Oklahoma Part One: Avgokopsi and Culinary Car Tour

Oklahoma makes me hungry. A state is a good state if you can be hungry even when its 100-plus degree heat in other places would normally dull that sensation. And Oklahomans and their restaurants can accommodate: increased temperatures mean cheaper Sonic drinks, increased threats of tornadoes are met with more outdoor grilling, and the the condensation that more rapidly forms out the outside of beer cans makes their contents more appealing. After a delayed then canceled flight out of DC yesterday, multiple phone conversations with United associates in India, research into prices for cross-country bus and rail travel (thankfully financially prohibitive enough I didn't act out of desperation), eventual flight re-routing, a Dallas airport bad-Taco-Bell-meal, I arrived in Oklahoma, a surprisingly lucractive locale for culinary adventures for an amateur food critic.

My Yiayia yesterday had me, my visiting brother, and my parents over for one of the finest homemade meals I've had probably since the last time I was home. She prepared makaronia me bouturo, which still stands as one of my top meals. But, in making what may be my new favorite Yiayia-cooked meal, we also made a startling discovery, critical to both mine and my mother's understanding of food taxonomy and nomenclature: real dolmathes are actually cabbage, not grape leaves.

This may sound like silly quibbling for adeherents to the foodie, Greek, or pretentious-food-blogging subcultures, but it's a critical differentiation to a food purist who thought cabbage rolls were the bastard child to the dignified grape leaf, whose sheath was reverentially taken from the same vine as the nectar of the gods.

So, I stood corrected and saw the creation of an avgolemono sauce for the dolmathes and by extension, witnessed the culinary act of "avgokopsi"-ing.

A cabbage roll contains rice and seasoned meat, all lovingly wrapped in a cabbage roll that is tender but has enough fortitude to keep its shape while being steamed and avgokopsied. To create the avgolemono sauce (from αυγό for egg and λεμόνι for lemon), Yiayia stiffened egg whites, later added the yolks and lemon juice, and slowly added at the end the sauce left over from the cooked grape leaves. My mom poured the sauce over the grape leaves and my Yiayia made kissing noises. This is a critical part of the avgokopsi process for unknown reasons, but almost certainly has something to do with evil spirits, evil eyes, or potential bad luck to offspring and their ability to avgokopsi.

Yiayia with the avgokopsied dolmathes.

And it was a thing of beauty, as makaronia, cabbage leaves, tabbouleh, hummus, and Kalamata olives were served on fine china; what a homecoming.

Lunch today was sedate. Tonight we're headed to a fancy steakhouse that has a neon red-colored bar and where I will find the Oklahoma oil baron who will underwrite my blog, or whatever enterprising amateur venture capitalists would do to financially support amateur food bloggers. We went to the Prairie Thunder Baking Company, a cute local bakery and sandwichery that unfortunately is staffed by women who seek to cast themselves as nouveau pin-up girls (deliberately messy hair with flowers in it). Sort of unfortunate when all you want is to order a roast beef sandwich. It was tasty, though: sandwiches on airy foccacia bread that wasn't too greasy and had about one needle of Rosemary every two square inches.

Unfortunately, the bread to meat ratio was way off, just as typically pin up girls have more eye makeup than eye surface area. But it was tasty, the view of downtown OKC was great, and the sweets were satisfyingly pretty to just admire. I

Afterwards, we drove around and I ogled at all my favorite restaurant signs that were also satisfyingly pretty to just admire. This might be a very boring series of pictures (like the equivalent of how interesting pictures of birds would be to people who collect stamps) but it's a selective snapshot of OKC's culinary ethos.

The famous Braum's milk bottle: Braum's is a local creamery and only recently put their logo on the bottle. The structure was built in 1930 and has been added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

Taco Bueno: proprietor of the finest tripartite chips' dip plate, MexiDips and Chips. I can't believe one, that that menu item is copyrighted, and two, that the phrase MexiDips and Chips appears twice on the pages of an aspirationally pretentious food blog.

Braum's: the best place in Oklahoma to get crinkle fries, peppermint ice cream, cheesy poofs, and a hamburger in shiny pink and silver foil, all in one spot.

And, finally, Sonic: hallowed temple of fountain drinks, with a legitimately-good-priced happy hour.

And because we're piously good customers, a glimpse inside the sacred edifice: