Saucing the oily Frickle

As I took up residence on a barstool at the Bar of the Gods awaiting friends for the last night of the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, I noticed sheets of paper taped up around the bar advertising the fried food special of the day: The Frickle. The signs spoke of “Dill pickle spears dipped in a corn masa batter, fried and served with a Horseradish dipping sauce”, a rather flattering description for what was to come. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Patton Oswalt is one of the funniest comedians alive today. He’s got elements of every great Comic before him–Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, Seinfeld, Samwise Gamgee–but content and opinions all his own. His set was fucking awesome, and he seems to love Portland, which is a plus.

“All you Portland people are going to move out into the real world and try to pay for a sandwich with a poem, and they will murder you with a hammer.”

but I’m still ahead of myself. I found myself contemplating the Frickle because I was waiting for the organizers of the Festival to get their shit set up properly. I showed up early enough to beat the published box office opening time, so I sidled up to the BOG bar to pass the time, checking on the box office between drinks. I checked on the box office 4 times before they’d figured everything out. It wasn’t a big deal, I simply over-prepared for large crowds and lines that didn’t materialize. Thus, by the time my friends had joined up, I’d spent way too long in the BOG. That’s when the frickle order came, on my fifth drink or so, at the time of the night I like to call The Moment of Hazardry.

I’d apologize for the shitty cell phone picture, but I won’t. I mention Mr. Oswalt because of how he begins his most recent album, Werewolves and Lollipops. He rags on the KFC Famous Bowl for 15 minutes, calling it A Failure Pile in a Sadness Bowl.

Three drinks prior, I knew this dish was a conceptual nightmare, but you know me: forever the dedicated consumer of utter crap for your entertainment. First of all, I knew that if they used pickle spears, all moisture from within the pickle boils and escapes the green mass of death. The only successful battered deep fried pickle is a whole one.

Second I knew you will over-hydrate Masa Harina trying to make a dip-able batter. Harina is a fine grind corn flour that isn’t forgiving, and this isn’t something it can do.

Third, the combination of Masa, Pickles and horseradish made me think of those unfortunate flavor combinations that result from getting stoned in your Crazy Uncle’s back yard and going nuts with the fridge-door condiments you’ve never seen before.

My, I was spot fucking on. The pickle boils on the surface and the Masa doesn’t have much stickiness to it when it’s over hydrated (and also lumpy!), so, as I expected, the fried bits slid off the pickles when you picked them up. We were left with Hot oily Pickles, desperately dipping them in Mayo spiked with horseradish knowing that at least it would be over soon. Saucing the oily Frickle. Someone notify the Euphemism Generator.