Carruthers John - Eat street : the ManBQue guide to making street food at home

Great food requires years of training, respect for established standards, and an exacting focus on local, organic, and artisan cooking philosophies. With every bite, every taste, and every aroma, we need to holistically consider our impact on tradition, the environment, and local foodways. Only by mindfully and deliberately internalizing all sides of the food system through years of preparation can we produce truly meaningful food. ...

At least, thats according to the assholes. Consume too much food media today and youre likely to be wracked with a combination of insecurity and guilt before you can even pick up your knife. Why should I try and whip up a po boy when this guys been doing it flawlessly for two decades and I live two time zones away from the only acceptable local bread? How can I use this beef when I dont know the name of the rancher who raised it (Its Hank. Its always Hank.)? How can I ethically cook if I dont know which traditional Welsh lullabies my lamb chop was sung to sleep with? Its fantastic that people are paying so much more attention to food and cooking these dayswe did get a couple of books out of this whole phenomenonbut you come away with a lot of messages about The Best and The Worst: Only The Best will do! Why would you get a hot dog anywhere else, you idiot? Commercially raised produce? Thats literally the worst thing since Hitler! Foods a world of almost limitless possibility, but all of our 2,000-word articles on what does it all MEAN leave things weirdly codified and stringent. Its why the word foodie gets an eye roll from us. Its messy. Its loud. Its loud.

Most importantly, its fun. Thats why we love to make it and eat it ourselves. And at the heart of things, food connects you to the best memories of your life: grabbing tavern pizza with the family and shouting over each other; finding the perfect empanada at a packed street festival in the middle of summer; finally saying fuck it and trying a dish you cant pronounce at a market stall during study abroad. Its why one whiff of food across a crowded street can bring back a rush of memories you hadnt thought of in years. The food you eat standing up isnt any better or worse than the food you pay the $200 prix fixe tag for, its just different. While were glad that you can buy a previously unthinkable amount of ethically-sourced ingredients, sometimes youve got fifteen people coming over, a family to feed, or you just want to get dinner on the table.

So weve put together recipes that draw from the highs and lows of what this great food nation has to offer, from specially bred (and expensive!) wagyu beef to the corn dog, King of Midwestern Garbage Foods. So go ahead, do your thing. Make a Philly steak with the regular torpedo roll from your local grocery. Press a Cubano with a brick. Make some takoyaki and dunk it in a spicy mayo like the flavor-seeking barbarian youre born to be. Weve got a limited amount of meals on this earth, so lets try to enjoy all of them.

Weve got a lot of delicious stuff in this book, so lets get started. Call some friends up. Buy a quantity of beer, then reconsider and go back for double that amount. Wed remind you to preheat the oven, but youll probably forget anyway. Thats finetheres no rush. Drink up. Drink up.

Welcome to Eat Street.

The wide, hot expanse of the griddle is like the desert in one of those Cormac McCarthy murder novels we enjoy so much. Forged in heat, brutally unforgiving, it exists only to force change and bring something face-to-face with its essence. Or maybe were putting too much thought into it. While youre reading this, theres a sullen teenager somewhere manning an electric griddle at a Ralphs supermarket offering tiny bites of regrettable cheese-injected sausage and making nine dollars an hour. But, as a cook, isnt it much more fun to put yourself in the middle of something epic? The ultimate point is, you can make some delicious stuff on a griddle, even ifno, ESPECIALLY ifits a two dollar cast iron resident of the Island of Misfit Kitchen Toys at your local thrift store.

If the Waffle Hut cook who hasnt slept in fourty-six hours and who appears to be tweaking can manage to create delicious food on this blank slate of possibility, so can you. When buying a griddle, look for: Something heavy: You want it to get hot and stay hot. Cast iron may not be the most even-heating material, but you can get a crispy sear on a diner-style burger so delicious it can single-handedly solve the student loan debt crisis. Something suited to your kitchen: Are you a kitchenette dweller? Maybe you dont have room for some four-burner beast of a slab. A smaller model could be in the cards. If you dont care much about high-heat searing, then (