The Atomic California Dog.

Here at the farm, we do more cooking than “assembling” of dishes. In other words, if we can make something ourselves, we usually do, particularly if we can do it better than store-bought. However, if a local purveyor makes it better, we are happy to support their business, we just want our food to taste good. And since it has been extremely hot (like “Africa hot”, to borrow from Neil Simon) we are trying to minimize our cooking time and are happy to do some “assembly”.

Along the way, we created a dawg dish we really, really like- enough to share, and certainly a good 4th of July recipe. We call it the Atomic California Dog. Why? Well, it has a bunch of California-made sauces and condiments and they are spicy…very, very spicy. But somehow, when you are already sweating when standing still, the spice seems to work. And beyond the pure heat, we have some very good flavors to work with.

The Atomic California Dog combines a quality hot dog (try a local source, although Hebrew-National always work), a traditional bun (local), Dijon-style mustard (East Bay), sauerkraut (local, see below), kimchi (local, see below), Sriracha (SoCal) and Pepper Plant sauce (Gilroy). What you get is sweet, savory flavors from the dog and bun and then acidity from the mustard and kraut followed by layers of spice (and funk) from the kimchi, Sriracha and Pepper sauce. Textures? Soft bun, snap from the dog and crunch from the kimchi and kraut. Complete. Dish. Even if it is “just” a hot dog. And sometimes a hot dog is just a hot dog.

And we will give a quick shout out to the fermentos at Wildbrine who made the kraut and kimchi we used. We don’t know them, but we tried their stuff, and it is very good. Local fermenting and pickling operations are popping up all over the country and these products are often incredibly tasty. So if you have time or opportunity, try some locally fermented products- you may be in for a pleasant surprise.

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