Question of the Week: Vacation vittles
Monday, August 6th, 2007When most people go on holidays, they paradoxically put their stomachs to work, eating more sinful food – and more of it – than they do at home. My special bonus question of the week is, What kind of cooking do you like to do on beach vacations?
When we go on trips, my family has a tradition of making Frogmore Stew, which basically amounts to boiling up a mess of shrimp, new potatoes, sausage links and ears of corn. It’s easy to make, leaving you more time to mellow out.
On vacation I’m particularly fond of cooking not just seafood, but “disreputable†food, which creates a party atmosphere. A few years ago we cooked Beer Can Chicken, for which you roast a chicken that’s sitting upright with an open, half-empty can of beer jammed up its, uh, innards. It turned out to be quite yummy. The flavor wasn’t noticeably beery, so that’s not a selling point, but the process makes the chicken meat extremely moist and succulent. It was the kind of dish that sounds more “white trash” than it actually is.
I haven’t yet built up the nerve to make Butter Burgers, which, as I understand them, are like cheeseburgers only cooked with an equivalent quantity of butter instead of cheese. (Partly the problem is that I haven’t found a recipe that inspires me to take the plunge.) It sounds like an unbelievably decadent taste sensation, and also like it could cause your heart to explode like a hand grenade. Which could, you know, put a crimp in your vacation plans.
