Road trip dining

Our road trip through the Southwest featured carbs, mostly from diner breakfasts and Mexican restaurants. Comparisons of green chile and cheddar omelets (me) and corned beef hash (Aaron) across state lines didn’t break up the monotony as much as made a game of it, and we had a few standout examples. Aaron says the hash and biscuits at Harris Ranch in the California valley were hands-down the best of the trip. The Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, gets a nod for grilling the chiles for the omelet, and a diner in Blythe, California made a pattern on top of the omelet with a sliced square of Kraft American cheese, earning the honorable mention for the chef. You have to appreciate cheese art.

In the midst of all the sameness, two meals featured sauces that were interesting and well-deployed within the meal, enough so that these would have been noteworthy even in a foodie mecca like San Francisco or Manhattan.

Roka Cafe in Bisbee offered a risotto cakes with grilled vegetables and three sauces, a savory habanero, a basil puree, and a mild smoked chile cream. Habanero sauces are often sweet and hot, but this was savory with a vegetable stock, and medium-spicy. The basil sauce was pesto-like, but without cheese and just the barest touch of roasted garlic so it didn’t overpower the freshness of the basil. The chile cream wasn’t made with cream but had that consistency, so was smooth without heaviness. The spice level was low, so the flavor the chile and smoke came through without mouth heat. A generous portion of bite sized pieces of roasted carrots, onions and green beans were served over the sauces as a bed for the risotto cakes. Each sauce was tasty on its own, and the combination so good that I pushed the risotto cakes out of the way to make a meal of the underpinnings.

Trinity restaurant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, is an anomaly in a town full of barbecue-pizza-fast food joints. I’m usually not a fan of pasta primavera, the token vegetarian dish in far too many restaurants, but it was welcome that night when compared to the only other veg option in town, potato salad and coleslaw sides at a barbecue joint. Plus, Trinity used fresh vegetables rather than canned so the pasta tasted okay. A pleasant surprise, though, was an appetizer of fresh local goat cheese with chipotle-blackberry sauce. The sauce was made either with fresh berries or with good quality, not-too-sweet preserves, so had a powerful berry taste which was terrific with hot, smoked chile to flavor it. The sauce had a real kick--no shyness with spice here--and was delicious with the cheese.