Portability

Sonic's eXtreme Tots!

I challenge you to find a more portable version of open-faced cuisine than this...

A boat of those marvels of potato engineering, tater tots, covered in cheese, sour cream, jalapeno slices and chili. Slipped into a foil envelope.

This should be in sitting in the passenger's seat during a drive home from any night of responsible consumption.

Fit for a King!

I taught biology for a semester at Pima Community College – Desert Vista.

Desert Vista has a culinary school so you can actually get some tasty lunches made by the students there. But the real culinary genius is at the grill right next door. Every Tuesday and Thursday the little Mexican lady who works the grill brings in her very own meat sauce for Taco and Nacho Day… I don’t know how the tacos are, but these Nachos are well worth the 4 dollars.

The mistress of the grill handed me this particular batch with the exclamation, "Fit for a King!" Indeed.

Corned Beef Hash

Plates of corned beef hash (and hash dishes, in general) are an important component of open-faced cuisine. Mom and Dad would tag-team up some CBH on camping trips, or on the occasional weekend morning, and I ... oh, excuse me as I find something to wipe up this drool.

Corned-beef hash differs in anatomy from the prototype presented by JW just last week. In a hash, the meat and carbohydrate are mixed well together. The 'mess factor' comes primarily from egg yolk, and from the hash itself.

Mom always made CBH from a can. Yes, it looks like dog food when it first comes out
(in fact, I'll always remember a scene in '"Where the Red Fern Grows," in which the protagonist is told that CBH is not good enough for his dogs). Once, it's fried up though... with crispy brown bits around the edges, it starts looking like... well, fried dog food. But THEN, you crack some eggs on top of it, cover it and let those eggs cook up, and you have the breakfast of real champions.

Now, the dish pictured above is a little different from your typical CBH. In fact, this is about as high class as CBH gets... . The Brockton Villa restaurant is a good place to get brunch with your parents while in San Diego (La Jolla, no less!). Sure enough, though... that's open-faced cuisine, with FRESH INGREDIENTS! Nice big hunks of corned beef, mixed in with chunks of potato and pepper and topped with free-form poached eggs. Really some of the finest CBH I've had at a restaurant.

That's a peculiar thing about corned beef hash; restaurants are typically really bad at making it. Here is exhibit A.
Who cooks corned beef as patty? And what are the eggs doing all the way over there on the other side of the plate? Let's bring an end to the egg-hash segregation! This dish is from Frank's/Francisco's in Tucson. They do a lot of things right for breakfast. In fact, I love breakfast at Frank's. Just don't order the CBH.

Given how hit-or-miss restaurants are with their CBH, we experiment at home... So, I'll leave you with a success story. We had some leftover trout that had been fried in salt and juniper berries, so we mixed it up with some mashed potatoes, topped with some eggs, and ouila!

Anatomy 101

Open-faced cuisine comes in many forms. On this blog you will see us discuss nachos and garbage plates and sandwiches too. We're equal opportunity, to a point. There are some requirements.

Open-faced cuisine needs a platform. It needs a platform of starch. Bread, potatoes, chips and macaroni salad all serve as the starch platform for classic open-faced dishes. Atkins never ate open-faced. It just doesn't work like that.

Open-faces need protein. Vegetarians can eat open-faced, but few vegans can. Not that vegans don't have protein components of their diet - they just aren't that creative. Animal protein generally reigns over plant protein in terms of open-faced needs. When was the last time a tofu melt got your Pavlov going?

An open-faced dish must have a mess factor. Sauce, cheese (which, yes vegetarians, can serve a dual purpose as animal protein in some cases), relish, gravy, you name it; if it's on there in enough quantity to slip out of a standard sandwich, it's mess factor. Quantity is key. Open-faced cuisine is not light on the mess factor. Unless you're Norwegian. In some cases, such as Welsh rarebit, mess factor and protein are combined into one glorious component.

Another hallmark of open-faced cuisine is that it is built on the plate upon which it is served. Open-faced food is not made in one vessel and then transferred gingerly to another. There are no points for plating. Of course components can be made in different pots, pans, bowls etcetera, but one does not assemble open-faced cuisine anywhere but on the plate upon which it is delivered. It is this plate where open-faced becomes open-faced. Melts are a possible exception, though they are always better when some of the mess factor is burned onto the plate it is served on.

Nachos for the steak and potato set

Super Fries
a.k.a. Carne Asada Fries

This beauty combines two of my favorite things: Nachos and Potatoes (preferably deep-fried potatoes). It's as simple as you might imagine. Prepare yourself for the typical Super Nacho toppings (Cheese, Salsa Fresca, Guacamole, Sour Cream, Cilantro and Carne Asada) but instead of chips, french fries.

Don't get me wrong, Nachos hold a dear dear place in my heart, these exceed Nachos in a couple of ways

First, because... well, it's potatoes! with nacho toppings!

and Second, there is no confusion as to the necessity of utensils. JW and I typically use a hybrid approach when setting into a styrofoam box of super nachos. Starting manually, and using our years of experience, we manipulate corn chips to put together the perfect bite. Towards the bottom of the box however, things get sloppy. We're not animals! We bring out the forks.

With the super fries... well, there is something about the simplicity of pulling that fork out right away. None of the anxiety associated with deciding when to switch strategies...

These babies are available at Los Betos and Nico's and probably any other Mexican Drive-Thru in Tucson.

Coming up: EXTREME TOTS and Home Made Plates.

Benedicts

Potato benedict and its mutant cousin Country Benedict

To me, eggs benedict is not one of the high points in the evolution of open-faced cuisine. They remind me of linen tablecloths and sunny Sundays: they're Mother's Day food. Sit down at a diner bar and order one of these and see how the guy next to you moves a stool or two over.

But I've found a place where the mutant benedict thrives: Broadway Pancake House in Brookfield, IL.

The Dr. Moreaus at BPH have concocted a number of benedicts that are not out of their element at the diner bar.

The Country Benedict - biscuits, fat juicy sausage patties, poached eggs and country gravy.

The Potato Benedict - potato pancakes, bacon, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.

Nearly everything on the menu at BPH is listed with 2 eggs. Nearly everything served comes with 4.

File Under: Open-Faced EXTREME

I present for your consideration:

The HAYSTACK with eggs.

This dish is served at “The Grill” in downtown Tucson; a 24 hour diner with a bar attached.

The Haystack is the closest thing I’ve seen to the garbage plate outside of Rochester, NY.

The Haystack is a bed of French fries with a thick burger patty laid over the top, all held together by country gravy. Eggs are optional, but I went for it since this will probably be the last time I go to the Grill in my time here.

The best thing about the Haystack? The boundary between the burger and the fries gets filled up with country gravy, such that the fries start to dissolve in beefy grease and gravy. It tastes like America in there.