CC:FTF

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Food Truck Friday

This blogs been in the hopper waiting a while since the event was May 3rd. I was meeting a friend and former colleague to catch up and I was in charge of finding a spot with food trucks. After a bit of searching, filtering and decision making our target was the Cabarrus County Food Truck Friday. The event is held at Gibson Mill in Concord and I have to say it was worth the drive.

The parking is around back by the Cabarrus Brewing Co., what a convenient thing. There are plenty of picnic tables with umbrellas outside and some seating in the brewery’s tap room. Another convenience is a satellite bar outside in a corner of the picnic area. The evening temp was just about as good as you could ask for and since I got there first I decided to recon the satellite bar and picked up a Spring Street Blue which was a blueberry wheat beer. It wasn’t bad, the blueberries added some nice color but the flavor I thought was a bit muted.

After a just a bit my friend showed and we toured the food trucks to find out which one was going to receive our patronage. After much consideration Big City Bites was the winner.

We jumped right on their special of 3 sliders and added a side of fries each. As they were taking a while to get the orders up we ventured into the taproom to acquire liquid accompaniment for the meals. Jody went with a bourbon barrel aged ale which looked, smelled and tasted like it meant business. I selected something more on the tropical scale with their The Floor is Guava. I only got that reference as I was writing the blog, initially I just thought is was a weird name but now I get it. In any event, the drink was a sour beer made with, surprise!, guava. The sour actually went pretty well with the sliders, especially the Cubano. Speaking of the sliders.

From left to right they are the Cubano, the Pulled Pork Italiano and the Chicago Italian Beef and anchoring the top of the take out tray were the crispy, well cooked fries. All three of these sandwiches were good and offered a nice variety of tastes. The beef sandwich had some peppers and crumbled cheese and was pretty good but #3 of the trio for me. The pulled pork had green peppers, roasted red peppers, shaved cheese and some tender, moist pork slotting it solidly in second place. As mentioned the Cubano was my favorite with the tender slow roasted pork, ham slices, with Swiss cheese, pickles and tangy mustard pressed and grilled. An excellent choice of meals to go with a years worth of catching up with a friend. Thanks Jody Sneed for sharing the meal and time.

As a postscript I believe they are running the Food Truck Friday every Friday until sometime in October. They had live music, are family and pet friendly so if you’re lost for someplace to eat on a Friday pile the family in the car and explore your food truck options.

France via Latrobe

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Apparently I wasn’t done with French food in April although it wasn’t a close to home experience. I was on a work trip to Latrobe, PA and the first night I went to a long time staple when staying in Latrobe, Sharky’s Cafe.

My intent when I headed over was to get a stromboli, which has been a comfort choice on more than one occasion but instead I decided to try something new. In this case something new was their French Onion Burger.

This 10oz burger was topped with caramelized onions and a Gruyere and Swiss cheese sauce. Actually topped is an understatement, smothered is probably a much better word choice. Let me tell you when the server dropped that off and I looked at that and the one napkin the silverware was wrapped in I knew that wouldn’t do. When she came back around I let her know this looked like a multi-napkin affair and it was. The bun also wasn’t structurally sufficient to the task either and this was just a delicious mess that I’d recommend to anyone. As a side note dredging the tots through the excess cheese sauce was a pleasant experience.

On my last evening I didn’t feel like a restaurant but I wasn’t in the fast food mood so I was scrolling Yelp looking for something different and came across French Express just down the road. This was a take out cafe that just like the name says specializes in French cuisine. If I live in Latrobe I’d be a semi-regular here.

It’s a nice little shop with a few tables in the front of the store and some spices, honeys and other food stuffs around the edges of the store. You have the counter where you can order hot and cold items ready to eat or take home and heat. I selected a crepe, a slice of quiche and desert. The crepe and quiche were both larger than I expected so either would have been sufficient alone.

The quiche Lorraine was very good, light, fluffy, cheesy and hammy. Couldn’t ask for much more. The crepe was the biggest surprise. I went with a smoked salmon crepe which came in two separate containers. The crepe was very large with diced cucumbers wrapped up in it. The smoked salmon was in it’s own container and there must have been a half pound of quality salmon. So I embraced the roll-your-own philosophy and ate about half before I had to tap out. Nice choice and it was a great value for the price. Lastly was the desert. I don’t recall what it was called but it was a flaky pastry with a hazelnut flavored filling that on top of the other items capped evening and just put me over the top into a food coma.

So while Latrobe isn’t a local spot for me I found a couple of local spots while there that did the French cuisine thing proud.

Opening Day

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Food Truck Friday

I am a couple of weeks behind posting and this was actually a couple of Friday’s ago. I’ve got stuff in the hopper now for the next few weeks but I wanted to start the catch-up with this one.

I’m not a hunter however I look forward to the opening of another season, my local Food Truck Friday season. I guess I do hunt for new food trucks and dishes to try during this season but my taxidermy bill is nil.

My day hadn’t been stellar up to the point I departed for the event. I’d flown earlier in the day and there was an almost hour delay getting bags from the plane to the carousel which peeved me a tad. I was counting on this first FTF to counteract that and it did. I rode in listening to 80’s music on the radio and got out to the strains of Journey’s Any Way You Want It from the evenings band, Kids In America an 80’s tribute band. They did a great job and as you can see from the photo committed to it with the hair and wardrobe.

With that promising start I was off to the beverage tent where the rotating tap selections included, Funky Buddha Black Currant beer.

It had a purple hue and tartness from the black currants that made this Belgian ale enjoyable from sip one. They call it a Tripel Lindy which seems like a Back To School reference to me and just added another point in its favor. It also had a 9 point something alcohol percentage which I noticed by the time I hit the bottom of the cup.

From that point I was in hunter mode searching for signs of something different and tasty. After reconning the array trucks available I backtracked to Momo Food Truck.

They had several options I was interested in but the special of dumplings over a rice bowl looked like a winner to me and spoiler, it was a winner.

Talk about fusion, there was a lot going on in this dish. The chicken was served with a gravy that had a definite Indian influence kind of like tandoori flavor with light tomato gravy. Accompanying that was plain basmati rice, steamed vegetables and oddly pico de gallo. The steamed dumplings were filled with minced chicken that was lightly spiced and had what tasted like a hint of coconut and the whole drizzled with a mustardy sweet sauce. Like I said a lot going on. I have to say this was absolutely worth having again.

I almost forgot, check out this utensil they were supplying with the food. I’d not seen this before and thought it was worth a pic. I didn’t need to cut anything so I didn’t test how sturdy it would have been with the knife snapped out.

The evening was a perfect temperature and as I shared a bench with a family, who’s kid knew every one of the 80’s tunes (good parenting), enjoying the breeze and my Sugar Creek Blood Orange IPA I felt the satisfaction of a successful opening day.

Ma-ka-rohn

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France

What’s this you say? That’s not the correct spelling of macaron. Well you are correct but that is the spelling of the company name that I got this box of assorted macarons from.

I was enticed to trying these because being originally a French confection so that put them squarely in the culinary-passport purview and they were colorful plus unusual flavors not to mention sprinkles and gold leaf. I had a lot buttons being pushed here people.

There were nine distinct flavors and all of them were quite sweet and most of them had additional qualities that made them worth mentioning. Two of the macarons were March specials and not on the card, there were the Irish coffee couplet in the back of the middle row and the Lucky Charms dark green one in the right hand row.

The Irish coffee tasted of coffee but not that much like whiskey but that’s ok it was still a favorite. Lucky Charms surprisingly tasted a bit like the cereal bits in the box but not so much like the charms so as you might imagine it didn’t rank among the top. It was sharing basement space with the Fruity Pebble macrons. I didn’t like them when I was a kid and that didn’t change by morphing them into a fancy cookie. Those flavors kept Pistachio from being the least favorite. It had a mild pistachio flavor but it was a nice color so it had that going for it.

