Old Bay Fries & Vegan Tartar Sauce // S1E2 Deep Throat

Published by Conspiracy Kitchen on October 25, 2022October 25, 2022

You and I are going to the Spud State!

While the pilot episode featured no food, food plays a prominent role in this episode.  Mulder’s cooking what appears to be a can of Campbell’s soup when Scully calls him, they eat burgers and fries at a diner where Mulder purchases a limited edition print of a UFO, they take the stoner kids to a diner where Seth Green uses a hamburger to demo the flight of the UFOs he’s witnessed. One character tells a story of a returned test pilot who sprinkled fish food on his dinner at a dinner party, which is a food story of a certain kind.

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That being said, the point of this blog is not to recreate meals found in The X-Files. If we did that, we fear we’d be looking at a lot of burgers and fries, which were consumed twice on screen in this episode alone.  Instead, we’re cooking meals inspired by the episodes— focusing on the setting and atmosphere, the themes, any elements that stand out and inspire us to cook.   

We’ve created a recipe that features potatoes, the food synonymous with this episode’s setting.  We’ve also incorporated Old Bay seasoning, because inexplicably this episode also seems to have a recurring coastal motif…in Idaho (the Beach Grove motel, the fish, the fishing). Don’t worry, we’re not about to put fish flakes on anything, but we see that something fishy is afoot, so we’re paring these old-bay seasoned fries with our own spin on a vegan tartar sauce.

How to make Old Bay fries & tartar sauce

Preheat oven to 425°F. Scrub or peel potatoes and cut potatoes into wedges. Toss potato wedges with oil and Old Bay seasoning on ungreased baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper, as desired. Bake for 15 minutes. Flip the fries and then bake for an additional 10 – 15 minutes, until lightly browned and crispy.

While the fries bake, mix up the vegan tartar sauce. Vegan mayonnaise serves as the base for this tartar sauce. We like to use Sir Kensington’s Vegan Mayo, but have recently found that the Vegan Dressing & Spread from Hellmann’s is pretty good as well. While tartar sauce traditionally has chopped pickles or relish, we’re using capers because Reegan does not like pickles. Finally, the radishes add a little bit of a spicy kick.

To make the sauce: add mayonnaise to a medium sized bowl. Grate the radishes and chop the fresh dill. Add radishes, dill and capers to the mayonnaise. Add the lemon juice and stir everything to combine. Taste and then season with salt and pepper as desired.

Note: The radishes do make the tartar sauce slightly pink. If you’d prefer to not have pink tartar sauce, you can quickly blanche the radishes, which will make them bleed a little less red, peel them, or sub in daikon radishes or horseradish. But, if you’re serving vegan tartar sauce alongside a regular tartar sauce, having the vegan version look distinct isn’t a bad thing.

Old Bay Fries with Vegan Tartar Sauce Recipe