The Mighty Cone

Street fair and festival foods are certainly a favorite category. You don't need utensils, food items are generally pretty easy to eat, and deep fried items are certainly in abundance. Mmmmm.....how can you go wrong?! One of the newest trailers to hit Austin was born at the Austin Music Festival by the wild game enthusiasts at Hudson's on the Bend. What apparently was a huge hit for Hudson's at the hot and dusty ACL is now a "permanent" fixture, and not just for one weekend in September. The Mighty Cone has now reared its pointy little head.

Situated on our hip South Congress Ave (SoCo), The Mighty Cone is in the same lot (someday to become high end apartments or will the economy kill that plan?) with Hey Cupcake, one of the early entries into Austin's trendy trailer/airstream eateries. They've barely been open a week, but this is the time to get your doors open, as multitudes of hungover SXSW party-goers could use a little fried food to cure what ails them. A report from over the weekend said the line was around the block at lunchtime. My friend and I decided to brave it anyway, heading over on St. Patty's Day. Fortunately, at 11:45 am, we beat any lunch crowd, though we were hardly the only ones there.

As you can see from the menu board, it's not an extensive list of offerings....but from this first taste of it, I'd say what they do, they do well. (But I would expect that from the folks at Hudson's.) I got the Crunchy Chicken Cone, my friend the Deluxe Chicken & Avocado Cone, and we split an order of fries. Their crunchy eats are coated in a cornflake crust with sesame seeds, and fried beautifully, as there was no grease whatsoever. Did I mention tasty? Really tasty. The tortilla-wrapped chicken was very crisp, and served with a cole slaw with a creamy, spicy dressing on it, a nice amount of heat. You can make out the shape of the corn flakes, since they're not totally pulverized. The thin cut fries were also fried to perfection and a bit of chili powder sprinkled over them. The red picnic tables are outfitted with cone holders, a definite necessity. My only complaint is that the slaw slid down to the bottom of the cone, making it a bit hard to eat without a fork....such is life, I suppose. I was totally happy with the chicken, and the chicken-avocado got high marks too.

Saw some sliders being eaten; they too are served in a cone and looked pretty yummy. Didn't see any desserts coming out, but they sound so good, I'll have to return for them -- funnel cake and a wild turtle cone! And as the side of their trailer says: eat at Hudson's for under $10!

No Knead Bread!

A no-kneading multigrain bread! And it's good! A friend had told me of a book that features no-knead bread recipes, and in the February issue of Eating Well magazine, they ran five different recipes from the book, including this multigrain.

I started it late Tuesday evening, and let it rise overnight, for about 15 hours total. (Shoulda taken a picture of the first rise, but I didn't think of it!) You then stir it, put it in a Dutch oven, sprinkle it with additional seeds, slash it, and let it rise for about another 2 hours before baking.


It is a large, very heavy loaf, with a large crumb, and a very chewy crust (did I mist it with too much water when it went into the oven?). When I slice it real thin and toast it, it reminds me of those very dense Scandinavian breads. It's been great with butter, and also with pb & j. I think it would be lovely sandwich bread if I had deli meat or the like at home to put on it! It will take me awhile to go through this loaf....if you want a piece, let me know!

All things pork

The one and only Bacon Explosion. Weighing it at 4 pounds, it's pure pork pleasure with sausage rolled up inside! Not made by me, but it was well-received at my recent pork-inspired pot luck. Mmmmmm.

Karibu Ethiopian

Karibu means "welcome" in Swahili (according to the menu), and this is a welcome addition to the multi-ethnic restaurant scene here. Located about a 1/2 mile east of IH-35 on East 7th and Attayac, Karibu seems to deliver on authentic Ethiopian tastes.

Weekdays, they have a lunch buffet, which is always a fun way to try lots of different things, and this didn't disappoint! From the photo of my plate of food, going more or less clockwise from the top: injera (the burrito-looking bread), fosolia (green beans), tikil gomen (cabbage, in the middle to the left of the rice, alicha wot (beef in a light curry herb sauce), kay wot (beef with onion, garlic, ginger & berbere spices), kik alicha (yellow split peas), kay misir wot (red lentils in a spicy sauce), and something that was just labeled as "Ethiopian bread." Not pictured, are the abesha gomen (collard greens w/ spices), but I did have a bite off someone else's plate. Everything was good, but what I really thought was outstanding (and I went back for more) were both the kay misir wot lentils and the kay wot beef dish. Both really had a nice layer of flavors -- mildly sweet, then flavorful and a touch spicy, those berbere spices at work! The beef particularly has a certain richness to it; the menu says it's cooked with purified butter (ghee?) which may account for that, as well as it's shine, without a greasy feel. Their injera is made of both teff and barley, but apparently one can order ahead of time an all-teff, and hence gluten free, injera. It was a very tender injera, and didn't taste quite as fermented (the dough takes about 3 days to make) as those I have had before.

Now I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Ethiopian food, and I have enjoyed the food of Aster's, both from the farmer's market and their restaurant; it's been a while since I have eaten their food, so I will have to revisit Aster's to compare. I would love to come back to Karibu and try the lamb dish that's on their menu. They had friendly service, and according to their website, live music on Fri and Sat nights. Worth a trip from South Austin to East Austin, for sure!

Cinnamon buns

Half of the programs on the Food Network drive me crazy! But there are a number that I do enjoy, and get some inspiration from. This past week on the Barefoot Contessa, Ina was making a quick version of cinnamon rolls using puff pastry dough. Mmmm!

I decided to make 24 mini rolls, rather than 12 standard. Good idea in theory, but it ended up not being so swift in practice. I overfilled the muffin tins with the brown sugar & butter mixture, and in the course of baking, their cups raneth over, and burning sugar became smoke and filled my kitchen, causing the smoke detectors to go off. Whoops! Well, at least I know they work, seeing how I was in Morocco when the time changed, and didn't install new batteries. Needless to say, the cats did NOT like all the noise, and I still have a couple windows open and ceiling fans going, an hour and some later. At least it's a warm February night....

So if you're inclined to bake, take a look at the recipe. Here's what I did differently. Walnuts instead of pecans and instead of raisins. Added a about 2 tablespoons of mini chocolate chips to the filling. And if I had to do it all over again, I'd use about half to two-thirds of the initial butter & brown sugar that you put in the bottom of the muffin tins (at least for the minis). These baked in about 18 minutes. After the smoke, I turned the oven off and let them sit in there for about 5 minutes.

Yummy! Very nice and sugary/glazed on the outer part, and still very squishy in the middle. Can't really go wrong with a little chocolate. I would put them on a tray before putting them in the oven. Fortunately, I have an oven liner on the bottom rack of my oven, which should make this cleanup process much easier. I would make these again! No yeast, no dough rising. Almost no fuss, no muss!