The cotton candy and birthday cake both lived up to the names on first bite but the sweetness hit hard. The galaxy and brownie batter were both great and they had gold and silver shiny bits respectively. They shared their blinginess with the Ferrero Rocher macaron and all three had chocolaty goodness going for them. I expected more from the Ferrero Rocher but it really didn’t have much hazelnut flavor. In spite of that it was in the top half of the group.

If you want to try some interesting flavors you might not get at your local French bakery you can check these folks out at ma-ka-rohn.com. I’m glad I did but I think I’ll support the local bakery next time I have the urge for a macaron.

P.S. I tried something that falls squarely in the France category so I’m throwing this postscript on the blog.

I enjoy going to the grocery store Lidl, which is a German based grocer that often carries European sourced products. They have things you just don’t find in the domestic based stores. As I walked through the other day I saw they had this:

“James we don’t know what that is.” I hear you saying so let me tell you. Those are puff pastry stuffed with escargot topped with parsley garlic butter. Some of you are now gagging and others are going “Yum!”.

In spite of living in Geneva for almost 3 years and eating at more than one French restaurant in the many years since I’ve never tried these mobile home carrying slugs. I figured I might as well bite the bullet in the privacy of my own home in case I felt the need to regurgitate. After baking they came out looking interesting if not exactly appealing.

I steeled myself and tried the first one. It was almost a disappointment because I think I wanted it to be gross so I could feel justified in my years avoiding this garden pest. Turns out the puff pastry and garlic butter overpowered any flavor the snail might have had so the only contribution of the snail was a bit of chewiness in the center. The snail was like a fried clam or maybe a piece of calamari after it starts to cool down and get chewy.

Having cleared this hurdle I might try them in a restaurant in the future where I’m sure digging them from the shell with a tiny fork will be a treat.

Ukrainian Yum

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Ukraine

The March box of goodies hailed from the country of Ukraine and looked promising right off the bat with the amount of chocolate I could see. Before I get on to the snacks let me say that the little booklet that comes with this as well as the intro card are educational and interesting so if you have kids at home these boxes are educational as well as mostly delicious.

Now on to the goodies. The one I liked the best was a pack of little chocolate squares that had a caramel and cinnamon filling in the center.

I was kind of skeptical at first but the bitterness of the dark chocolate paired with the sweet caramel was a given winner and the hint of cinnamon was a very nice add in. The number two snack was also a chocolate based snack.

I had not read the description in the booklet and took this at face value expecting nothing more than a milk chocolate bar. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to have a creme brule center. That was the kind of unexpected good fortune that cements a high rating in the snack competition. Another surprise, without the same result, garnered the middle of this trio the weirdest snack title.

If you look closely you can see a dark spot in the center. The outside of this was like a cross between a jellied candy and a gummy worm and in the center was a viscous liquid artificially flavored core. There were a mix of flavors and none were bad per se but just an odd combination of textures and flavors. No the only bad snack was the hands down winner of the worst snack moniker.

I had mixed feelings going into this trial. When I saw the flavor was meat jelly I recalled the Russian snack that was meat jelly flavored and how unappealing that was. On the other hand I was hoping the novelty of the potato planks and horseradish might redeem it. My hope was for naught. These smelled disgusting as soon as the package was opened and the flavor was every bit as noxious as the Russian snack had been. It left a foul aftertaste and gave me heartburn even though I only powered through a couple of the chips.

There was another box of chips with dill and sour cream flavor and they at least redeemed the company’s name and let me enjoy the unique chip. I have to say I was digging the packaging and long slender potato crisps. They were kind of like Pringles in texture but a touch thinner. Very little wasted space unlike our 1/3 filled bags of chips.

Other snacks in the box included french fry shaped snacks made from corn with potato flakes added. Two varieties were included, one onion and one veal and adjka flavored. There was a pack of really nice caramels with a great dairy taste. For breakfast one morning I had the ham and mustard corn puffs. Aside from the little candies there was a big bar of dark chocolate with bits of dried fruit stuck to the outside.

Overall the box was a winner in spite of the meat jelly assault. I can’t wait to see what’s in the April box from Israel.

New Jersey Nosh

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US – Northeast

As on most Saturday mornings I was preparing to go grab breakfast at one of my usual haunts when I remembered a new spot I’d seen on my way to the Doctor earlier in the week. It was in a spot that has been at least two other restaurants that I’d visited so I thought let’s see what #3 might have going for it.

I checked them out online and when I saw this on the menu I knew I had to check them out.

I figured if they had crayons on the salad I needed to see if they were cooking with E-Z Bake ovens and using a Lite Brite for the menu board. (Spoiler Alert – they didn’t and aren’t).

When I got to Momma’s Place I was the only patron in the restaurant. I was greeted and seated quickly and set up with coffee and a menu. When I got the menu the guy waiting on me let me know the whole menu was open so order anything I wanted. As tempting as a crayone salad might have been or more seriously an empanada for breakfast I decided to stick with “regular” breakfast fare.

In this case a bagel with eggs, pork roll & provolone cheese.

Now getting to that required navigating a lot of options. The stock breakfast sandwich is two eggs (fried, scrambled or omelet style) on a roll or bagel (plain, everything or cinnamon raisin). You can add meat (bacon, Italian sausage, pork roll or ham) or cheese (American, Swiss, provolone, cheddar, pepper jack, muenster, or Monterrey jack) for little extra.

Never having had pork roll and after some discussion about how pork roll was like the unofficial official breakfast meat of New Jersey & New York I had to try it out. It’s also called Taylor ham in some quarters for reasons you can find out on Wikipedia after Googling it.

Looking at the photo you may have had the same reaction I did, “that’s just fried bologna man.” It was in fact fried but it was definitely more hammy tasting that bologna. It was fried to the point where it was a little bit crispy and paired well with the rest of the sandwich.

The staff of this place was really great, friendly and more than willing to converse with the customers and answer any questions. I’ll definitely go back and try some of their other offerings, although I’m still not that keen to try the crayons.

Salivating over Salvadoran

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El Salvador

After seeing an early showing of Captain Marvel I decided to just take a right onto South Blvd in Charlotte and see what struck my fancy. I had confidence there’d at least be something with a Latin American influence along the route that would serve. After passing a few that didn’t lure me in I decided to pull into a strip lot parking lot because I saw a Mexican place at the end that looked promising. The I saw Restaurante Comalapa that advertised being Salvadoran, Honduran & Mexican and that roped me right in.

When I first walked in and the waitress rounded the corner and saw me it apparently threw her off her game because she just stood there for a bit staring at me. I don’t know if she thought I was lost, wanted to use the phone or what but after a few seconds of silence I decided to help her out and said “Just uno” and that seemed to cut through the confusion and she went into action, grabbing a menu and beckoning me to follow.

As soon as butt hit booth she asked if I wanted guacamole fresco & chips so I said sure. I expected her to ask me what I wanted to drink first but nope that didn’t come up until she came back several minutes later with a platter of chips, salsa and guacamole.


I ordered up a Modelo Especial and tried my first bite of the guacamole. So let me say until just a few years ago I called this green concoction gag-a-mole or gackamole but I’ve had a change of heart and will eat it now and then. Based on that I am no connoisseur of guacamole but this was the best I’ve ever had. They mean the “fresco” part and that’s why she asked immediately because they make it to order. All the ingredients tasted fresh and it was both creamy and chunky with just the right amount of salt and cilantro. I did try the salsa and while it was good it was the second place finisher in a two dip race. Let me also add this is an appetizer and will show on the bill.

I tried to order the chicken tamales for my meal since the picture made them look pretty cool and they came wrapped in a plantain leaf. I barely got the word tamale out of my mouth and she was channeling her inner Soup Nazi with “no tamales for you!” At least she followed it up with “we ran out”. OK so it wasn’t personal. She recommended the other dish I was considering, pupusas.

These are kind of like corn flour pancakes stuffed with cheese and / or other things like the pork I got. They came with cabbage salad and a thin tomato sauce. I tasted the cabbage salad first and it was crunchy and tart with a bit of carrot and some green herb I think was oregano. At first I thought it was vinegar giving the tangy acidity but the more I had of it the more it reminded me of the tang from fermentation like the homemade sauerkraut I made last year. Regardless it was good but still only a side dish.

