When I started this blog it was really my intention to rotate around the world's recipes rather than concentrate on the US. After all, most of the world's great street food is in Asia. If pressed I could concentrate on Mumbai or Singapore alone and never get bored.
Thing is, Austin is seeing a strange surge in the popularity of trailer food. Its hard to really understand where this is coming from. Around the corner, a car "repair and sales" lot transformed into a collection of trailers and some nice shaded benches. Four blocks from the "Trailer Park", a church has allowed another cluster of trailers to form in an unused parking lot. Today there are 7 different trailers in the church parking lot:
- The Mighty Cone - a strange attempt by a fantastic restaurant to make faux tacos?
- Rappolo's pizza - terrible pizza, displayed at an angle!
- Armadillo coffee - standard coffee offerings.
- Vaquero Cocina - this one is new. Seems to concentrate on smoked sides. Things would be grand if this turns out to be good.
- Crepes & Paninis - pressed sandwiches and crepes. Not as popular as the crepe trailer about a mile away.
- Cornucopia - flavored popcorn.
- Hey Cupcake - this was the first trailer. Very cool idea - cupcakes and ice cream.
Seems like a good idea to touch on some of the better offerings before the inevitable clampdown from the folks at City Hall. I sincerely hope they start with Rappolo's. The only way to make the crap pizza experience worse is to add plasma TV's blaring truly awful music videos.
Cornucopia delivers the obvious and provides an alternative to kettle corn trailers, a regular at street fairs. Kettle corn is an addictive substance that draws huge crowds when out in the open. It comes in large bags that are normally inhaled while avoiding face painting. The downside of making kettle corn at home is the potential to light your kitchen on fire. The corn is made in a huge pot over a serious gas flame. While I have never seen it, it can't be hard to ignite the oil.
This is a simple alternative that I make on a regular basis. Eventually I want to spend the time to understand a safe way to make kettle corn at home.
Fireman's Kettle Corn
- 1/3 cup organic coconut oil
- 1 cup popcorn
- 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Throw a couple kernels of popcorn in the oil.
- When the kernels pop, throw the rest of the popcorn in the pot, cover, and shake around a bit.
- When the kernels stop popping, remove from heat and pour the popcorn into a paper bag.
- Melt the butter and whisk in the sugar and salt.
- Pour the butter mixture over the popcorn in thirds, shaking the bag each time.
- Put the popcorn into a casserole dish and heat in the oven for 10 minutes.