accepted a chef position at Sullivan's and another of our chefs is getting close to sealing the deal on the Executive chef position at a downtown hotel property himself. This means we are expanding and changing up the flow of things. 2011 will be the year of the slider. Stay tuned to see what events we will be catering and what new location will host our newly wrapped and easily identifiable trailer of creativity. Those of you that just can't wait can enjoy our sliders at Antone's on February 13th at the Austin Blues Society Grammy Party. http://www.antones.net/event/28511/ Great live music and gourmet eats. We will continue to share our developments in the menu and trailer as they occur so be sure and check back to ensure that you don't miss out on any late breaking slider news. Thank you everyone for the continued support of our local business.

Sweetbreads Slider

Unfortunately we ran this special yesterday and had underestimated our fans appreciation of some skillfully prepared offal goodness. For those of you unfamiliar with this delicacy, sweetbreads, refer to either the thymus which is located in the throat or the pancreas which lies near the stomach. As far as I know they call them sweetbreads because it is a hard sell when you call them what they are? Thankfully we have euphemisms otherwise many people would be missing out. Due to the process in which we prepare our sweetbreads we are unable to run this special again today. Here is glimpse of how it went down.

We got excited to see sweetbreads on our trip to the market and immediately grabbed a few pounds and started a 24 hour soak in milk. We knew we had to get moving quickly to be able to run this as a special by Friday so the plan was start getting the sweetbreads ready for service and think about the rest of the flavors at a later time.

And then thanks to time constraints this week the next picture is the finished product. What you didn't see was rinsing them after the milk and placing them in a pot of cold water with a little salt, bay leaves, and lemon. We then applied heat and simmered for 15 minutes. As soon as the time had elapsed we plunged them into a bucket of ice water. While this blanching step is not completely necessary it sure does make it a little easier to accomplish the next step. The next step is to remove the membrane and any visible veins while still trying to keep the whole thing intact which can be a task in itself. We then wrapped all the desirable product in cheese cloth and pressed it between two pans with extra weight resting on the top pan. After another 24 hours we were ready to roll. We sliced it into thick slices and held them in the fridge to await service. So as you can see, it takes a little dedication and advance planning to prepare sweetbreads but the patience in the end is rewarded. The aforementioned later time to pick flavors to compliment ended up being Saturday morning at the market. While picking up some of the other produce items on our list we came across a bin of nice looking daikon. We sliced it up and threw it in a rice wine vinegar pickling liquid. We wanted to add a pickle to this slider to combat some of the richness of the sweetbreads and the toasted sesame and shiner bock tempura batter that encapsulated them. To this we added a little heat in the form of a sriracha aioli and topped it all off with a piece of toasted nori. As soon as we had the daikon in the cart we went ahead and committed to the Asian flavor profile. This slider flew out the window like hot cakes. Thank you to everyone who got the chance to check this special out and who continue to support what we do.

Ratio- The Simple Codes Behind The Craft Of Everyday Cooking written by Michael Ruhlman

I wanted to share with everyone today a book that has been instrumental in changing the way I think about cooking and has allowed me the courtesy of hardly ever having to reach for a recipe to use as reference. This book re-iterates the fact that all cooking is defined by relationships. For instance; bread is broken down as 5 parts flour, 3 parts water. (plus yeast and salt) Now I know there is a lot more that goes into bread but this ratio is the essence of bread. If you have had any experience making bread and have the common grasp on how long it should be kneaded you can pull a decent loaf off on the fly by grabbing a scale and your ingredients, never once having to Google a recipe or dust off a Martha Stewart cookbook. The most important thing is that you are using 5 parts of flour and 3 parts of water. You do need salt for seasoning and yeast for its leavening but the amounts used are rather forgiving unless you have a super specific texture of bread you are trying to achieve. Now that you know this you can make roasted garlic bread, cinnamon raisin bread, or any other type of bread you can brainstorm.

So, I found this information mind blowing and it left me wondering why I didn’t think of this. Let’s look at other doughs.
Pasta Dough = 3 parts flour : 2 parts water
Pie Dough = 3 parts flour : 2 parts fat : 1 part water
Biscuit Dough = 3 parts flour : 1 part fat : 2 parts liquid
Cookie Dough = 1 part sugar : 2 parts fat : 3 parts flour

The list goes on and on but I think you get the jest of it. If you have a basic understanding of the techniques involved you only need to know these relationships to pull off any variation of these items. The book is broken up into:
Doughs and Batters
Stocks and Thickening Agents
Farcir Sausage, Mousseline, and Other Meat-Related Ratios
Fat Based Sauces
Custards

For those of you out there looking to enhance their cooking prowess I highly recommend this book. As stated in the last sentence of the book: "Ratios Liberate You-when you know the ratio and some basic techniques, then you can really start to cook." Once you allow yourself to get into this mind set you will start to look at everything in terms of ratios and really examine while the work. For me it has definitely made me a better cook and expanded my abilities to create on the fly. When shit hits the fan and everyone starts to freak out that something was overlooked and something needs to happen quickly, this is when you stop everyone and calmly say, it's going to be alright, it's easy to make, I don't even need a recipe. Go home a hero. Free your mind for the low cost of $27.00

Green Chile Pork Slider

This special was decided on after a craving for puerco verde that would just not go away. To make it into a slider we started off by taking boneless pork loin ribs and marinating them in a salsa verde for a few hours. We then pressure cooked the pork and it's marinade for 45 minutes on high pressure and let them cool thoroughly before removing the ribs from the salsa which then found its way into a squeeze bottle where it remained destined to be re-united with the pork in the near future. The salsa verde was made with charred onions, poblanos, jalapenos, tomatillos, cilantro, cumin, mexican oregano, and honey. As you can see from the last post we made a batch of lime infused queso fresco to add some acidity and the wonderful mouthfeel that cheese always provides. To add some texture and freshness we added fresh cilantro sprigs and shaved radish. At first we wanted to do a tortilla crusted rib but opted for masa flour when wondering through the store. We dredged it in the masa, dipped it in buttermilk, and then back to the masa before frying it to GBD. We hope everyone enjoyed this rendition of classic flavors.

The Cheese

Making the Lime Infused Queso Fresco for a new special.

New Years Eve.....belated

I am finally getting to post about our New Years Eve special. My apologies for the delay. Due to an unfortunate run in my phone had with a sink I was unable to obtain a picture. We started off the evening with Saffron and Vanilla Bean Butter Poached Lobster Tail served on one of our fresh baked buns with a little grated celery root slaw. We garnished the lobster simply with a drizzle of the butter that continued to take on more lobster flavor as the orders flew out the window, and a sprinkling of smoked Maldon Salt. The reason I say earlier "we started off the evening with" is because we sold out quickly even though this was the most expensive slider that has been on our menu to date. We tried to go get more lobster tails to share these flavors with more customers that day but everybody else in Austin must of had lobster tails on their mind because the market was sold out. Thankfully we found an excellent substitute in some fresh monkfish. The good old poor mans lobster. Everyone seemed to enjoy this one as well and we sold out of these by nine. It was a fun evening of great food, music, drinks, and friends. We can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for us.

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..........