Carne Asada Tacos at Edgar’s Cantina at Safeco Field in Seattle

Going to a baseball game on an empty stomach no longer means that you need to lower your culinary standards. In decades past, dining at the ballpark was a pretty monochromatic affair: hot dogs and a hamburger; maybe, if you were feeling particularly adventurous, a knish. Things have changed, and now that innovative cooking and flavor combinations are now more widespread, baseball stadiums have become a place where one can sit down and try an abundance of delicious food. In some cases, stadiums incorporate offerings from local favorites; in others, comfort food is taken to new levels. These seven foods come from ballparks all across the country, and represent a wide range of tastes, from rich desserts to savory snacks to heartier fare.

Carne Asada Tacos at Edgar's Cantina, Safeco Field, Seattle
Portable, savory, and delicious: the taco may well be the platonic ideal of hand-held food. Since opening in 2013 at Safeco Field, Edgar's Cantina has served up noteworthy food and drink to people taking in Mariners games. Among the highlights of their menu are carne asada tacos, which bring a familiar heartiness to stadium fare without being too filling.

Chile Verde Mac Dog at Big Dawgs Chase Field, Phoenix
If you're a baseball team playing in the Southwest, why not embrace some of the local cuisine — in this case, the unique heat found in green chiles. If your summer plans include an Arizona Diamondbacks game, and you’re fond of hot dogs, mac and cheese, and green chiles — and you've always dreamed of eating all three at once — your prayers have been answered.

Steak Tip Sandwich at Fenway Park, Boston
Some of the most refreshing dining options at baseball stadiums might, on paper, look similar to tried-and-true favorites. The steak tip sandwich served at Boston Red Sox games is comprised of beef, cheese, and a roll, but it's the small details where it impresses the most, like the way the steak is marinated, and the texture of the roll. Alternately: a classic sandwich at a classic ballpark.

RELATED: Baseball Just Got a Little More Dog-Friendly^[1]

Beef Empanadas at Pipo’s Café, Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg, FL
Hot dogs aren't the only thing that makes for nicely handheld ballpark eating. The long-running Tampa restaurant Pipo's Café has long attracted admirers of Cuban food, and they’ve recently begun serving up a variety of items at Tampa Bay Rays games — among them, a delicious-looking beef empanada that goes perfectly with your beverage of choice.

Chicharones Cone at AT&T Park, San Francisco
So let’s say you’re at a ballgame, and let’s say that you’d like to snack on something salty, dry, and crispy. You could certainly order a bag of potato chips or some popcorn, sure — or, if you’re at a San Francisco Giants game, you could opt to snack on some chicharones — fried pork that has been seasoned and then served in a cone.

Sausages at Hot Doug's, Wrigley Field, Chicago
The closure^[2] of Chicago hot dog mainstay Hot Doug's in 2014 left a hole in the heart of those who admired their bold and tasty flavor combinations. They now maintain a presence in the bleachers of that city’s storied Wrigley Field, serving up a constantly updated array of sausages, each named for a former Cub. The Joe Wallis, for instance, is a curry bratwurst with "curry dijonnaise, caramelized onions, and smoked gouda cheese." Just because it's comfort food doesn't mean it can't take risks.

Strike Cone Concrete at Shake Shack, Citi Field, New York
Sometimes, the best ballpark snacks are the sweetest. On the menu of the Citi Field location of Shake Shack, Mets fans will find the Strike Cone, which brings together vanilla frozen custard with pieces of sugar cone, chocolate truffle cookie dough, and sprinkles. It's just the thing for cooling off when watching a day game in the middle of the summer.

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: Baseball Just Got a Little More Dog-Friendly (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} The closure (www.mensjournal.com)

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Salsa is one of the easiest things to make at home, especially when summer ingredients are abundant and a hot grill is at the ready to impart flavor and smoke. And conveniently, if you make a batch of it before dinner, it can double as a snack with some tortilla chips and an amazing complement to grilled steak or fish tacos. Once you know a few of the basic tenets of salsa-making, you won’t need a recipe to whip some up on the fly.

RELATED: Danny Trejo: Kicking Ass and Making Vegan Tacos^[1]

Assemble Your Ingredients
Alex Stupak, the chef behind Empellon and the author of Tacos: Recipes and Provocations^[3], likes to think of salsa ingredients in a framework of four essential categories: garlic, chiles, alliums, tomato/tomatillo. You might choose chipotle chiles if you want a deep, smoky flavor, or jalapeños if you want something bright and light. You might use tomatillos if you want a sharp, acidic green salsa, or ripe tomatoes if you want something sweeter. If you're a little more adventurous, you might try experimenting with insects like grasshoppers and flying ants, like Stupak does. "They add flavor and more importantly a meaningful amount of protein," he says.^[2]

Cook Your Ingredients (or Not)
While most salsa ingredients taste great fresh, a little bit of charring or smoking can go a long way. Stupak loves to smoke his tomatoes for salsa, but if you don't have a smoker, you can also try charring your ingredients on a hot grill. This will give your salsa a great concentrated flavor and some beautiful little flecks of blackened tomato skin. Just set your tomatoes/tomatillos, along with any other ingredient you’d like, on the grill until each appears lightly charred. You can get a similar effect by putting each of these ingredients on a baking sheet in the broiler for 5–7 minutes.

Blend Them All Together
If you're in a countdown to dinner guests arriving, you can toss all of your beautifully charred/smoked ingredients into a blender, and you will have salsa in a matter of seconds. If you want to invest a little more time and a little less counter space into your salsa, Stupak recommends a molcajete (a stone mortar and pestle traditionally used in Mexican cooking). "It will give you an intimate relationship with your salsa that a blender or food processor will not," he says. Once your salsa is complete, add a little lime juice, salt, or freshly chopped cilantro to taste.

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: Danny Trejo: Kicking Ass and Making Vegan Tacos (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} Empellon (www.empellon.com)
3. ^{^} Tacos: Recipes and Provocations (www.amazon.com)

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Credit: Martin Jacobs / Getty Images

With your hot dips, cream cheese comes into play. Alton Brown feels that spinach-artichoke is the avatar of the form, but I am interested today in hot crab dip — if only because it seems about the meanest thing you can do to crabmeat: drown it in sour cream, spike it with Worcestershire, smother it with cheese. "You can even crumble some Ritz crackers in there," says Brown. But to me this recipe exemplifies the luxurious, heavy decadence of a good dip. It's far more luxe than any million-dollar ad, and it will stay fresh long after the party has gone stale. 

RELATED: Authentic Guacamole from Rick Bayless^[1]

Ingredients

•  6 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
•  1/4 tsp salt
•  1/4 tsp garlic powder
•  2 6 oz cans lump crabmeat, drained well
•  cheddar cheese

Directions 

1. Combine all ingredients in a casserole. Grate cheddar cheese to cover. 
2. Heat uncovered in a 325° oven for 10–15 minutes.
   

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: Authentic Guacamole from Rick Bayless (www.mensjournal.com)

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Credit: Photograph by Nigel Cox

Beer purists view the shandy, a beer-and-ginger-ale cocktail from 19th-century England, as a crass concoction — a cheap way to water down good brew. Our take? Exactly! It's summer. You want a drink that goes down easy before noon, when you're lashing your cooler to an inner tube. Thankfully, the craft world is now turning its attention to lighter, less-alcoholic brews with a refreshing citrusy kick. As well as producing bottled shandies and radlers, which use flavored sodas instead of ginger ale, many brewers are devising IPAs with a shot of grapefruit juice to amplify the hops' natural pop. Sure, some still taste like liquid candy. But some, like the four below, are great — and perhaps the only reason to own a pair of those bottle-opening flip-flops.

BEER: The 101 Best Beers in America^[1]

Stiegl Grapefruit Radler
^[2]Stiegl makes a 40-60 blend of its Goldbräu lager and grapefruit soda. The aroma is bright, and the body is so crisp that you may forget you're drinking beer.

Leinenkugel's Grapefruit Shandy
^[3]Leinenkugel's saw the potential of the beer cocktail a decade ago, and its Grapefruit Shandy is its most refined yet, with a mild sweetness and balanced finish.

Widmer Hefe Shandy
^[4]Widmer's Hefeweizen is the original American-style wheat beer, and the Portland, Oregon, brewery adapted it for summer with Lemondrop hops, which add a citrus bite.

Boulevard Ginger Lemon Radler
^[5]Kansas City's Boulevard has a talent for refreshing brews, and the ginger and lemon juice in this wheat-beer-based radler bring an extra level of zing.

The Homemade Radler
The radler is a relatively foolproof beverage, and it's worth experimenting by mixing various flavors of soda into your favorite beer. The traditional recipe calls for a 50-50 blend of a lager that's mild on hops, such as a Session Lager, and grapefruit or lemon soda, like Sanpellegrino Limonata. To get adventurous, try a crisp but funky style like a German Berliner weisse or gose as the beer base. You can even add an ounce of aromatic gin along with the soda.

References

1. ^{^} BEER: The 101 Best Beers in America (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} Stiegl Grapefruit Radler (www.stiegl.at)
3. ^{^} Leinenkugel's Grapefruit Shandy (www.leinie.com)
4. ^{^} Widmer Hefe Shandy (widmerbrothers.com)
5. ^{^} Boulevard Ginger Lemon Radler (www.boulevard.com)

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Credit: Anna Watson / Getty Images

"While I love all types of pizzas, from the corner slice to Chicago deep dish, my favorite is the Neapolitan pizza," says Ron Brown, the chef and owner of Barboncino^[1], a popular pizzeria in Brooklyn that specializes in Neapolitan-style pies. "I consider it the Lamborghini of pizzas!"

Neapolitan pizza is elegant in its simplicity. Typically pies are thin, almost delicate, and encircled by a crispy, flaky crust. The center is topped by San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala, and fresh basil. It's baked quickly in a wood-burning oven where temperatures can reach over 900°. The techniques behind Neapolitan pizza are considered sacrosanct and have developed over many, many generations — there's even an international organization whose mission it is to "promote and protect in Italy and worldwide the 'true Neapolitan pizza.'"

At Barboncino, Brown, who has run seven food-related businesses since 1982 and considers this restaurant "the culmination of everything I have learned, and grown to love, about the food and hospitality business," strives to work within the Neapolitan tradition. For instance, the organic, low-gluten flour they use for the dough is imported from Italy. “It’s the same flour used in the famous pizzerias of Naples," says Brown. And Barboncino's handsome wood-burning oven was imported from Italy, where, Brown says, it was made by a family that's been manufacturing ovens for over a century.

RELATED: How to Make Frank Pepe’s Famous White Clam Pizza^[2]

While Brown respects the traditions of Neapolitan pizza, he is also willing to compromise — just not on flavor. "Taste is much more important to me than imposing some rigid standard. In fact, it’s everything," he says. Since Italian mozzarella di bufala has to be shipped from overseas, Barboncino uses a local fior de latte that's fresher and still achieves that "perfect melt in the oven."

Those adjustments and allowances are an important lesson for the home cook who isn't prepared to install a wood-burning pizza oven in their apartment. But acquiring a pizza stone and peel is a good investment if you're striving to get close to the "Lamborghini of pizzas."

Below is a recipe for a home-style version for Barboncino's arugula pizza, one of the restaurant's bestsellers and one of the easiest to make.

Barboncino's Arugula Neapolitan Pizza

Note: Allow to proof for three days (according to Brown, a rushed dough can leave you with a bloated feeling). Yields two twelve-inch pies.

Dough ingredients 

• 315 grams low-gluten flour
• 186 grams water
• 9 grams salt
• 0.6 grams yeast

Dough directions 

1. In a large bowl or pot, combine water and salt.
2. Add in a small amount of flour.
3. Add yeast, then the rest of the flour.
4. Knead by hand.
5. Cover with towel and leave out for 30 minutes.
6. Form into 255 gram balls.
7. Place in refrigerator, covered, for three days.
8. Before cooking, let the dough sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Pizza recipe

• Neapolitan pizza dough (see above)
• Fior de latte mozzarella
• Shaved parmesan
• Cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• Arugula
• Several cloves of raw garlic, crushed
• Extra virgin olive oil

Directions 

1. Preheat your oven to 400°, or hotter if you can get it.
2. Stretch a dough ball to 12 inches, then top it with enough fior di latte mozzarella to cover the pie, followed by sliced cherry tomatoes and a sprinkling of raw crushed garlic.
3. Bake until the pizza crust is crispy. Cooking times will vary depending on the temperature of your oven — but check your pizza after a few minutes. In a traditional oven, you'll see "leoparding" of charred spots on the outer crust, but at home your pie may not reach the right temperature. Instead, wait for the crust to rise and the cheese to melt.
4. Remove from the oven and top with fresh arugula, shaved parmesan, and a drizzle of olive oil.

References

1. ^{^} Barboncino (www.barboncinopizza.com)
2. ^{^} RELATED: How to Make Frank Pepe’s Famous White Clam Pizza (www.mensjournal.com)

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