“Chile” Dogs

While last summer was all about textured soy marinated in Miller High Life, this June grilling season has started off a little more au natural. We wanted to come up with some sort of vegan equivalent to that street vendor staple bell pepper and grilled onion smothered hot dogs wrapped in bacon. It all started with a simple search term: “vegetarian sausage casings.”
To our chagrin, that turned up little more than crazed vegan Internet gossip trying to track down such a product. (Apparently, such casings do exist, but they’re only available to commercial buyers in industrial numbers and the idea of storing 10,000 vegetarian sausage casings was not appealing.) Instead we came up with another idea: use a grilled chile for the casing! And it worked, sort of. For a meaty filling, we mixed up a slow beer-infused onion mushroom and chorizo-spiced stuffing, held together by the magic of risotto. Though starchy for sure, the veggie rice mixture makes for a pillowy hot dog replacement. Experiments to find the perfect stuffing are on-going.

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 white onion
1/2 cup crimini mushrooms
1 cup Arborio rice
1 Tbs. cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup beer (pale ale)
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
2 canned tomatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 lbs. oyster mushrooms
1/2 Tbs. smoked salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 red onion
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar
4 green chiles, Anaheim or Fresno
4 large hot dug buns
1. In a sauce pan, add olive oil and put on medium heat. Finely chop onion and slice mushrooms and add to the oil to sauté, stirring, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the arboro rice and stir for a few minutes to toast.
2. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.
3. While toasting rice, add spices starting with the cumin seeds and fennel seeds so they toast as well. Stir well and continue adding coriander, paprika and cayenne. Now add the beer and continue stirring every 30 seconds. Once beer has completely been absorbed, slowly add vegetable stock in 1/4-cup increments as it absorbs, while stirring. Near the end, add diced canned tomatoes. This should take about 10 minutes.
4. While waiting for risotto to fully cook, roast off your oyster mushrooms. Tear large ones into bite-sized pieces and set them on a pan sprayed lightly with oil. Season with smoked salt and black pepper and roast in oven until deflated and slightly crispy on edges, about 15 minutes.
5. Once risotto rice is sticky and nearly overcooked, remove from heat. In a large bowl, combine roasted oyster mushrooms, chopped red onion, soy sauce and vinegar. Test consistency by making burger-shaped patties. They should hold together well when you toss in the air (careful).

6. Now, fire-roast your chiles to remove the skin. Make an ice bath with 3 cups of water and some ice. Cut off pepper top, remove seeds gently and place pepper on a stovetop burner on high flame. Turn with tongs every minute to evenly black each side, then dunk the charred pepper in ice bath. Wait one minute and then scrape off skin with your fingers. Repeat and your pepper casings are done!
7. Finish by stuffing chiles with mushroom-meat risotto. To ensure they won’t be too big for a hot dog bun, slice off part of the chile: Make a lengthwise cut to on side, stopping short of the point so the pepper is one long rectangle with a tip. Now put your knife down about 1-cm inside the pepper and slice again, removing a 1-cm section, making the pepper smaller. Take a full handful of risotto stuffing, then put half back. With the remaining portion, form a long cylinder in your hands, then plop into the pepper and curl it back into its original shape. Pat gently until the mixture sticks to pepper skin and you have an enclosed package.
8. Spray generously with oil before putting on the grill. Keep sliced fold from opening by gently position with tongs. Grill about 5-7 minutes or until grill marks are satisfactory. Place in a warm bun, garnish with desired fixings (we liked grain mustard and vegan mayo).
Beverage: Dale’s Pale Ale
Soundtrack: Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup