Guatemalan Entree

SHUCO
(Hot Dog)

INGREDIENTS

1 yellow onion
⅛ head cabbage
2 chorizo sausages
4 foot-long hot dogs (or as long as you can get)
2 loganizas (white sausage, linguica)
¼ pound thinly sliced bacon
¼ pound thinly sliced ham
¼ pound thinly sliced salami
½ cup guacamole
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup mustard
1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)
4 foot-long hot dog buns or 4 baguettes or 8 regular hot dog buns*

* = You may need to cut the sausages to fit the regular hot dog buns.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric grill

PREPARATION

Dice onion. Shred cabbage. Slice chorizos, hot dogs, and loganizas in half lengthwise. Put cabbage with enough water to cover and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until cabbage is tender.

Grill bacon, chorizo, hot dog, and loganiza halves on medium heat or at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes or until they look done. (Start grilling chorizo sausages and loganizas with casing side down. Flip them carefully.) Turn as often as necessary to avoid burning meat. Grill ham and salami for 1 minute. Flip meat slices after 30 seconds. Toast buns on grill or in toaster..

Place a chorizo, hot dog, and loganiza half on each bun bottom. Top with bacon and ham and salami slices. Sprinkle each bottom bun with equal amounts of onion and boiled cabbage. Spoon an equal amount of guacamole, mayonnaise, mustard and hot sauce over each top bun. Assemble top and bottom buns to make a delicious feat.

TIDBITS

1) This is the first tidbit.

2) As I recall, shuco means “dirty.”

3) All cooks, in addition to being hotties, are extremely organized and neat. So, calling this dish dirty is unfair. Perhaps some ancient royalty dropped his shuco on the ground and it got dirty. Indeed, some culinary historians think the king, being an oaf, ate the dirty shuco. Three of his nearest courtiers laughed at him. He had them beheaded. The fourth nearest courtier–We know his name. It’s Xatal.–started to laugh. Being a quick thinker, he changed and pretended to clear his throat.

4 The time limit for ancient Mayan royal secrets is 1,500 years. That limit lapsed exactly at the time I typed “pretended” in the previous tidbit. So, I know now the king’s name was Bongo. King Bongo played the bongos. Count Bassie originally toyed with playing bongos but didn’t wish to play second fiddle to Good King Bongo.

5 Some culinary historians take issue with the title Good King, pointing to the frequent executions he ordered.

6) Anyway, Xatal, who has been waiting patiently since tidbit 3 to play his part in culinary history, cleared his throat and said, “Good King Bongo is a medical genius as well as a brilliant musician. There is iron in dirt. Iron makes you strong. Let us all follow his illustrious lead and become strong by eating dirty hot dogs. Hey let’s call them shucos in honor of his son, Prince Shuco.”

7) The ancient Mayans threw their shucos on the ground, ate them, and grew strong. And these strong men formed strong armies and these strong armies conquered lands as far as the eye could see. King Bongo had really good eyesight and liked to stand atop his tall pyramids, so they conquered lots of really far away lands.

8) King Bongo’s eyesight was so keen that many culinary baseball historians think he could have been a better hitter than even the great Ted Williams if his highness had only been born in the 1920s. It’s frightening to think how many World Series the Boston Red Sox could have won in the 40s and 50s if they had had both Ted Williams and King Bongo in their lineup.

9) But the ancient Mayans, although being cracker-jack astronomers, never developed the time machines. Their princes grew up to be kings, not ball players. They’d bash in skulls in battle, not bash balls over the fence.

10) This happy state of Mayan conquest lasted for centuries for their warriors were strong from the iron in the dirt of their dirty hot dogs. In 1540, the Mayan Empire suffered a dirt shortage. Their warriors became weak. In 1541, the Spanish conquistadors attacked. The Spanish were strong from the iron they got from eating sautéed liver. The issue was never in doubt.

11) Vitamins and supplements became widely available to the populations of the world during the twentieth century. Countries that had had no access to Guatemalan suchos or were too disgusted by sautéed liver to eat it were suddenly able to get enough iron to raise armies of strong men. This is why we had two world wars in the last century.

12) Today’s Guatemalan shuco contains nothing but fine ingredients and is one of the ten best hot dogs of the world. Be strong!

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.