The Impatient Chef Traveling Survival Tip: Coffee Pot Hot Dogs

 

A Dog in Every Pot

The Impatient Chef occasionally travels (and will again once the pandemic is over), and food on the road can be difficult if a restaurant for every meal is financially out of the question.  Long time readers of this blog know that The Impatient Chef is not a food snob, but does like finer foods when available.  When not available, what will fill the stomach can be just what the doctor held his/her nose and ordered.  

In that vein, The Impatient Chef was traveling across the country in 2014 in a car full of camera equipment and a cooler filled with food that came along because A) it would have spoiled if left behind, or B) it would be convenient.  Once such convenience was a pack of Trader Joe's hot dogs.  The trip was done on a tight budget, so "economy" was the word when booking rooms.  Desperation being the stepmother of innovation, thinking outside of the wrapper is a good skill to have.  

One innovation that still makes The Impatient Chef and wife chuckle is the Coffee pot hot dog.  After arriving to a hotel room very late and very hungry, we put out heads together, and rummaged through the cooler, emerging with a pack of hot dogs, cheddar cheese, and some mustard, while eyeing the drip coffee pot menacingly.  

The process was simple.   Fill the pot with water, and pour it into the coffee maker's reservoir.  Add hot dogs to the pot.  Turn on the pot.  It is good form to not allow any of the hot dogs to burn onto the bottom of the pot.  Once the water has dripped into the pot, let it sit for about 5-10 minutes, and serve.  

IMPORTANT!  Clean the pot afterward.  Be a considerate traveler, and make it nice for the next person.

Thanks for looking!

--The Impatient Chef  

The Impatient Chef Comes Out of Hiding with a Gin Review

The Impatient Chef has been on a barely deserved vacation, and has not posted anything in over two months.  So, you might ask, why now?  

Well, why not?

The real reason is that The Impatient Chef forgot his gin while traveling.  The Impatient Chef's alter ego, Gary Quay, moonlights as a photographer, and he was on Washington's Key Peninsula to hang an exhibit, and wanted a martini in the hotel to end the evening (hence the crappy iPhone pic above).  It just so happens that a distillery is a few doors up.

The distillery is called Heritage Distilling  Co.  It hails from Eugene, Oregon, but has a tasting room in Gig Harbor, Washington.  I stopped by to see which gin would work for my martini.  This review will be in two parts: 1)  Tasting notes, and 2) How good is the martini.  Sometimes a gin tastes really good neat (warm from the bottle), but makes a horrible martini.  Sometimes the opposite is true.  

Come on this journey with me from the tasting room to the cocktail glass.  

I tasted two gins.  The first is called Batch 12.  

Tasting notes:

Clean, mild juniper taste, not heavy on botanicals. It has a bright taste similar to London Dry Gins like Bombay and Plymouth, but slightly dirtier (not a bad thing).  My guess is that the juniper is added before distilling, or filtering removes some of the flavor.

The second is Elk Rider.

Tasting notes:  

Clean, heavier juniper taste, peppery flavor, and a darker complexion.  It has a slightly yellow color, usually meaning that juniper is added after distilling, and less is filtered out.  It's similar to London Dry gins like Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire.

I am not afraid of juniper, so I bought the Elk Rider.  

How Good is The Martini:

3 olives, 1/4 oz vermouth, and gin.  Stirred, not shaken, like martinis are supposed to be made.  The drink turned mildly cloudy.  The only other gin that I am aware of acts that way is Joe Penney's Gin from McMennamin's Edgefield Distillery.  That gin revolutionized my taste for gin, and the martini.  McMannamin's calls it an "American Dry" gin.  There is a similar gin style called the "Portland Dry", epitomized by New Deal Distillery's Gin 33, that put Portland, Oregon on the map for gins.  Elk Rider in a dry martini is a cross between Joe Penney's and Gin 33.  The Impatient Chef suggests you buy a bottle of each.  

Martini tasting notes: 

Notes of citrus, and a flavor that makes a nod toward genever gins, but without the astringent sourness that makes them unpalatable in a martini.  It's unusual, but delicious.  In the martini, it was nothing like a London Dry.  The Impatient Chef finds this mildly amusing.  

Conclusion:

If you participate in the heresy that is the vodka martini, or prefer lighter gins like New Amsterdam, you will hate this gin.  The Impatient Chef is okay with that, and loves this gin.  

This gin would work in the Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail.