Music Festival Food Fun 2024

Salmon Poké Bowl with Greens

Salmon Poké Bowl with Greens Description: Savory salmon chunks served with avocado, pickled cucumber, onion, jalapeno, spicy bean sprouts, and spicy mayo on a bed of greens.

Tuna Poké Bowl with Greens

Tuna Poké Bowl with Greens Description: Tasty tuna chunks served with avocado, pickled cucumber, red onion, jalapeno, spicy bean sprouts, and spicy mayo on a bed of greens.

Funnel Cake with Vanilla Pudding and Strawberry Topping

Funnel Cake Description: A traditional, perfectly fried funnel cake topped with vanilla pudding and strawberry glaze then dusted with powdered sugar.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Of course, it should come as no surprise that the dish to top my list requires deep frying. (I generally don’t do that, as a rule.) Plus there’s making a batter that can handle being deep fried.  Recreating this in a low carb, sugar free format will certainly be a challenge.  I know I can make the vanilla pudding topping. Most likely, I’ll leverage the same recipe I used for my Keto Kitty Litter Box Cake.  For the strawberry topping, I’ll start with a berry syrup, as seen in my Berry Sparkling Wine Cocktail recipe. Then I’ll thicken it, likely with some gelatin or xanthan gum.  The batter is going to be the true challenge.  I anticipate requiring significant experimentation.

Mommy’s Grilled Cheese

Mommy’s Grilled Cheese Description: A melty blend of Gouda and American cheeses with caramelized onions between layers of tastily toasted bread.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Recreating the Mommy’s Grilled Cheese shouldn’t be too bad.  Of course, this will mean caramelizing onions, which takes a bit of time.  However, most recently, I’ve been doing so on the induction burner. I just let them cook down, stirring every once in a while, while doing other things.  I really think this would be great with some berry preserves too. However, I’ll start with the dish as-is and modify from there. 

Veggie Egg Rolls

Veggie Egg Rolls Description: A flavorful cabbage mix rolled into a wrapper and deep fried. Served with a sweet and spicy chili glaze on a bed of spinach.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Once again, it seems par for the course that some version of frying will be required for a ketofied version of these Vegetable Egg Rolls.  I know that the way I’ve seen them ketofied before is to use fried cheese.  However, the last time I tried that, the results were very yummy but didn’t hold their shape.  I have some ideas on this, but will need to test them out.  Air fryer or oven baked versions intrigue me as well..  (I really would like to avoid deep frying where at all possible.)

Rolled Beef and Chicken Tacos

Rolled Beef and Chicken Tacos Description: A combination of beef and chicken tacos rolled and fried crispy. Served with shredded lettuce, cotija cheese, crema, pickled red onions, red salsa, and avocado salsa.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Assuming I stick with the store-bought low-carb street-taco-style wraps, this should be pretty easy to recreate.  However, I do plan to more liberally season the meat fillings.  I’ll also use a heavier hand with the cotija cheese. Since this is me and cheese we’re talking about, that should not be shocking.

Daddy’s Grilled Cheese

Daddy’s Grilled Cheese Description: Shaved Ribeye, Muenster Cheese, and Lil Sauce

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Regarding the remaking of this sandwich, I’d probably focus the majority of my attention on the meat.  My first thought for cooking this is to season it and then cook it sous vide. Once done, I’d likely stick it in the fridge or freezer to firm up before shaving it.  I can’t say that anything particular stuck out to me as the “Lil Sauce” on this sandwich, so I’d likely take some liberties there.  While I’d include the Muenster cheese, I’d also likely add something sharper with a bit more punch like a Manchego or a sharp cheddar.  For the bread, I would just use store bought keto bread unless I had a dietary restriction on my guest list that dictated otherwise. 

“Eat A Peach” Pizza

Eat A Peach” Pizza Description: Thin Crust Pizza topped with an Olive Oil Base, Basil, Peaches, Goat Cheese, Candied Bacon, and Balsamic Glaze.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: I’ll start by saying that a repeated theme you’ll see here is that I want to work on a thick keto pizza crust.  I have a whole list of experiments lined up.  The other components present some other challenges for eliminating the sugar, namely the peaches and the balsamic glaze.  I’d start by making my own balsamic glaze, reducing balsamic vinegar and using brown erythritol to sweeten it.  For the candied bacon, I’d leverage brown erythritol in this case as well.  Okay, in the challenge of peaches, I think I’d turn to chayote squash sauteed in butter and granulated erythritol.  To that I’d add peach extract. 

