Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2010 > June
June 2010
Hot Links, July 4th edition: Chili cooks compete, Nathan’s famous bows out, guilt-free hot dogs, Sticky Toffee wins gold and Canadians celebrate, too
Nathan’s, minus the famous one: Hot dog-eating champ Takeru Kobayashi, who has won Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest six times, pulled out of this year’s contest because of a contractual dispute. The Coney Island contest will be televised at 11 a.m. Sunday on ESPN.
Veggie hot dog contest: While the professionals in New York are scarfing meaty hot dogs, local vegetarian hot dog eaters will be downing meat-free versions at iLoveMikeLitt’s fourth annual Veggie Hot Dog Eating Contest. The competition to see who can eat the most veggie dogs in 12 minutes will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tiniest Bar in Texas, but those not competing in the contest can enjoy veggie dogs and NadaMoo ice cream for a $5 entry fee.
Independence of another sort: Canada Day is Thursday, and Canadians in Austin, a local group of Canucks, is hosting its annual Canada Day Celebration at 6 p.m. at Paradise on Sixth. Enjoy music from Ty Hall, Fatty Monk and EZ3, as well as Canadian beer, poutine, back bacon and Tim Hortons coffee. Send them an e-mail to RSVP.
A chili holiday: Becker Vineyards, just east of Fredericksburg, is hosting its fourth annual All-American Chili Cookoff on Sunday. Seventy chili cooks will compete, and members of the crowd can help pick a winner.
Fun on the Fourth: Way Out West Austin has a great round-up of stuff to do this holiday weekend, including events at wineries and, of course, places to watch fireworks.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Fall Creek on ‘Today’: Joe Bastianich, son of the lovely Lidia, featured a wine from Fall Creek Vineyards on the “Today Show” on Monday. Bastianich called Ed’s Smooth Red one of the best regional wines in American under $15.
Meaty holiday: For the Fourth, HOPE Farmers Market newbie Ben Runkle of Salt and Time will be selling hot dogs made with locally sourced meats. Kocurek Family Charcuterie will also have pre-marinated and -smoked ribs for sale. At the Saturday downtown farmers market and through their ever-growing online butcher shop, Jesse and Tamara Griffiths of Dai Due are offering hot dogs, chili dogs, potato salad and a bunch of other picnic favorites.
Golden pudding: Austin’s own Sticky Toffee Pudding Company took top honors at New York’s Fancy Food Show, one of the world’s largest food showcases, in the best baked good category. The company won the same award in 2007 for its English lemon pudding.
‘I am just angry:’ New Orleans chef Susan Spicer is leading the way for another lawsuit against BP.
‘Bitter’ revenge: Creepy, creepy. In “Bitter Feast,” a movie premiering at the Los Angeles Film Festival featuring an appearance from Mario Batali, a chef who gets fired after a bad online review goes after the blogger who writes it. I’m too chicken to watch gory movies like this, but some of you might like it.
A watered-down ‘Gourmet’: Conde Nast announced that Gourmet will be “relaunched” digitally this fall, but former editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl reminds fans that it’s just as the brand, not the magazine.
Fishy fish: I don’t trust this new genetically modified salmon one bit, not only because the FDA does not require that it be labeled as genetically modified (the same turn-the-other-cheek rule they apply to produce and grains), but because no one knows for sure how the fish will impact schools of non-genetically altered fish.
Wash those reusable bags, folks: A study recently found that the vast majority of cloth grocery bags carried potentially harmful bacteria because their users didn’t wash them. E.coli was found in twelve percent of the bags tested.
Lion burger, anyone? An Arizona eatery found itself in the middle of an international controversy after the media picked up that they were selling burgers made with lion meat.
Photos from AquaBounty, Ed Ou for the Associated Press
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Monica Pope to teach in Austin as part of tour for online cookbook
The book, Eat Where Your Food Lives (available online only, $35), features more than 100 recipes and reflects Pope’s signature style of cooking in-season, locally grown produce that she’s featured in her Houston restaurant t’afia since it opened more than six years ago. (She’s so committed to promoting local farmers and seasonal produce that the restaurant is the site of a weekly farmers market.)
And just because the new book is only available online doesn’t mean she’s not out on tour to promote it. She’ll be in Austin on Wednesday to teach a class at 6:30 p.m. at Central Market North. (Tickets $65.)
Pope’s cookbook is published by the Austin-based company, Keeper Collection, which has published digital cookbooks from fellow Texas chefs David Bull and Paul Petersen.
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Where have the Anthony Bourdain stalkers gone?
Maybe Austinites are distracted with the World Cup, or maybe the heat has sent everyone scattering out of town on vacation, but there hasn’t been near as much Bourdain-stalking online as when he was here in April. During that Austin visit, every other tweet I read over a two-day period was dedicated to either the whereabouts of him or his crew, which we’ve confirmed was shooting not for a full episode of “No Reservations” dedicated to our fair city but for a multi-city episode about food in the heartland that will premiere on July 12 on the Travel Channel.
But just a few hours before his appearance tonight at the Paramount, the Interwebs have been strangely quiet about Mr. Bourdain, whose book I found both fascinating and fickle. (All in all, I liked “Medium Raw,” but the parts I didn’t like, I really didn’t like. If you’ve had a chance to pick it up, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book.)
I’m sure tweet-happy Bourdain fans are just holding back until the sold-out Q&A at the Paramount Theatre tonight and a book signing at BookPeople tomorrow at 7 p.m. The BookPeople event is free, but starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, the store will be handing out wristbands for the book-signing line for those who have purchased the book from the store.
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Summer garden update: Tomatoes, okra, green beans, cukes
What a difference a few degrees makes.
Last year at this time, the triple-digit heat was taking its toll on my backyard garden and on me. I swore I wasn’t going to even attempt to grow food into June, but of course, I ended up planting a few tomato, cucumber, okra and green bean plants.
I’m happy to report that everyone’s faring much better this time around.
The 98 cent celebrity tomato transplant I bought from H-E-B has grown into a tomato-producing behemoth. The other tomato plants aren’t producing quite as large or as many fruits, but the bugs and the heat haven’t totally wiped them out, either.
(One problem, if you can call it one, is that there are tons of green tomatoes sitting on the vines, but they take forever to turn red. I’m worried the squirrels and birds will get them if I let them sit so sweet and ripe on the vine, so as soon as they develop a hint of color, I pull them off and let them ripen in the window. Anyone have any ideas why they are slow to turn?)
Green beans and cucumbers are going strong, which is good because we eat a lot of both. We even have a single acorn squash from a volunteer plant that popped out of our compost pile.
It was fun to watch the lettuce and radicchio go to seed and flower, and I know the basil isn’t far behind. This is my first year to plant okra, and I’m just now getting enough to actually start cooking them up.
Now if only I could catch one of their beautiful but short-lived blooms long enough to photograph.
As the temperatures creep closer toward 100 degrees, I know there aren’t many happy garden days left this summer.
But there’s nothing like the summer heat to make you look forward to the fall season. How are your summer crops doing? I’ve been hearing that people are having much better luck with tomatoes right now than in recent years, and the truly dedicated are keeping a close watch on the dates. Pumpkins go in the ground on July 4th, and some gardeners are already thinking about putting those fall tomatoes in.
Me? After this round of plants has had it, I’m taking a break until the weather cools down.
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15 Minutes or Less: Making a zoo of cupcakes
Like most 3-year-olds, my son has developed a bit of a sweet tooth.
We tried to avoid giving him sugar-loaded foods, but as sweets lovers ourselves, it’s hard to tell him he can’t have a cookie when you’re nibbling on one in the first place.
But moderation in everything, right?
This week, we made cupcakes together (and by together, I mean I made them while he sat in at the kitchen counter trying to get the wrapper off the sprinkles) and instead of leaving the whole batch at the house, which would mean a daily battle over how many he should get to eat, I dolled out one to each of us and then I brought the rest to share with my co-workers.
Pretty cute, huh?
I wish I could take total credit for baking these bad boys from scratch, including the icing, but I had the help of a few new products from Duff Goldman, the guy behind the Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes.” (I don’t usually write about national products like this, especially $9 cake mixes or $24 fondant, but the cupcakes turned out pretty moist and delicious and I wouldn’t have been able to put them together in less than 15 minutes without the assistance of pre-made fondant.)
But who am I kidding, it’s the cheap animal-shaped cookie cutters from IKEA that made this project blogworthy.
Fondant’s consistency makes it perfectly suited to be cut with cookie cutters, and if you have gelatin, glycerin and a willingness to experiment, you can try your hand at making it at home. (I came across a few recipes that relied on marshmallows instead of gelatin and glycerin. Have any of you tried it either way?)
Duff’s fondant tasted pretty good, definitely better than most fondant found on wedding cakes but not as good as a rich buttercream frosting. I only used about a quarter pound of the two pound container, which means I’ve got plenty left for more zoo cupcakes.
Just don’t tell Julian.
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Olive oil expert Mary Beth Murphy: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Slow Food Austin is hosting one of its biggest fundraisers of the year on Saturday. The Texas Artisan Showcase will features dozens of local food producers and artisans, including Mary Beth Murphy of Piche, a Austin-based boutique olive oil company that imports French, Italian and Californian olive oils.
Murphy, who went from being a casual oil lover to the kind who can now detect even the faintest imperfections, isn’t importing just any old olive oils or even just your run-of-the-mill, high-quality ones. She’s after the delicate olive oils made along the southern coast of France or similar oils made in other countries. Not sure what the difference is? She’ll be hosting a tasting demonstrations with bread from local baking company Bona Dea at the showcase that takes place from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Space 12, 3121 E. 12th St..
You can still buy tickets for the event (full-priced tasting tickets cost $60, $55 for Slow Food members, but you can buy fewer tastings for $40 or $35 for members), which will feature food and drinks from dozens of local purveyors.
What three things are always in your fridge? Cheese, eggs and whatever is in season at Boggy Creek Farm.
What’s your favorite condiment, besides olive oil? Hellman’s mayonnaise. On anything.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten with olive oil? Nutella, salt and toast.
Photo by Mary Beth Murphy.
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Natural Epicurean culinary school moving, adding more classes
Casa De Luz used to be one of the only places where you could get a decent vegan meal, but now there are vegan offerings on menus across the city and several raw restaurants, including the Talkhouse, Beets Living Foods Cafe and the Daily Juice Cafe, have opened.
As the scene has grown, so has the Natural Epicurean Academy of Culinary Arts, which was recently purchased by the owners of Yoga Yoga. The culinary program used to host classes in the educational space next to Casa De Luz, but now it is moving to a bigger space at 1700 S. Lamar Blvd.
The new facility is scheduled to open next month, but the school will host a grand opening celebration in the parking lot in front of the new facility from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. The event will feature cooking demonstrations, tastings and tours of the new space.
With the move to the new location, the Natural Epicurean will expand the number of classes it offers to the general public. You can still enroll as a student in the 900-hour culinary arts program that begins in August and ends with an externship next year, but now anyone can learn the basics of raw, vegan, ayurvedic or macrobiotic food preparation, as well as specialty topics such as gluten-free cooking or foods for a healthy pregnancy, in cooking classes that start at $45.
If you’re interested in enrolling as a student, the school will be awarding one full scholarship to a recent high school graduate and three $5,000 scholarships to students who are already work in the yoga, health care or macrobiotic industries.
Information on the classes, scholarships and grand opening are all available on the website.
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Aussie baker returns to Sugar Mama’s just in time for World Cup
A year ago, Pryles and Sugar Mama’s owner Olivia O’Neal, cupcake shop owners with similar baking styles who met on Twitter, teamed up for a week of Aussie-meets-Austin baking at O’Neal’s bakery, 1905 S. First St.
They hit it off so well that Pryles, who owns Sugadeaux Cupcakes in Melbourne, has returned to Austin and Sugar Mama’s, where through Sunday, she’ll be selling Australian specialties including wattleseed shortbread cookies, chocolate crackles (a “childhood staple” Pryles says that is like a crisper, lighter version of Rice Krispy treats), malt chocolate cupcakes, tart cupcakes topped with Sour Patch Kids gummies and, my favorite, pistachio cardamom cupcakes called Persian Delights (above).
It’s too bad I didn’t have a dozen wattleseed cookies to bring to one of Claudia Alarcón’s World Cup feasts during the opening weekend match between Germany and Australia.
I went to one of Alarcón’s famous fêtes for a story in Wednesday’s paper about how, for foodies, the biggest sporting event in the world is just another excuse to eat dishes from around the world.
On Wednesday, the Aussie soccer team faces Serbia at 1:30 p.m., and to celebrate, Pryles and O’Neal will be giving away free chocolate crackles for every dozen cupcakes or cookies purchased from the Aussie line of sweets.
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Ahead of ‘Inedible to Incredible’ premiere, John Besh talks seafood, oil and frumpy shoes
It’s a crazy time to be John Besh.
The New Orleans chef and James Beard-winning cookbook author has spent much the past two months being the unofficial spokesman for the Gulf coast as the oil spill has threatened an entire way of life for people in his native Louisiana.
When he’s not traveling with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal or telling anyone who will listen about the gravity of the situation, he’s running a family, including four boys, and a family of restaurants, which within a few months will include a restaurant in San Antonio, his first outside Louisiana.
On top of it all, Besh is the host of a new series on TLC that premieres tonight at 9 p.m. “Inedible to Incredible” has been billed as the “What Not to Wear” of food, and, having been made over on national TV on the long-running fashion show, I can tell you that the comparison is spot on.
For the show, Besh ambushes seemingly hopeless home cooks, who don’t see anything wrong with dishes like adult baby food and strawberry cereal-laced hamburgers, shows them how awful their cooking really is and then walks them step-by-step on how to make it better.
“I had to be the bad cop and that galled me to death,” he says. “That one sound byte sounds crass, but it is for their good.” He says it was a life-changing experience for almost every person he worked with during this season.
Life-changing, indeed.
With the “What Not to Wear” cameras rolling in late 2007, hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly ambushed me at a downtown concert venue to tell me that I was a horrible dresser. It was humiliating to have a stranger have to break the news, but the truth was that I needed to hear it.
Watching the first few episodes of “Inedible to Incredible,” I empathized with the embarrassment, defensiveness and ultimate eagerness to learn that many of the “contestants” showed. It was a smart move by TLC to take the “What Not to Wear” format and apply it (almost identically) to food.
“(Food) is such a personal thing,” Besh says. “People don’t want to go there. I would never say to my wife that she dresses poorly or that she cooks poorly.” He says that after watching a few episodes of “What Not to Wear” with his wife, Jennifer, he thinks twice before walking out the door. “It’s made me conscious, and I think to myself, ‘OK, I can’t look like a slob. I can’t wear frumpy shoes’.”
I told him that his show will undoubtedly have the same effect on home cooks.
The former “Top Chef Masters” contestant is no stranger to television, but he says he is relieved that his TV appearances now aren’t limited to chef competitions. “People are looking at food on TV now as a sport, and that’s not why I cook,” he says. “So I stopped doing them. This is a show that can really make a difference” because ultimately, it’s about teaching people how to be connected with their food and how to cook with passion. “The show isn’t, ‘Hey, look at what I can do.’ It’s ‘Hey, look at what you can do’.”
He sees a connection between his work educating the public about what’s really going on in the Gulf — 60 percent of Louisiana’s coast is still open for fishing, he notes — and the impact he has with the new show.
Traveling around the country with TLC and stepping into other people’s kitchens, he says he quickly realized that few people are connected with the food traditions of where they grew up. “We’re all required to be stewards of where we are from,” he says. “I’m a product of these coastal communities. This is where I come from and this is who I am. It just happens that the problems of my city and region make front-page news.”
People come to New Orleans for the culture, and the food is a big part of that, he says. “After Katrina, New Orleans bounced back in a remarkable way…But right now, the oil itself isn’t affecting the daily life in New Orleans other than the psyche of the people that we’re up against a wall in another disaster.”
The biggest battle ahead for the Gulf is the perception, even many years in the future, that seafood from that region is tainted. “It’s more than the seafood; It’s more than the shrimp. It’s a culture,” he says.
And he knows he owes everything he has, including this show, to that culture. “If it weren’t for this seafood, this culture, nobody would know who John Besh was,” he says. “What I do wouldn’t have the allure.”
“We have a civic responsibility to do the best we can with the talents that we have. I’m not doing any more than what’s expected of anyone else.”
Photos from TLC, Judi Bottoni for the Associated Press and Lori Waselchuk for the New York Times.
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Hot Links: Spaghetti Uh-Ohs, Jesse James’ Austin burger joint and the Soup Nazi returns
Uh, oh is right, Campbell’s: The soup maker is recalling 15 million pounds of Spaghetti O’s dating back to 2008.
Stay classy, PETA: Naked protesters, covered in fake blood and laying on large trays covered in plastic, demonstrated in downtown Austin last week. I’ll let the Austinist host those pictures.
The Soup Nazi is back: This brings a tear of joy to my eye. The New York Times reports that the man made famous on Seinfeld will reopen his Soup Kitchen International in the same location next month. He closed the store six years ago to “pursue franchise opportunities and frozen soup production with the Original Soupman brand.” During one of my most memorable trips to New York in the early 2000s, Al Yeganeh served me some of the best soup I’ve ever had from that store. I couldn’t be happier that he’s back.
Food and form: If you have the same fondness for pastries and Paris as I do about the Soup Nazi, check out this short film over on Gastronomista that celebrates the similarities between food, architecture and design found throughout the city.
Critics yelp on Yelpers: On the Bon Appetit Foodist blog, restaurant critics from across the country, including our own Mike Sutter, chime in on the topic of user-generated restaurant reviews. (For those of you who followed along during the discussion of this topic at SXSW and on Relish Austin earlier this year, I’m still waiting on the SXSW Interactive folks to post the podcast of our session.)
Fonts geeks, rejoice: Yummy new fonts from HandmadeFont.com.
Get your thump on: The Luling Watermelon Thump is this weekend, in case you needed a reminder.
But do we really need either? TMZ reports that Jesse James isn’t just moving to Austin, he want to open a Cisco Burger, too.
