Street Food Diaries

346 Pages·2014·15.65 MB·English

STUFF IN BUNS

STUFF THAT’S OPEN-FACED

STUFF THAT MAKES YOU SWEAT

PRETTY FLY FOR A FRY GUY

MEAT-ERMISSION

I LOVE BACON

STUFF ON STICKS

STUFF THAT’S IN BETWEEN BREAKFAST AND LUNCH (YA BRUNCH!)

STUFF IN BOWLS AND BOXES

INDEX

FALL IN LOVE WITH FEEDING PEOPLE

INTRODUCTION

I remember being a little boy and watching my nonno cook. Sometimes putting a
meal together was a two- or three-hour process. Tomato sauce was made every
fall in his garage and stored in mason jars in the basement. I’m talking a year’s
worth of sauce. Bread was made from scratch every week. It was normal to see
fresh pasta hung from every apparatus in the spare bedroom. I remember
watching all of this thinking this was how you cooked food. This is how people
eat all the time.

I remember certain times I wouldn’t want to finish something on my plate. He

would always say to me, “Matteo, mangia … that’s the best part.” Somehow the
part I left was always the best part. Sometimes I just wouldn’t eat things to see if
that would be the new best part. But he was right. It was the best part. It was all
the best part. All food handmade with love was and is the best part.

When I was growing up, I had no desire to go to culinary school and model my

technique on things done by some French chef who lived in the 1500s and who I
had never met before (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it wasn’t for
me). I wanted to create something from scratch, just like my nonno had taught me,
and I wanted the meals that I created for other people to be the very thing that
defined me, that made me who I was.

Street food is as much about roots and stories as it is about recipes and

ingredients. The act of cooking isn’t about technical skill, but about falling in
love with feeding people.

The whole street food movement really does epitomize this. It’s the perfect

combination of home-cooked meals and homemade stories. It can be the hotdog
empire that started off as a cart 90 years earlier. It can be a family moving to a
new part of the world and bringing with them a piece of their past. It can be a
little park where people meet by the hundreds around 8 a.m. and buy you out of
every last ounce of BBQ you smoked. It can be a kid from Toronto (cough,
cough) who quit his cubicle job to start a pop-up, a food truck, a restaurant … a
street food revolution.

Street food is my life. It’s how I connect with food, and in turn connect with

people through food. When I first came up with the idea for Fidel Gastro’s, my
only aim was to open up a sandwich shop. That was my end goal. Open up one
shop. It was my now business partner and girlfriend, Ky, who insisted I think
bigger. Very quickly, though, thinking bigger ultimately became smaller in reality.
I had a meeting with the bank, and once they discovered I had no experience and
no money they very quickly told me I had no business. I was crushed. To the point
where I didn’t even want to hear the word sandwich. And then something
happened. I stopped working toward something finite and just started cooking
again.

I was at a party with some friends, and instead of ordering in food, a bunch of

them asked me to cook. So I did. But I didn’t just cook, I brought some energy and
fun to it. To the point where cooking food at the party was a part of the party, just
like music, shots of tequila … and then boom! The next night I wrote on a piece
of paper “Dinner with Fidel Gastro.” That was the idea. That was the business.
Create an experience that people wanted. When I finally launched it, it
materialized as a pop-up. At that point, a door with walls and washrooms was
irrelevant. People had to want to experience Fidel Gastro’s and hear the story in
addition to eating the food.

Fast-forward to three years later. Pop-up became food truck became restaurant

became catering company became reality television became this cookbook —
and on and on and on and on. Ky was right, Fidel Gastro’s wasn’t about opening
up a sandwich place, it was about connecting with people through fun food and
taking that principle as far as it can go.

Creating this cookbook has been a journey for both me and my partner, Kyla

(Ky) Zanardi, who is also the book’s photographer. She would capture moments
with street food vendors and restaurant chefs, even pit masters, while I would
scribble notes down on a napkin … the same one that had sauce on it. Together
we chronicled food stories and the recipes they inspired. This is a book about the
people we met, the stories we heard, and the food we ate across North America’s
incredibly close street food community. Now, although some of the stories aren’t
necessarily from street food vendors, their food still inspired us to create street
food for this book. They all represent fun food like bacon and deep-fried things,
but they also make telling a story through a meal that much easier. They are the
core of street food’s roots — inspired by others and created to bring people
together by sharing a meal.

I never wanted to just write a cookbook. Neither did Ky. So we didn’t. We

haven’t given you cookie-cutter recipes and fluffy over-exposed photos of staged,
plastic food. This is a cookbook about street food. It’s gritty and unapologetic. I
hope you change things around and make each recipe your own. I want you to get
creative with some of these recipes. Don’t feel you have to follow my
instructions to the letter, instead see them as a guide to street food creativity.

I hope this cookbook inspires you to travel across North America or the world

or your own city, to eat amazing street food and be inspired by it as well. I hope
you look at these recipes and say, “Ya, I love that, but what if we did this …” I
hope you embrace street food for what it is: an opportunity to tell someone a bit
about yourself by the food you make.

This is a cookbook inspired by stories, smells, that perfect dish, something

clever written on a chalkboard, a loved one, a desire to be more than just a food
trucker or restaurateur. Ultimately, inspired by everything and anything.

