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food trucks

Chattanooga, TN Food Trucks: Famous Nater’s, taco sherpa, Monkey Town Donuts, & Pure Sodaworks

April 21, 2012

    So. I recently discovered the burgeoning food truck scene in Chattanooga. My first thought was along the lines of: “Chattanooga has food trucks?! Since when…? This is unmitigated awesomeness.” I’ve pined for food trucks in Chattanooga ever since I spent some time in Portland, OR living off its thriving food truck scene back in 2008. These mobile kitchens, serving creative, fresh food, add to the vibrancy & texture of a city. They make downtown positively tapestry like. Like memories of an ice cream truck’s lilting calliope & the hot salty sugar smell of carnivals and parades, food trucks are festive. The smells of donuts frying, slow cooked pork, burgers on a grill, spicy Korean BBQ, and Argentinian empanadas all permeated downtown on Friday as the food trucks congregated at Miller Plaza for the Fresh On Friday market, where you can also buy yourself a meticulous, technicolor bouquet for $10, get a cake pop, and an organic soda flavored with everything from jalapeño to hibiscus to lavender.         Snagged by the promise of a guilt free donut, I tried Monkey Town Donuts last summer at the Chattanooga Market. Wheat donuts cooked in soybean oil, they have only 180 calories and 2.5 grams of fat per half dozen serving. They tastes like this is an evil lie, but it isn’t. It’s true. They are revelatory donuts (in so far as a donut can be revelatory, which, you may not know, is quite far). I often lamented their

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Julia Child’s Soufflé Au Fromage: Local Dairy & Spring Asparagus Salad

April 17, 2012

As I see it, fresh eggs deserve a light touch so that they can shine, thus I turned to my copy of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I”, bequeathed to me along with Volume II by my mother, for her soufflé au fromage recipe. People are frightened of soufflés, it seems. I must admit, I’ve a touch of the fear myself, despite having made my fair share. I reason that they are quite prosaic & provincial, something French mother’s whip up for dinner, and therefore I needn’t fear them. But, like the much maligned macaronage, it is the step of folding in the whipped egg whites that causes people the most trouble and consternation. The key is just that: folding not stirring. Child says that the entire folding process should take no longer than a minute.   While I read cookbooks voraciously, it’s actually rare that I open a cookbook to actually cook out of these days. I, more often than not, do not use recipes (or use my own), and when I do consult recipes it’s often a dizzying array of recipes collected from the vast archives of the internet. Opening the book was comforting, as is opening most old books. It’s the same visceral experience of listening to an album on vinyl: sensual, tactile, grounding… humanizing, even. The yellowing pages, like the perfect imperfections of a record’s crackles and pops, and Child’s clear, orderly instructions were just what I needed to calm any lingering

summer thyme

perfect buttermilk biscuits, scrambled eggs with ricotta & thyme, and black forest bacon: supfast!

April 14, 2012

    fresh thyme from the front porch     ricotta scrambled eggs mise en scene: 6 eggs from Fall Creek Farms, salt & pepper to taste, 1/4 cup raw milk, 1/2 cup whole milk ricotta, fresh thyme, 1 T butter     Supfast! Breakfast for supper. The bacon looks burnt. It isn’t. Black forest bacon gets rad like that. Recipes below.   L’oeuf. Huevos. Ovos. Ei. Ouvo. Eggs. They are important, and I purchase an inordinate amount each week from the farmer’s market. They are abundant, cheap, and a great source of protein. Our household of two easily goes through two dozen eggs a week. In our defense, I have a mean baking addiction and am in the habit of doling out baked goods to whomever crosses my path. But really, I just adore eggs. They are sensual: the velvety yolk of a pierced poached egg over grilled asparagus or eggs benedict, fried eggs over easy on a ham sandwich, a soft boiled egg with toast soldiers.The language of eggs is it’s own kind of poetics: albumen, meringue, quail, ovos moles, frisée au lardon, hollandaise, deviled, bibimbap, globular, pickled, huevos rancheros, custard, soufflé, eggnog, runny, emulsion, sunny…This veritable egg poem runs through my mind, and I think of the egg as a metaphor: as life, as creation, as frailty. One of the most common yet sumptuous ingredients, it is their humility, simplicity, transformative properties, and ubiquity that I find fascinating. From meringue to mayonnaise to my father’s deviled eggs,

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{Local Milk}: A Chattanooga, TN Food Blog

April 12, 2012

our first jar of raw cow’s milk from Fall Creek Farms   rainbow chard from Fall Creek Farms   Fresh flowers & herbs from Alexanna Farms in Wildwood, GA. The past couple of weeks she’s had a variety of nettles, sorrel, and purple & green asparagus… all quite coveted. And her chicken eggs are some of my favorites, the yolks are rich & orange, fresh enough to easily poach. locavore: one who eats food grown locally whenever possible The title {local milk} was inspired by a new found love of both raw milk and Chattanooga. Milk is that basic building block of mammalian life: our first source of nutrients as infants. Milk is our nutritional cradle, a primal food. It’s creamy, porcelain, and sweet with myriad permutations: butter, cream, kefir, yogurt, ice cream, and cheeses. Chattanooga, like milk, is what I was born and raised on, and I believe it is proving that its potential for change is as abundant.   sustainable meat & produce at the Main St. Market       free range eggs from Fall Creek Farms Spring radishes. Pair with butter (local & raw = superlative), fresh bread, and sea salt for a traditional French snack that makes for a satisfying lunch. It sounds deceptively simple, but I cannot urge you strongly enough to try it; the spicy crunch of radishes combined with unctuous butter, bright salt, and a chewy, crusty bread is some sort of alchemy.   Main St. Market, Wednesdays 4-6; Chattanooga, TN   {local milk} is about

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