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Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wine & Food Fest Sunday Fair wrap-up
Famed New Orleans (and tharabouts, and that’s him right there) chef John Besh got things off to a brunchy start at the Vineyards at the Salt Lick a little after noon Sunday, with a homey cooking demo that was appropriate after a weekend of lots — in some cases too much — of good wine and food.
He said he’d finished the previous evening at Parkside and “I called it a night after the tequila shots came out, so I thought I’d make a good morning-after breakfast, shrimp and grits.”
Good it was. Besh said restaurant chefs tend to be more cerebral when they’re on the clock, but elsewhere “The food that I like to eat at home is like this — food that is rustic, food that is forgiving.”
And in less than 30 minutes he had it — American wild shrimp, stone-ground grits, a little red bell pepper, leeks, andoille, butter (grass-fed dairy cows produced that) and a few other ingredients made for a beautiful beginning to the day.
“The food that I like to demo is the stuff that I want you to take home and cook,” said Besh, who added that he grew up in a family that made a habit of making stocks and freezing them. Lots of folks were taking notes.
Breaking news: Besh announced he’s opening a place in San Antonio so we won’t have to go so far for his award-winning cuisine.
The grounds were a tad soggy Sunday but nothing like last year’s monsoon mudfest, a precursor of ACL a half-year later. There were lines of folks at least 30 minutes before the gates opened at noon and tents filled up by mid-afternoon. Balcones, the Waco distillery, was doing good business pouring samples of their Baby Blue whiskey and Rumble, a turbinado sugar rum/brandy concoction. In that same spirits tent, mixologist David “Tipsy Texan” Alan (that’s him in the photo) made Maker’s Mark mint juleps ahead of the Kentucky Derby, Savvy Vodka — distilled 20 times — poured it straight, in martinis and with cranberry juice and Deep Eddy vodka-infused sweet tea was a big hit.
We also ran into a 10-year old girl named for a Belgian beer: Tara Chimay Senn, who goes to St. Gabriel’s.
(American Statesman photo by Patrick Beach)
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Dogfish Head Off-Centered Film Fest wrap-up
Two nights a year, the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek — which regularly puts on great beer dinners and programming — turns into hophead heaven for Dogfish Head’s Off-Centered Film Festival with Sam Calagione, the Delaware Brewery’s founder, presiding over the festivities.
This year they outdid themselves. Friday night was a 15-course dinner paired with 15 Dogfish beers, a number of which aren’t yet available in the Texas market. (Calagione had a few things to say about what he regards as Texas’ rather finicky labeling requirements.)
“Tonight, we’re going to get our geek on for beer,” Calagione said at the outset Friday. That we did. Paul Michie’s house-made duck sausage paired beautifully with Dogfish’s Indian Brown, and Aprihop, a crisp and refreshing apricot ale, ambled up nicely with a chicken, corn and black bean mini-burrito. A sturdier brown ale, the wood-aged Palo Santo Marron, stood up to a chorizo and cojita cheese quesadilla. Pours and portions were small, but even so, by the time we got to that latter course many in the crowd were flagging. But your you, dear bloggy readers, I soldiered on. Great jazz all night by local band Torch, whose keyboard player teased us with a little Journey.
If you didn’t feel like spending $60 for the decadent dinner experience, Saturday spotlighted the film submissions and they were offering $5 pints of 10 Dogfish beers. Out of some three dozen submissions, Erik Mitchell of Philadelphia was the winner for “Burton Baton and the Legend of the Ancient Ales,” an Indiana Jones-style parody that actually featured Molecular Archeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, who’s worked with the brewery for more than five years to help develop Dogfish’s series of ancient ales such as Chateau Jiahu. Brilliant. (That’s Calagione, second from left, and Mitchell, third.)
Mitchell was a finalist in last year’s competition, too. What’s his secret?
“We did a lot of drinking while we were coming up with ideas,” he said. “We were third last year and wanted to come down to Austin and do some drinking again.”
Making sure Mitchell didn’t have to do all that drinking by himself were Brian Moore, Robert Desjardin and Dan Woolard.
Best comment I heard about DFH all weekend came not at the film festival but at the Wine & Food Fest out by the Salt Lick Sunday. On Doghfish Head 120, Brian Senn of Austin said this: “That beer makes you see God.” Aye.
(American-Statesman photo by Patrick Beach)
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Palate Cleansers, Grape Escape at the Driskill Saturday
You know the push back against crazy bold wines is going full tilt and the Hill Country Wine & Food Festival books a room on a Saturday afternoon for lighter, more delicate tastes. So it was Saturday for Palate Cleansers, a tasting of rieslings, roses, chenin blancs and more.
I was particularly taken with a dry rose from McPherson Cellars of Lubbock. It was long on strawberry, airy and delightful for mid-afternoon sipping. Owner Kim McPherson said the grapes come from Brenham.
Two 2008 South African chenin blancs from Indaba and Raats Family, respectively, showed the difference even a little oak aging can make. A portion of the Inbada is aged in oak barrels for only about six months. That short time resorted in an oaky pull so faint you could barely taste it on the first sip, just a faint suggestion on the back end. The Raats chenin blanc, on the other hand, ages in all stainless steel barrels, yielding a somewhat more mineraly taste.
We wrapped things up for a comparatively more bold 2006 chardonnay from Byron in the Santa Maria Valley. That was made itself known in a roomful of more retiring offerings.
Maker’s Mark sponsored the Grape Escape cocktail challenge later Saturday afternoon, with a bunch of bartenders competiting to concoct the top Maker’s concoction. Among them, Jeff Boley from Paggi House, who offered something he called a “Sway Tay,” with Maker’s, fresh iced tea, fresh lime juice and candied lemon. The winner will have their drink poured by master mixologist David Alan at the Sunday Fair today. (I’d love to tell you who won but the thing started late and I had to get the the Alamo Drafthouse. And it turns out I was supposed to be a judge. Guess I need to read those e-mails more carefully. Stay tuned for an update on the winner.)
UPDATE: The winner was Lara Nixon, David “Tipsy Texan” Alan’s teaching partner and author of The Blue Ruin blog, for her “Kentucky Peach,” a simple concoction of peach, bourbon and mint. Sample it today and judge for yourself.