VIVA LA STREET FOOD REVOLUCIÓN

MATT BASILE

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT PUTTING STUFF IN BUNS THAT JUST
EPITOMIZES STREET FOOD FOR ME. IT’S MOBILE, IT’S FUN, AND IT’S
NOT REALLY SPECIFIC TO ONE TYPE OF CULTURE. IF YOU THINK
ABOUT IT, SAYING YOU LIKE SANDWICHES OR BURGERS IS KIND OF
LIKE SAYING YOU LIKE TV. I MEAN, THAT’S JUST SO BROAD. THERE
ARE SO MANY GENRES AND SUB-GENRES OF FOODS THAT GO IN
BUNS, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO JUST LABEL IT SO ARBITRARILY. I
MEAN,
YOU
CAN
HAVE
VIETNAMESE
SUBS,
JAPANESE

INTERPRETATIONS OF A 90-YEAR-OLD HOTDOG RECIPE, OR YOUR
FAVORITE MEAL REMIXED TO FIT IN A BUN. THE OPTIONS REALLY
ARE ENDLESS WHEN IT COMES TO PUTTING STUFF IN BUNS.

STUFF IN BUNS WAS MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT BREAKING INTO THE
WORLD OF STREET FOOD. IT WASN’T ABOUT JUST MAKING A
GENERIC SANDWICH THAT PEOPLE HAD SEEN A MILLION TIMES
BEFORE, BUT INSTEAD ABOUT TAKING UNIQUE APPROACHES TO
CLASSIC DISHES AND STUFFING THEM INTO BUNS. THE MEAT, THE
BREAD, THE TOPPINGS, AND THE SAUCES ARE ALL EQUALLY
IMPORTANT TO MAKING SURE THE “BUNNED” VISION IS COMPLETE –
AND DESPITE IT COMING UNDER THE UMBRELLA OF “STREET FOOD,”
THESE STUFF IN BUN CREATIONS ARE THE RESULT OF A TRUE
CULINARY PROCESS.

STUFF IN BUNS

AMERICANA BURGER

CHIMICHURRI STEAK SANDWICH

KOREAN FRITA

SUGO BURGER

SWEET ’N’ SOUR BEEF STEAK SANDWICHES

CUBAN SANDWICH

PORK BELLY PO’BOY

PORK ’N’ PEPPA DLP

LAMBAPEÑO BURGER

BUFFALO CHICKEN PATTY MELT

OLÉ MOLÉ GUACAMOLE CHICKEN SANDWICH

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIE FISH & CHIPS SANDWICH

TEMPURA-FRIED CONEY ISLAND DAWG

BANH MI SHRIMP

LA ROMANA

AMERICANA BURGER

SERVES 4

A GREAT BURGER GOES A LONG WAY. I MEAN, IF YOU CAN MAKE A
STANDOUT BURGER, THEN PEOPLE RESPECT YOUR CULINARY
ABILITIES A LITTLE MORE. IF YOU HAVE TO MAKE JUST ONE KIND OF
BURGER, MAKE THIS ONE.

2 lb (1 kg) coarse ground chuck (ground beef)

1 tablespoon (15 mL) kosher salt

1 tablespoon (15 mL) black pepper

1 tablespoon (15 mL) smoked paprika

1 Roma tomato

1 heart romaine lettuce

4 slices extra-thick-cut bacon

1 tablespoon (15 mL) unsalted butter

4 eggs

4 burger buns

4 slices processed American cheese

THE MEAT

In a big bowl, mix the ground beef with the salt, pepper, and paprika. Make sure the
spices have been mixed really well into the meat so that there aren’t any little pockets
of them hiding behind a nice chunk of fat. Form the meat into four evenly sized patties,
but instead of making them incredibly thick, try flattening them a little so they appear
much wider than thicker. The beef patty is less likely to cook unevenly and will
actually turn out juicier because you’re not constantly flipping it and not pressing it
down while it’s cooking. A wise burger man once told me that pressing is for pants,
not burgers.

THE TOPPINGS

Thinly slice the tomato and chiffonade the romaine lettuce. “Chiffonade” is a very
fancy term for cutting the lettuce so thin that it looks like it was shredded.

There are two ways to prepare the bacon: either cook it in a skillet over high heat for
approximately 4 minutes per side or place it on a grill pan and cook it in the oven at
350°F (180°C) for 7 minutes per side. Take the bacon to the next level by basting it
with honey while it’s cooking, and then hit it with bourbon to deglaze the pan. Believe

it or not, I learned this technique while at university — not culinary school — but
literally at university, hungover from the night before. The thick-cut bacon is already
cured, so now you’re just trying to bring out the crispiness of the fatty piece of meat.

A GREAT BURGER GOES A LONG WAY

BUILDING THE BURGER

Heat the butter in a grill pan or skillet over high heat. Place the meat patties in it, and
sear the burgers for approximately 2 minutes per side. Turn down the heat to medium-
low, and cook the burgers for approximately 4 minutes per side.

In a separate, nonstick pan, either cook one egg at a time or find a pan that’s big
enough to cook multiple eggs. Personally I would never cook more than two or three
eggs in one pan. Cook the eggs, sunny-side up, over medium heat for approximately 5
minutes. If you like your egg yolks a little less runny, over-easy is the way to go. If you
don’t like a runny yolk, scrap the egg altogether as this yolk is going to get all over the
burger.

Place the cooked bacon on the bun bottom. Top with a burger, followed by a slice of
cheese, then a fried egg, and then some lettuce and tomato slices. Press the bun top
down to complete the delicious burger. People often ask me why I use American
cheese for burgers. To be honest, I find that nothing melts over hot ground beef quite
like processed cheese. Normally I don’t use any sauce for this burger because that
ooey-gooey egg yolk becomes sauce the very second you press that top bun down on
your Americana burger.