SF Street Food Fest 2011

I heart street food, or as SF's La Cocina would say, "I Cart Street Food". Street food is casual, no-fuss, portable, yummy, and (usually) budget-friendly.

Street food has become trendy in the past few years, especially with the rise of the gourmet fusion food trucks...you know, the ones on Twitter and Facebook....who may or may not be redefining the idea of ethnic food by adding kimchi or curry or brown rice or bacon or cheese...and deep frying it. I appreciate and celebrate all this inventiveness, and SF did too, with its annual Street Food Festival in late August, organized by La Cocina.

Spanning four blocks on Folsom Street in the Mission, with over 75 booths and food carts, it was one hell of a block party. Oh the crowds, oh the humanity, oh the food. See http://www.sfstreetfoodfest.com/list.php for an idea of the food purveyors and the yumminess they purveyed.

I stopped by in the morning and stayed for a couple of hours, making some very tortured decisions on what to try. Here's what I finally decided on, based on appetite and length of the line:

Biscuits and Gravy from 15 Romolo, a bar in North Beach. I fancy myself a biscuit connoisseur (graduating from KFC to Popeye's and beyond...) so I started with this. Two flaky biscuits topped with rich white gravy and spiced liberally with red pepper. It was good, but quite spicy. Thankfully Osha Thai and their killer Thai Iced Coffee was a couple of trucks down.

Takoyaki from Nombe, an Izakaya in the Mission. Okay, I adore takoyaki, the pillowy octopus stuffed balls of dough that are the epitome of street food in Osaka. So the second I saw this on the list, I made sure to stop by. The line was effin long. I waited a good 20 minutes in the bright sun (of course SF had to choose that day to have its UV rays on full power). I was annoyed by having to shift incessantly to allow people to pass (why do peeps gravitate to my section in the line to pass? Do I look like a pushover? Oh yeah, I guess I do.) I was this close to saying fuku-yuu to the line when one of the guys from Nombe popped out with a small dish of takoyaki. He was apologizing for the wait and offering samples. Evidently their takoyaki machine can only crank out so many balls in 8 minutes. (Sudden flashback of Xiao Long Bao trauma in Shanghai.) Peeps in line were hesitant to take a takoyaki from the dude. Screw politeness -- it was eat or not eat. And I was eatin'. First dibs, baby. And it was effin good, with gooey cheese (cheese!!!) inside amidst chewy bits of octopus. Awesome. I was staying in line, dammit.

Beef Piroshki from Anda Piroshki. As a child, I used to love those greasy frozen piroshki. I forget which company made them, but the wrappers were blue for beef and potato, and bright orange for beef and cheese. Hot and greasy and nuked in under 2 minutes, perfect afterschool snack to nosh on while watching She-Ra. This childhood food memory was lost until a few weeks ago, when a friend mentioned the word piroshki in the context of...I forget. I just remember the piroshki. And that I wanted one. Now. So yeah, I had to try one at the fest. It was baked, not fried, which I thought would be a strike against it, but actually, it was lovely. Flaky pastry and hearty, flavorful filling. Really excellent, and a bargain at $3.

Sweet Potato Pie Waffle from Pinx, a catering company from the East Bay. Oh damn, when I saw this, I knew I had to have it. I dunno how they did it, but they managed to make a crispy waffle taste like sweet potato pie. And the bourbon caramel sauce and whipped cream didn't hurt either. Really good....and I was devastated to find out they don't have a retail location or truck...yet. But when they do, I will be going back for another fix.

Chicharrones from 4505 Meats. Okay, I was stuffed at this point, but I still had a couple of passport bucks left, so I bought a bag of these infamous crunchies to snack on at home. I've been meaning to try 'em for a while. Holy hell. Why did I wait so long? They are light and crunchy and salty and sweet. They melt in your mouth. Pork fat, spices, magic. Melting in your mouth. I snarfed that bag down in two minutes, and flipped the bag inside out to get at any leftover bits. It was quite gluttonously sad and undignified. Probably would have done the same even outside the privacy of home.

All, in all, I thought the event was wonderful. Lots of really good restaurants showed up, giving peeps a taste of the genius behind each for just a few bucks. Most items started at $3, and usually topped off at $8. I wish I had an extra stomach to spare, because I would have loved to try a bunch of other things. I hate crowds, but ultimately, dodging the hordes of peeps was worth it for the excellent eats.

Conwoocious Cook...

I had the oddest desire to make Chicken Tikka Masala after having Indian takeout a couple of weeks ago, so I went online and typed "Idiot-Proof Chicken Masala" to see what would pop up. I perused, and rejected, several recipes that required marinating the chicken (I said idiot-proof, dammit). I finally ended up trying this recipe for "Murgh Tikka Masala", since it seemed the easiest. See: http://www.whats4eats.com/poultry/murgh-tikka-masala-recipe

Yeah, it's not traditional, but it seemed pretty straightforward. The recipe made a HUGE pot, about 6 times the amount I ordered from the takeout place. (I measured this by actually storing my tikka masala in identical plastic containers that the takeout comes in...yeah I do takeout a lot and I hoard those containers like they were gold -- or chocolate-dipped bacon.)

But anyway...to the cooking. It's not a super easy recipe, since there are lots of things to prep (chopping onion, chopping tomato, cutting chicken - icky slimy yuck), but a food processor helped greatly. Not so much with the chicken, but with the other stuff, heck yeah.

I pretty much kept to the recipe, though I did add a cup of food-processed spinach in an attempt to add more veg to my diet, and the fresh tomatoes I used looked a little anemic -- they tasted fine, but they weren't super red. I kept tasting the dish during the simmering process (after the chicken was fully cooked, of course -- I ain't a complete cooking dunce!), and it just lacked punch...you should have seen me maniacally shaking the different spices and seasoning into the pot in an attempt to give it some pep.

After I added the yogurt at the end, it was still lacking something...the buttery, creaminess that the takeout had. Ooops. I used nonfat yogurt...and not a drop of cream . I was so desperate, I was ready to drop in a hunk of buttah. But as I was trying to figure out how much to add (Whole stick! Half a stick! Whole! Half!), the dish just kind of came together. Like magic.

The dish tasted way different than the takeout (hell, it looks waaaaay different...and way different from the pic in the recipe, too!). It was much less creamy, and more tangy, but it tasted right. While I was having my internal butter debate, the flavors melded and compromised. I quite enjoyed the dish, both with naan, and over rice, and for the cost of the chicken and some spices (I had to pick up turmeric and garam masala) I ended up with a pretty decent dish that lasted quite a few meals. And like takeout, this tikka masala actually tasted better the next day...and the day after...So the moral of this story is: Wait a bit, let things stew, and things may come together just right in the end.

Here's a pic of one of my containers of tikka masala. It kinda looks like it could be takeout, yeah? Sad, but my culinary goal is to make food that looks like takeout.