Taking a Bite out of Philly

Dallas managed to take a bite out of Philly on Sunday. 24 bites, if you're counting..and I'm counting! Those among our circle of friends who are Cowboys fans took several bites...delicious bites of cheese steak sandwiches.

When we gather to root for our team, it often becomes more about the food, and less about the outcomes. Ha ha...who am I kidding? It's ALWAYS about the outcome! Our friends Paul and Maria have an ongoing invitation to watch the Cowboys in their home. They are gracious hosts, week in and week out, for almost every game. We have a blast. Sometimes it's a potluck affair, others it's a pizza party experiment, or ribs are on sale and we smoke large slabs of 'em. You name it, we try to mix it up and sometimes the party starts at a different home, but we all manage to gather together and yell for our team.

This week with the Cowboys clan taking on the Eagles we decided to make some Texas style Cheese Steaks and take a bite out of Philly. Yeah, baby...I love a good cheese steak sandwich. No Philly green bell peppers for us, but we did use red peppers and plenty of jalapenos, onions, mushrooms, and 2 kinds of cheese.

Many years ago I worked at a little hole-in-the-wall joint called The Back Door Lounge. It was on Rio Grande at Mesa and it boasted an original cheese steak sandwich as created by Ala Haney and Dennis Calabrese. I learned to make some delish cheese steaks when I worked there; ask just about any local and they remember just how good that sandwich was. That's the place I actually got to play pool with Don Haskins (yeah he was merely placating me, but still...I'll never forget that). After 5 years of being away from El Paso, and returning in 2000 I found the Back Door beckoning again. Imagine my surprise when I found the restaurant had moved and was getting ready to re-open in downtown El Paso! I needed a job, and was right on time to start anew right where I had left off. This story is not so much about the Back Door Lounge as it is about good food...and specifically that cheese steak sandwich.

So Maria was worried about how to go about making cheese steaks for our Cowboy crowd this weekend. To make it easy, she wanted to make one huge sandwich and cut it up. No way, Jose! I told her in the typical George Lopez fashion "I got this!" Kids hate everything, some among us don't like onions, or peppers, or jalapenos, or they are allergic to mushrooms, etc., and etc., infinitum! I was willing to do individual order taking (short order cooking sticks with you once it's in your blood), but luckily there were plenty who wanted "the works" and others who wanted almost all the works without the hot jalapenos...then there's my uncle who cannot eat the mushrooms, and lastly the kids, who wanted meat, meat and nothing but meat. I was able to make several sandwiches in batches, and the rolls were real small and snack size...which made it easier to feed a bunch of us at once. Dang, I so enjoyed doing this. Imagine my surprise when everyone crowed about how good these sandwiches are! The kids? Them cute little brats liked 'em? LOL. That was truly shocking!

I had such a good time cooking, I forgot to take pictures! The ingredients I used to make our cheese steaks yesterday were not the same recipe as I knew from The Back Door Lounge, but without that prior knowledge to go on, I'd have never known really how to go about it. So here's to good people, good sportsmanship, good food, and a great recipe from a place I once worked at in El Paso, Texas.