The pupusas were new to me but I’m now a fan, at least of the ones from Comalapa. They had a nice corn taste and the filling was ground pork with a little seasoning. It was ground fine, not quite a paste, so the filling layer wasn’t thick, just enough to give additional flavor to the corn bread. The tomato sauce for dipping was called “special” on the menu but that was optimistic at best. It was thin and fairly tasteless but to me it was extraneous anyway. The papusas stood on their own.

Overall I’d have to say this lunch was no kind of fancy but some kind of good. If you find yourself in the neighborhood stop in and grab a meal. Oh and by the end of the meal the waitress was friendly and chatty and on the way out the lady at the register made a point of waving, thanked me for coming and invited me back soon.

Italian Yum

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Italian Snacks

The February box from Universal Yum was loaded with snacks from the best country shaped like footwear and like quality footwear even if it’s not your style it’s hard to say bad stuff about it. Nothing in this box fell into the “yuck” category although a couple were unusual enough to make you go hmmm.

It was hard to pick a favorite this month. Nothing really stood out far and away above the others but it’s hard to go wrong with chocolate an hazelnuts so here was the one that edged out the others.

The chocolate was good and the hazelnut chips, while not evenly distributed, managed to show up in every bite. Plus I like the packaging, no glitz just information. Interesting marketing.

Number two on the hit parade revisits the same combo.

That trapezoidal chocolate hunk in the middle is the runner up. The chocolate is silkier than the bar and the hazelnut flavor is fully saturated in the candy. As I’m writing this it occurs to me the reason this is in second place has more to do with size rather than taste. I guess it does matter.

The most unusual was a tie between a sweet and a savory.

The white chocolate bar with saffron was interesting. The white candy part was nothing special on it’s own but the saffron was a nice addition. It was subtle but obvious on first bite but the distinctiveness fell off with each additional square. After a break though the next first bite was interesting all over again.

The savory item was a lemon pepper wheat cracker sort of thing. After tasting the first one I decided this was going to be pared with some soup. In this case lentil soup. The tart lemon and spiciness of the black pepper were a perfect accompaniment to the earthy lentils. I’d not have thought about that combo in a cracker but it worked.

So my least favorite wasn’t really bad but just the back of the pack overall.

I feel like I should have liked these more but the truffle chips really just didn’t do it for me. The chips were crispy and their truffle game was strong but maybe too strong. I could taste the truffle before it even hit the tongue and it was just as strong on the last chip as it was on the first.

I have to give honorably mention to the almond crisp cookies.

After I had the first one I immediately got up and fixed a cup of coffee. Great almond taste and crispy and crunchy like nobody’s business. I don’t think I’ve a better coffee companion in quite a while.

The other items in the box were a carrot orange cake, tiramisu cake, rosemary crackers, pizza flavored corn puff rings, cappuccino chocolate ball and fizzy hard candies in lemon and orange flavor. All snack worthy.

I didn’t even crack the code for March. I figured I let it be a surprise.

Albanian Aliment

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Image result for albanian passport stamp

Well it has been quite the hiatus for the Culinary-Passport for several reasons like the holidays, lack of food truck roundups, difficulty finding restaurants for new countries, plus a dash of laziness and a general dislike of the new WordPress editor. But I’ve put most of that behind me and figured out a work around for the no new restaurants issue.

The purpose of the blog is to sample foods of the world locally and it doesn’t get more local that my own kitchen so what I decided to do was occasionally pick a country, find a recipe or two from that locale and whip it up myself. There seemed to be no better place to start than alphabetically from the list of countries I downloaded from someplace on the internet. I’d covered Afghanistan so Albania it was.

I found the shishqebap me mish pule recipe first and went looking for something that might be a side that turned into the presh me oriz dish. You will find both recipes on the Tell Me More page.

