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..........