“Veggie and The Full Effect” Pizza

“Veggie and The Full Effect” Pizza Description: Thin Crust Pizza topped with Spinach, Red Onion, Mushroom, and Bell Pepper.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Continuing the pizza trend, I’ll repeat my desire to work on a thick keto pizza crust.  Beyond that, my primary changes to this dish would be increasing the amount of each ingredient on the pizza and dicing the red onions for easier bite-taking.  I could also definitely see this working with a ranch sauce instead of a red sauce.  However, I often feel that way about red sauces on pizza.

“Diavola” Pizza

“Diavola” Pizza Description: A thick pizza crust topped with a sweet marinara sauce, melty mozzarella, pepperoni, and slices of jalapeno all toasted in a wood-fired pizza oven.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Dish: Speaking of red sauces on pizza, I’m torn on the direction for this one.  On one hand, the sweet sauce used in the original was a nice balance to the heat of the jalapenos.  On the other hand, I hate sweet marinaras and actually scraped as much off of each slice as I possibly could.  Scar didn’t have that problem with the sauce.  The part that I will keep / plan to replicate is the handling of the jalapenos.  They were sliced super thin, like the thinnest setting on a mandolin.  These thin slices were placed on top of the pizza before it went into the wood-fired oven, so they received a nice bit of caramelization which added some depth to the flavor.

Nitro Sweet Peach Tea

Nitro Sweet Peach Tea Description: Black Tea with Peach Syrup through a nitro tap.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Drink: Okay, I’m not 100% sure that I want to remake this drink. It was interesting but really, really sweet. I guess the benefit of making it myself would be controlling the level of sweetness. To remake it in a sugar-free fashion, I’d start by cold brewing some black tea. Then I’d make a sugar-free simple syrup using allulose (or a combination of allulose, erythritol, and / or monk fruit) and peach extract. After sweetening to taste, I’d put it in our mini nitro tap for serving.

Butterscotch Root Beer

Butterscotch Root Beer Description: The smooth sweetness of butterscotch combined with a refreshing root beer.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Drink: This root beer company actually uses monk fruit in their diet root beer, so realistically I’d just work on requesting a diet version of the butterscotch root beer. I could be wild and put it through the nitro tap like the other root beer. I think that would be interesting.

Blackened Lemonade

Blackened Lemonade Description: Blackened Whiskey, Lemonade, Liquid-Alchemist Tamarind Syrup, and a splash of Club Soda

Thoughts on Re-Making This Drink: I think the biggest trick to keeping this cocktail as well-balanced as it was at the festival is getting the right level of sweetness in the lemonade. Unlike some of the other cocktails tried, this one was not overly sweet. So . . . to remake this drink, I’d start by making some sugar-free lemonade. Then I’d create a Tamarind Syrup using sugar alternatives. However, doing so would also involve tamarind puree and tamarind concentrate. Given the specialty nature of the tamarind, I’ll likely want to figure out some other recipes that will also use it.

Peach Smash

Peach Smash Cocktail Description: OYO Stone Fruit Vodka, Margarita Mix, and Peach

Thoughts on Re-Making This Drink: This cocktail also fell a bit too much on the sweet side for my personal preferences. However, that said, if I were remaking it, I’d probably start with a sugar-free simple syrup made with some combination of allulose, monk fruit, and / or erythritol. I’ll want to play around with this a bit. To this I’d add a combo of lime and peach extracts. Then, of course, I’d mix that with stone fruit vodka. Assuming I tone down the sweetness to better suit my usual audience, I think this could actually be a hit.

Nitro Root Beer

Nitro Root Beer Description: Root Beer through a nitro tap.

Thoughts on Re-Making This Drink: So there’s the easy way and the hard way. For the easy way, I’d just put my Zevia Root Beer (either Ginger Root Beer or Creamy Root Beer) into our little nitro keg and pour. If I wanted to go the more challenging route, I’d make my own sugar free root beer and then put it in our little nitro keg. Yeah . . . I’m probably not making my own root beer any time soon. However, I am likely to try root beer extract in some upcoming desserts. (Yep, that’s a thing!)