Ingredients
Finished product

I made a couple of modifications by using a honey infused with peppers and since I couldn’t find the Albanian salami I used two different types of Italian salamis. Let me also offer a tip if you try to make this. Use only a teaspoon of the oregano. The proportions for the marinate were too heavy on the dry ingredients and I wound up with a paste that didn’t want to spread and once it was initially mixed more olive oil just wouldn’t blend.

At the end of the day it was tasty and the different textures were interesting. Definitely a dish that would go well with a frosty brew.

The presh me oriz or leek and rice bake instead of being a side really turned out to be a meal on its own.

Ingredients
Finished product

The only variation I made to this recipe was using chicken broth I happened to have on hand in lieu of the lamb stock. The ingredient list is relatively small but the end result is a ton of food. Also you will need a big pan as at one point you have everything getting sauteed and brought to a boil before transferring to the baking dish. I used a flat bottom wok and it was a perfect size.

This casserole is straight up comfort food. I hadn’t cooked a lot with leeks and I thought both the leeks and the onions would be overpowering but they weren’t. It was mild and with the ground lamb and rice made for a hearty filling dish that provided leftovers for days.

My Albanian experience was good. Of the two I’d probably be more likely to make the leek and rice bake again but the kebabs might make an appearance on a fall evening that called for grilling.

Netherlands Yum

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Netherlands

This month’s box of goodies from Universal Yums featured snacks from the Netherlands.  

There was only one item in the box I disliked and a couple of them I was meh about but I happened to start off with what turned out to be my favorite.

The Choco Stroopwafels is a delicious caramel and cookie combo wrapped in chocolaty goodness.  You can see the caramel trying to escape from the chocolate prison but the only place it went was in my belly.  Nice start to the box. 

My second favorite was a box of cookies.

These rectangular spice cookies reminded me of windmill cookies I used to buy at a bakery outlet back in the 80s.  I think you can still find them in stores.  The taste was not quite gingerbread but definitely cinnamon spiced and maybe something else.  The texture was a bit crumbly and they are topped with sliced peanuts and very light glaze.  These rivaled the stroopwafels when paired with a good strong cup of coffee.

For the most unusual I’m going to say it was the truck gummies.

These little trucks came in three different styles and colors and each one had a different flavor and texture.  The light brown ones were the least “gummy” and broke down quickly as you chewed them.  The flavor like licorice with a heavy dose of brown sugar or molasses.  The medium brown were like a combo of caramel, licorice and a hint of milk with a more gummy texture.  I know that sounds weird but they weren’t bad.  The dark trucks were the most stretchy and chewy of the lot and tasted most of licorice but also caramel mixed in. 

As odd as the trucks might sound the truly oddest also qualified for the worst of the lot.

From the bag of candies came the Napoleon Zwart-Wit in the top right of the photo.  This little nugget of nastiness was supposed to taste like licorice with a salty filling.  Now I like licorice a lot and I’ve tried some salted styles from Denmark that I quite enjoyed but even salt couldn’t save these balls of bad.  It tasted faintly of licorice with an ammonia aftertaste which was off putting to say the least.  Turns out ammonium chloride is an ingredient.  I’m game though and stuck with it until the hard shell melted enough for the salt kick in.  That did dampen the ammonia a bit but the overall taste experience was like sucking on some kind of caustic cleaning product.  These were the Waterloo of the Netherlands box.  Just in case you thought I was on the fence these were disgusting.

I did want to go ahead and mention a couple of the others because they were good or at least interesting.

The pink Cadillacs were fruit gummies that tasted pretty good but I could only sit there hearing Aretha Franklin Freeway of Love song in my head the whole time I was eating them.  They came in strawberry, cherry and black currant.

The Roka Cheddar & Raspberry cheese crispies were worth a mention two because they had some of the best cheddar taste I’ve had in a cracker.  The texture of these were like a pastry dough that had been sliced thick and back with the cheddar and the little dried raspberry bits scattered in for a surprise sweet taste every now and then.  

Overall the box was 75% good, 17% meh and 8% yucky.  That’s a win percentage I can live with.  Decembers box is going to be a holiday box with several countries represented and I’m looking forward to it.