Food Notes: 5/6
Hot dog bun garlic bread, food coloring, spaghetti machines, and more
We celebrated our four-year-old’s birthday with a party in the park this weekend. Then we had to deal with the leftovers.
Cooper Park is a neglected little piece of green space on the edge of industrial East Williamsburg. The grass is rarely cut. The playground is well-worn. But at least you can barbecue.
We arranged for a permit, a requirement for large gatherings in the park. But unlike suburban park systems, permits don’t come with reservations, just permission. There’s no way to guarantee a table or a grill, and hypothetically, the parks department can deny you the right to set up a party.
My wife sent in the $25, but a week later still hadn’t heard back from Parks. We took our chances and sent out the invitation anyway.
A week later, the permit was finally approved with a long list of caveats including a ban on pony rides, petting zoos, and bounce houses. None of these were ever a consideration. However, bounce house requests must be popular enough that the Park’s email dedicated several paragraphs to explain why they were banned, including a link to a CNN video (which is no longer available) of bounce houses blowing away.
We lucked out. The forecasted rain held off and the sun even came out. We arrived at the park and grabbed two picnic tables, set out our table cloths, and had twenty pre-school age children, their parents, our parents, and a bunch of middle-aged friends in the park. We served the kids pizza, delivered from nearby Tony’s Pizza, and I grilled hot dogs and burgers for the adults.
The thing with planning barbecues is that it can be a challenge to gauge how many hot dogs, hamburgers, and buns are needed. This is especially true since we also had pizza. It turns out, adults eat a lot less grilled meat than I thought they would.
I stuck a box of burgers back in our freezer, and one package of hot dogs was never opened. We’ll be grilling on those all summer long. But what to do about the buns?
The first thing that came to mind was making garlic bread. My wife wanted to make a chickpea soup, so I offered to turn a pack of buns into fresh-made garlic bread. I browsed a few recipes online, but every recipe I looked at suggested using an air fryer, so I decided to make it up as I went.
In the spirit of using up old ingredients, I found a block of Romano cheese, which is saltier than parmigiana. The cheese also stands up better to the other strong flavors like garlic and hot pepper.
I mixed up my ingredients and slathered the buns together and started baking them at 400° F but soon found this was too hot. They were starting brown without become crispy, so I lowered the initial temperature to 350°. It all worked out. The buttery, garlicky, salty, cheesy bread was the perfect accoutrement to the soup.
Garlicky Hot Dog Bun Toast
Ingredients
6 to 8 of extra hot dog buns
1 stick butter
1 whole bulb of garlic
Pecorino Romano
Pinch of crushed red pepper
Dash of garlic powder
Dash of parsley
Instructions
Soften the butter, but don’t liquify it
Finely dice the garlic
Shred the cheese
Combine garlic, cheese, and seasoning into the butter
Whip it, whip it good
Open the hot dog rolls and smear spoonful of butter on the open side
Spread a little butter on the bottom and place face up
Bake at 350° for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown; rotate the tray in the oven to prevent toast from burning.
That’s one bag of hot dog rolls down. Stay tuned on how we figure out how to use the rest of the buns later this week…
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