Houston news: Katharine Shilcutt, aka @she_eats, is taking Robb Walsh’s job as the Houston Press restaurant critic, and Walsh, a cookbook author and former Austin Chronicle restaurant critic, is teaming up with Reef chef Bryan Caswell (another Texas chef who loves to drink Lone Star) to open a Tex-Mex restaurant in Montrose. Oh, and Tyson Cole is looking to open a sushi restaurant in H-town.
Speaking of Tex-Mex: Yellow cheese, “cantina” and three other signs you know you’re eating Americanized Mexican food.
A different kind of revolving restaurant: For 11 days later in October, the London Eye will turn into a vertically revolving eatery. Each Ferris wheel capsule will seat 10 diners and will feature one course per revolution.
RIP, Jimmy Dean: The former country music star and sausage maker was found unresponsive in front of the television.
Taking the farm on the road: The filmmakers behind “King Corn” have a new endeavor: farming out of the back of a truck.
Peanut-free flights? I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. The transportation department is considering a ban on peanuts on airplanes.
Up next, kombucha keg stands: The varying level of alcohol in kombucha — and the lack of proper labeling to explain it — has caused Whole Foods to pull kombucha from its shelves.
Rethinking processed: Ezra Klein makes a good point: Not all processed foods are bad.
Recipes, rendered: One of my new favorite sites, They Draw and Cook, features beautifully illustrated recipes from artists around the world.
Americans can’t handle the gay: After McDonald’s starting airing commercials in France that featured a gay teen, a company official made it clear that the “mistake” wouldn’t be shown in the U.S.
Southern Food: The Movie: With the help of the Southern Foodways Alliance, not to mention a big write-up on The Atlantic, filmmaker Joe York is hoping to turn his series of short documentaries about Southern food into a full-length film, possibly to air on public television stations.
Photos from HandmadeFont.com, Wicked Delicate Films, Michael Schmelling for the Associated Press, They Draw and Cook and Susan Hochbaum.
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East Side Show Room chef Sonya Coté: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
She’s the boss lady over at East Side Show Room, Mickie Spencer’s funky, vintage restaurant on East Sixth Street that opened earlier this year.
Coté serves an almost entirely locally sourced menu, mainly with produce from Rain Lily Farm just a few miles east of the restaurant. In her magical free time, she continues to operate a catering company and hosts supper club dinners like the one a week from Saturday (June 26) that will benefit the HOPE Farmers Market.
(The dinner, at 8 p.m. on Saturday at Big Red Sun (1102 E. Cesar Chavez St.), will feature a cruise ship-themed menu made with local ingredients. You can buy tickets and find out more online. Cruise ship is attire encouraged.)
And, best of all — at least in the mind of this momma of a young boy — she’s accomplished all this while raising her son into the kind of independent-minded 17-year-old who likes to do things like soap.
What three things are always in your fridge? White Mountain yogurt, lard and eggs
What’s your favorite condiment? liquid aminos, jamine’s restaurant style salsa, nutritional yeast
What’s your go-to late night snack? Popcorn, roasted nut trail mixes (with chocolate & raisin), Asian rice cracker mix (with nori & wasabi) & grapefruit
Fridge photo by Sonya Coté, Coté photo by Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Springdale Farm, new kid on the East Austin block, is bursting with tomatoes
Within one square mile off East Seventh Street in East Austin, you’ll find four urban farms. Almost 20 years ago, Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler paved the way with Boggy Creek, and in the past three years, Rain Lily, HausBar and now Springdale farms have followed.
But the farms and the farmers who run them aren’t just geographically close. Paula and Glenn Foore, who planted the first seeds at Springdale Farm in January of 2008, say their neighbors have been nothing but supportive as they’ve cultivated their 5 acres in the past year and a half.
“Dorsey (Barger of HausBar) will send an e-mail to all of us, ‘What are you all doing about these effing leaf-footed bugs?’,” Paula Foore told me earlier this week while we cooled off in the air-conditioned office that doubles as a farm stand on particularly hot Saturdays and Wednesdays.
In addition to their community-supported agriculture program, the Foores, who recently hosted a Dai Due Supper Club dinner, have started selling directly to chefs around town, and they just added the Wednesday farm stand this week to unload the hundreds of heirloom tomatoes that seemed to ripen simultaneously.
(The farm stand, 755 Springdale Road, is open from around 9 a.m. to at least 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and you can check on their website to find out what they’ll likely be selling each week.)
It was great to get to know Paula and Glenn this week. They are great additions to the local food scene, and like their fellow East Austin farmers and in the true Austin spirit, have decided to chose community over competition.
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At Swoop House, blurring the line between a supper club and a restaurant
Stephen Shallcross calls his Supper Friends Supper Club the most unusual restaurant in Austin, “because it’s only available when we’re able to cook.”
Several times a month, the owner of 2 Dine 4 catering, along with Jeffrey’s alum chef Chris Chism, hosts a multi-course, BYOB meal at the Swoop House, a renovated Hype Park house that Shallcross moved over to East Austin in 2008.
2 Dine 4 operates out of a commercial kitchen space and the house-turned-office at 3012 Gonzales St., just off East Seventh Street, but about a year ago, Shallcross realized that the Swoop House was more than just a pretty office space. He acquired a restaurant permit so he and his staff could host dinners when they weren’t preparing food for a wedding or event.
Called the Supper Friends Supper Club, the dinners cost between $40 and $60 and, because it’s a restaurant/supper club hybrid, feature whatever kind of menu Chism is in the mood to serve.
At a dinner in early June, it was South American-themed with pappas rellenas, black bean tamales, a saffron-infused Brazilian shrimp stew called moqueca baiana and chicken served over a roasted garlic and caramelized onion tart.
Dinners usually start around 7:30 p.m. with cocktails based recipes from Austin’s Tipsy Texans starting at about 6:45. Because they often plan the dinners on short notice, the best way to find out about them is to join the mailing list.
Shallcross says that because weddings and other events slow down in July and August, they’ll be hosting several dinners a week. The full schedule should be posted on the website soon.
Here’s a look at the dinners they are planning in July:
- Tuesday, July 6
- Friday, July 9
- Wednesday, July 14, featuring guest chef Miguel Hernandez
- Thursday, July 15, featuring guest chef Miguel Hernandez
- Thursday, July 22, featuring guest chef Larry Kocurek
- Saturday, July 24, featuring guest chef Holly Ratcliffe
- Tuesday, July 27
- Thursday, July 29
- Saturday, July 31
Top photo by Casey Woods.
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Want to make better pizza at home? Austin blogger offering classes
Christian Bowers has spent years perfecting his pizza dough recipe.
The Austin Food Journal blogger, who also works in photography, marketing and web design, took a scientific approach in developing a three-day, cold fermentation dough that is the basis of his infamous pies, which he serves almost every week at pizza parties at his house.
After enough queries from friends and foodies, Bowers is now offering a pizza-making class so you can learn some of his tricks and techniques for making a top-quality pizza — and by top-quality, I mean as good or better than just about any pizza you can buy in a 500 mile radius of Austin — in your home oven without buying any special equipment. (Except maybe a pizza screen, but we’ll get to that.)
The dough is much sticker than what I’ve been used to making (“If it ain’t sticky, you’re not doing something right,” he said at a class earlier this month), but the resulting crust has a far better taste and texture than I knew was even possible from a standard kitchen oven.
The key is making the dough a few days ahead so the gluten has time to properly develop, forming the pie by hand instead of with a rolling pin, preheating the oven to as hot as it will go (Christian’s goes to 550 degrees; mine tops out at 500) and baking it on a pizza screen, which you can buy for a few bucks at a kitchen supply store.
Bowers has learned all kinds of good lessons, from the best kind of flour to use to how to pick the best toppings (forget the pre-shredded mozzarella), and the class is a good opportunity to find out his technique without going through all the trial and error yourself. He offers them about once a month at his house, and the next class ($75, which includes slices of freshly baked pizza and dough to take home) is from 1 to 4 p.m. on July 10.
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Exploring the art of fried chicken
You often hear about the “art of cooking,” but how often do we really recognize that a cook is a performance artist who expresses an individual interpretation of an emotion through food?
From 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, explore the art of fried chicken during “Culinary One Acts,” an event at the former location of Ms. B’s, 1050 E. 11th St., that is part of the Black Arts Movement festival.
After a screening of a short documentary about the late Southern food expert Edna Lewis, Austin food writer Toni Tipton-Martin, who just returned from a trip to the White House to launch Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools campaign, will talk with three local cooks as they make their unique style of fried chicken.
“These women are known in their communities as great cooks,” Tipton-Martin says. “We want to spotlight the differences in style in each person’s execution, as well as showcase the personality and family history in each recipe.” Audience members will get to sample each of the three versions of fried chicken, as well as dishes that will appear on the menu of a new restaurant from Homer Hills, the former owner of Mr. Catfish. Tickets cost $15 at the door, and a pass to all the BAM festival events cost $65.
Photo by galant via Creative Commons on Flickr.
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I see discounts on barbecue in your future
Eat a lot of barbecue? You might get some use out of the Q Card, a new discount card that gets barbecue lovers everything from a free drink or dessert to a discount on meat by the pound.
The card is the creation of Drew Thornley, the enthusiast behind the hardcore barbecue blog Man-Up Texas BBQ who hosted this year’s Gettin’ Sauced barbecue sauce contest.
More than 20 barbecue establishments around Texas have signed on to accept the card, which costs $10 and is good for a year. (If you buy one by the end of June, it only costs $7.50.) Check out the site to buy one or find out where you can use it.
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‘Lunch Line’ doc digs deeper into school lunch reform
At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the Alamo Drafthouse at Lake Creek, 13729 Research Blvd., is hosting a screening of “Lunch Line,” a new documentary that explores many of the issues related to school food and the attempts to reform it.
Michael Graziano, who co-directed the film with Ernie Park, says that this will be one of the first screenings of the documentary and that several local food advocates will be on hand for a discussion after the film. In addition to its regular menu, the Drafthouse will be offering healthy school lunch foods for this screening.
Tickets cost $7 and can be purchased online.
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Culinary Academy of Austin to become first Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts
Austin is a long way from the small village outside Nice, France, where Auguste Escoffier was born and where the museum that honors his culinary legacy is located, but an Austin culinary school is set to become the first Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.
On Friday, the Illinois-based Triumph Higher Education Group announced that it had purchased the Culinary Academy of Austin and would be turning it into the first of a handful of culinary schools named for Escoffier, who many consider to be the father of modern cooking.
Escoffier’s great-grandson, Michel, who is president of the Escoffier museum and foundation, will be involved with the development of the Austin school and will be on its its advisory board.
Paul Ryan, president of Triumph who once led the Le Cordon Bleu culinary programs in the U.S., said on Friday that Austin was a perfect fit for the new venture. “I love Texas, and Austin has always been a city that piqued my interest.” Ryan says he was drawn to the Culinary Academy of Austin’s size and staff, so he approached Steve Mannion, who founded the Culinary Academy of Austin a decade ago with his wife Elizabeth Falto-Mannion, about acquiring it.
Mannion said on Friday that the deal had been in the works for about a year, but just a few months ago, “we were told that we were no longer part of the deal.” Thursday was Mannion’s last day at the academy, and he says he’s already looking into different food-related opportunities around the city.
Ryan says he’s working to create a collection of five to 10 “boutique culinary schools” that would honor the legacy of Escoffier, who died in 1935, more than three decades after he published his landmark textbook, Le Guide Culinaire.
After getting approval from several state regulatory agencies, Ryan says he plans to add two kitchens to the current location in Central Austin, as well as more instructors. He says the goal is to have around 250 students enrolled in two programs: one for culinary arts and another for baking and pastry.
“Part of the program will be working with the local community to buy our products locally,” he said. “We want to be focused on sustainable cuisines, and I believe Austin satisfies that part of our education.”
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Bryan Bracewell of Southside Market: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Southside’s roots date back to 1882, when a man named William Moon started selling beef and pork from the back of a wagon in Elgin, about half an hour east of Austin. Moon eventually opened up Southside Market, which has been in the meat business ever since. The Bracewell family bought the market in 1968 and has passed the company down through three generations of barbecue lovers.
In addition to running the restaurant and market, Bryan Bracewell hits the road several times a year, usually with a smoker in tow, for festivals and barbecue events to share a true taste of Texas barbecue with folks who aren’t lucky enough to live here.
Earlier this week, I ate at Southside with a group of chefs, restaurant owners, farmers and producers who were participating in a tour of local farms and food companies. We enjoyed the smoked chicken, ribs, brisket, pork steak, beans and potato salad, but there’s just no competition when it comes to the perfectly fatty and spiced sausage that has made Southside famous.
Bracewell will be serving sausage and brisket at Sunday’s festival, which features iconic foods from across the country (including Ted Drewes custard from St. Louis!) and famous foodies like “Top Chef” judge and chef Tom Colicchio and Southern food royalty Paula Deen and Pat and Gina Neely.
What three things are always in your fridge? Beef, salad fixins and milk (twin 4-year-old boys go through about 3 gallons weekly!)
What is your favorite condiment? Authentic Texas barbecue folks don’t need condiments, but I like to spice up my foods from time to time with any vinegar-based, red-pepper hot sauce!
What food are you most excited to try at the Great American Food and Music Fest? I can’t wait to try a hamburger sandwich from Louis’ Lunch, who claims to be the birthplace of the American Hamburger. They are a family-owned business that still makes authentic hamburgers the way they did in 1900.
Fridge photo from Bryan Bracewell.
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Driftwood winery hosting summer series of movies in the vineyard
There’s something inherently sexy about watching a movie outdoors.
Maybe it’s because we’re so used to sitting in freezing cold theaters where the seats make our butts go numb and we’re forced to eat junk food and over-salted popcorn.
This summer, Mandola Estate Winery in Driftwood, just southwest of Austin, is hosting movies in the vineyard on the second Thursday of the month through August, starting with “Bottle Shock” tonight at 8 p.m. (The film will start about 9 p.m.)
The movies are free, and you can buy a bottle (or two) from the winery as well as pizzas, cheese plates and other grub from Trattoria Lisina, the on-site restaurant. Bring your own blankets, chairs and kids, but no outside food, drink or animals. If the weather is bad, they’ll just move the party inside.
Check out the Facebook page for more details.
Photo from ‘Bottle Shock’ (2008, 20th Century Fox).
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Butter, sugar and a little bit of magic make Hope & Glory Pastry treats stand out
I like the way Jesse Kelly-Landes thinks about sweets.
The owner of Hope & Glory Pastry says that pastries should be an indulgence. “It’s not a treat for good behavior. It’s not just for special occasions,” she writes on her website. “No day is complete without a sweet little nibble or a morsel of something rich and buttery.”
Kelly-Landes was a clothing designer in Austin when she realized that her though her “hobby gone haywire” was fun, she didn’t feel compelled to learn any more about it. “The only thing I wanted to learn about was food, and I saw that as a sign that I needed to change.”
She enrolled in a six-month pastry program at the San Francisco Baking Institute, where she thought she’d learn to become a bread baker, “but once I was there, I just fell in love with the pastry,” she says. “I still love bread, but I don’t want to make it in large quantities.”
She moved back to Austin and eventually started Hope & Glory, which launched with five products ($2.50-$3.50 each or $8-$11 per half dozen): brown butter shortbread, salted pecan praline polvorones, raspberry chipotle chocolate rugelach, a pecan-, caramel- and chocolate-topped salty sweet butter cookie called a magic bar and a gluten-free, spiced-filled meringue ball. To make the items, Landes uses local ingredients as much as possible, including eggs, pecan and honey.
The Magic Bar and the Meringue Épice are two of her tastiest and most unique creations (not to say that the shortbread isn’t anything short of divine).
For the meringue, Kelly-Landes says she was inspired by an Egyptian spice blend of nuts, coriander and cumin called dukka. “There are a lot of gluten-free desserts, but I’m never going to make a gluten-free version of chocolate chip cookie that I love as much as the original, so why not making something totally different,” she says.
It’s hard to say if it’s the pecans or the caramel or the sable breton crust that make the Magic Bar stand out, but the combination of salty sweet buttery flavors makes this one of the best locally made sweets I’ve tried in a long time.
You can buy Hope & Glory pastries at several shops around Austin, including Whip In, Cafe Caffeine, Genuine Joe, Royal Blue Grocery, Little City Coffee, Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, Breed and Co. and Farmhouse Delivery and online through Etsy.
To celebrate the launch of the company, Kelly-Landes is hosting a party at Bows + Arrows on South Lamar Boulevard from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday with sweet treats and cocktails.
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Market Watch: Gulf seafood, ZubikHouse trailer, plums
Everybody asks about it, so Roberto San Miguel finally had to put up a sign:
Yes, seafood from the Texas side of the Gulf is fine to eat. No, the oil slick from the BP spill that is still gushing off the coast of Louisiana hasn’t made its way to the western part of the Gulf, which means that the shrimp, red snapper and other fish from the Freeport and Port Isabel area that San Miguel Seafood sells to both customers at the farmers market and local restaurants is safe to eat.
San Miguel says that the negative perception is having almost the same effect on sales as if the oil had floated this way instead of toward Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Shrimp season is just around the corner and, barring any hurricanes whipping the slick hundreds of miles in a different direction, Texas shrimpers will make their hauls just like any other year.
Peaches have been getting all the love lately, but plums are also for sale at local farmers markets. I found these beautiful baskets at the downtown farmers market on Saturday.
Another fun addition to the downtown market is the ZubikHouse trailer, which features locally sourced dishes, including breakfast (kolaches and a spin on eggs Benedict were on the menu on Saturday) and desserts like fried strawberries. Andy Zubik, who also has a catering business, will soon be expanding to the Sunset Valley market on Saturdays.
UPDATE: Knitted or other crafted foods have become quite popular in recent years, and Vicky Chazan has started a company called Toys for Dogs, which sells knitted, squeaky dog treats. I found them at the Sunset Valley market a few weeks ago, but the best way to order them is online or by phone (512-468-6427). They might officially be dog treats, but I know of a few kids who might get just as much enjoyment from these toy fruits and vegetables.
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Celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain, Sara Moulton coming to Austin
June is a big month for celebrity chefs coming to Austin. Culinary bad boy Anthony Bourdain will be speaking and signing copies of his new book, “Medium Raw,” ($26.99, Ecco) at 7 p.m. June 29 at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd. Starting at 9 a.m. the day of the event, you can pick up a wristband at the store if you’ve purchased a copy of the book from BookPeople.
Will Bourdain be shooting an episode of “No Reservations” while he’s in town? The week of his appearance at the Paramount Theatre in April, his crew shot footage at several local trailers and dropped hints that the former chef might be back to try some of the food himself this month.
Faraday’s Cooking Store, 1501 RM 620 North in Lakeway, is hosting two Food Network notables in the next few weeks. At a free event on Saturday, TV show host and former Gourmet executive chef Sara Moulton will be cooking from her new book, “Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners,” ($35, Simon & Schuster) at 11 a.m., followed by a book signing at noon. Faraday’s, which is the only Texas stop on Moulton’s book tour, will have copies of her book for sale.
From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 19 at Faraday’s, learn how to cook Caribbean-inspired dishes from Dzintra Dzenis, the Austin-based chef appearing on this season of “The Next Food Network Star.” Class costs $25, and call 266-5666 to reserve a seat.
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Austin(-ish) band Vega to appear on ‘Dinner with the Band’
If you need proof of how connected music and food are, just look at what’s happened to South by Southwest.
Not only are the thousands of people who come to Austin for the technology, film and music festivals on the prowl for something good to eat, food is the subject of dozens of panels, movies and parties during the March cultural bonanza.
At this year’s music festival, the Independent Film Channel brought in chef and TV host Sam Mason to shake cocktails at the channel’s IFC Crossroads House downtown
Now, Austin is going to Mason.
Vega, a disco pop band whose frontman Alan Palomo — who also performs as Neon Indian — is based in Austin, will appear on Mason’s “Dinner with the Band” at 9:30 p.m. on IFC on Tuesday (June 15).
The episode features Mason preparing a menu of seared snapper, apricot salad and micheladas with the band, which performs songs between courses.
The folks at IFC were happy to pass along Mason’s recipes, including for the crazy complicated michelada, which doesn’t have to be that hard to make:
Vivid Snapper
2 whole snappers, about 2 lbs each
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Cumin granola (see recipe below)
Edamame puree (see recipe below)
Apricot garden salad (see recipe below)
For cumin granola:
1 1/2 cup oats 2 tsp. cumin seed 1/4 cup honey 3 Tbsp. canola oil 1 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 325 degress. In a large bowl, toss all ingredients well and spread onto baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes until golden brown, mixing every few minutes to brown evenly. Let cool and put aside.
For apricot salad:
1/2 cup dried apricots 1 cup apricot nectar 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar 1 Tbsp. olive oil 1 cup edamame, blanched 1/2 cup dried apricots, sliced thin
In a small saucepan, bring dried apricots and nectar to a boil and simmer until apricots are tender. Transfer to blender and puree smooth adding oil and rice wine vinegar to taste. Let cool. In a small bowl, toss raw edamame and dried apricots with 1/4 cup of apricot emulsion. Set aside.
For edamame puree:
2 cups frozen shelled edamame 1/3 cup mirin 1 tsp. Thai fish sauce 1 Tbsp. shiro dashi 1/2 cup olive oil 2 tsp. rice wine vinegar Salt and pepper to taste
Boil frozen, shelled edamame until tender. Puree edamame and the rest of the ingredients in a blender until smooth. Set aside and keep warm.
For snapper, scale whole snapper and remove both fillets from each. Season fillets with salt and pepper.
Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan. Add the snapper skin-side down, pressing lightly to form crust. Cook 5 minutes on skin side until crisp, flip snapper and cook 2 minutes more. Transfer the fish to a plate.
Place spoon full of edamame puree onto plate, top with snapper filet, then apricot salad and cumin granola. Drizzle more apricot emulsion on plate for garnish. Serves 4-6 people.
— Sam Mason
Michelada
1 1/2 ounces mole Worcestershire (see recipe below) 2 dashes mole bitters 3 dashes maggi seasoning 1/2 ounces lemon juice Pinch of cayenne 12 ounces beer, preferably light Mexican beer Ancho-chili salt for rim (see recipe below)
For mole Worcestershire:
2 ancho chiles, dried 3 ounces pomegranate molasses 2 ounces lime juice 6 ounces orange juice 40 dashes mole bitters 2 tsp. magi seasoning 1 tsp. kosher salt
Toast ancho chiles over medium-low open flame. In a small saucepan, add toasted ancho chiles, pomegranate molasses, lime juice, orange juice and bring to boil, stirring until it reaches a syrupy consistency. Remove from heat. Let cool and pour into another container, removing ancho chiles. Add mole bitters, maggi seasoning and kosher salt. Makes 1/2 quart. Keep whatever you don’t use in the fridge for up to a month.
For ancho-chili salt:
2 Tbsp. ancho chili powder 1 Tbsp. kosher salt
Mix ancho chili power and salt and pour onto plate wide enough for rim of a pint glass.
To make the michelada, rim chilled pint glass with ancho chili salt. Add mole Worcestershire, bitters, maggi seasoning, lemon juice and cayenne to glass. Finish by pouring beer over ingredients. Garnish with lime wedge.
— Sam Mason
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Learn seasonal cooking, nutrition in Happy Kitchen classes
For more than 15 years, instructors with the Sustainable Food Center have been teaching free nutrition and cooking classes to underserved areas in the community. The Happy Kitchen/La Cocina Alegre classes are usually offered in Spanish, but in the past few years, there has been a big enough demand from the community at large that the Sustainable Food Center is offering the classes for a fee, according to Susan Leibrock, community relations manager for the organization. “The fees help offset the cost of providing the classes to those who could not otherwise afford to attend,” Leibrock says.
The series of six, 90-minute classes costs $175 and includes cooking demonstrations, nutrition and wellness information, a copy of “The Happy Kitchen” cookbook and ingredients each week so students can try making the recipes at home. “You can go to cooking classes that are entertaining or pretty advanced, but we want to provide the in-between classes where people can find out how to cook on a budget, in season” or following certain nutritional guidelines, says Joy Casnovsky, director of the program.
The next round of classes, which are held in the early evening at various community sites around Austin, won’t start until fall, but in order to get a head count and set up the classes, the Sustainable Food Center is encouraging people to sign up now. The organization is also looking for churches, schools, businesses or non-profits who would like to host classes. E-mail katy@sustainablefoodcenter.org for information on attending or hosting classes or to register.
I got to sit in on one of the last classes before the summer break, where two Happy Kitchen facilitators taught us ways to incorporate more calcium into our diets. They used fresh ingredients to make these two easy dishes that are perfect for summer salads. Â
Creamy Green Dressing
1 cup canola or olive oil (if using for a dip, reduce amount to 1/2 cup or less)
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp. apple juice
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp. fresh basil, chopped
1/2 tsp. salt
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
1 cup low-fat yogurt or buttermilk
6 spinach leaves (optional)
Put all ingredients in the blender except for the oil and blend for one minute. While the blender is running, slowly add the oil. Turn off the blender as soon as the dressing thickens and the oil is combines. Chill for 30 minutes and use as a salad dressing, dip for vegetables or as a marinade. Â — From ‘The Happy Kitchen’ cookbook
Thai Cucumber Salad
1 large cucumber, sliced
1/4 white or yellow onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup cilantro and/or mint
1/2 tsp. chile paste
1 Tbsp. lime juice
2 tsp. white wine or rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. sugar
1-2 Tbsp. fish sauce
1/2 cup chopped roasted almonds or peanuts
In a medium bowl, combine cucumbers, onions and herbs. In a small bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients except for nuts and whisk until combined. Pour liquid over cucumber mix and let marinate for approximately 30 minutes to allow the flavors to combine. Top with nuts and serve.
— From Lindsey Ripley, a Happy Kitchen facilitator
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Food blogger, record label owner Emily Gross: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Emily Gross is as obsessed with music as she is food.
Gross, who owns the Austin record label Artifact Workshop with her husband, John, mixes the two in her very cool food blog, Gnocchi No Plan.
Whether she’s writing about cooking, gardening or eating egg sandwiches and tater tots, Gross includes a song and lyrics with each blog post.
As if her food blog isn’t fun enough, the musicians she and John work with are pretty cool, too. They make this video to go with a CD release party for a local artist named Neilyo, who is playing a gig on Sunday at the Mohawk.
What three things are always in your fridge? leftovers for the next day’s lunch, good beer, and ketchup
What’s your favorite condiment? TexaFrance pesto! We put it on everything…grilled cheese, rice, breakfast tacos…you name it.
If you could only eat one vegetable for the rest of your life, what would it be? This is a tricky one. We’re both vegetarian and really love our vegetables. But let’s go with garlic! It’s the perfect food, and it would be hard to cook anything without it.
Photo by Emily Gross.
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Pick your own blueberries just east of Austin
Starting Saturday, Chickamaw Organic Farm in McDade will be open for pick-your-own blueberries.
Most of the pick-your-own blueberry farms in Texas are in the east/northeast part of the state, so to have a place less than an hour from Austin is pretty exciting for a Missouri girl like myself who stained her fingers blue picking blueberries and blackberries every June.
Pick-your-own berries (certified organic and biodynamically grown) at Chickamaw are $6 a pint, and you can only pick on the weekends. Call (512) 567-3456 if you have questions.
Directions: Go eight miles past Elgin on 290 to the little community of McDade. Look for a blinking light and turn right onto FM 2336, aka Swiftex Road. Continue approximately 2 miles or so and turn left onto Oak Hill Cemetery Road. Follow road exactly 2.1 miles (mark your odometer) to the Chickamaw gate on left hand side of the road.
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BBQ, beer and a book signing with Robb Walsh on Sunday
Houston food writer Robb Walsh will be in Austin on Sunday for a book signing party at Franklin Barbecue.
The former Austin Chronicle restaurant critic’s new book “The Tex-Mex Grill & Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook” isn’t for barbecue wannabes. Walsh’s new book follows the pattern he’s set with previous Tex-Mex and cowboy books by including recipes as authentic as the taco truck owners and pitmasters he profiles in it.
(Want to know what’s in his fridge? In early 2009, just before a book signing event in Austin for “Sex, Death & Oysters,” it was stocked with, you guessed it, oysters.)
The party at Franklin Barbecue, just south of Fiesta on the northbound I-35 frontage road, on Sunday starts at noon and will feature barbecue, beer and, of course, Walsh signing copies of his book.
Photo from Robb Walsh.
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Austin food writer Toni Tipton-Martin headed to White House for Obama event
Tipton-Martin was invited to attend the event to share with other food leaders her experience of starting a similar nonprofit in Austin two years ago. (Check out the most recent post on her food blog, The Jemima Code, to find out more.) The former Southern Foodways Alliance president started the SANDE Youth Project to teach cooking skills, nutrition and core values to underprivileged kids.
Obama’s nationwide program will help educate students on nutrition as well as improve the quality of the school meals. “People who are already doing similar programs will be sharing how they are getting it done, the problems they’ve had and inspiring and encouraging each other,” Tipton-Martin said before leaving for Washington D.C.
Photo from Toni Tipton-Martin.
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The fine line: When is a slaw a pickle?
I learned the quick pickle method from Stephanie Scherzer of Rain Lily Farm and Farmhouse Delivery, who has taught plenty of helpers like me the method of pickling vegetables in the refrigerator instead of a water bath or pressure canner (she uses those methods, too, but she says she likes the bite in fridge pickles).
(Click here to see more photos of the quick pickle party, as well as the refrigerator jam.)
The batches of quick pickles we made (beets, carrots and fennel) couldn’t be confused with slaw of any kind, but a dish of cucumbers marinated in vinegar and sugar that my neighbor happened to make just a day later made me ponder where exactly the line was between a pickle and a slaw.
Her cucumbers were definitely more pickles than slaw, but they were sliced so thinly that just a few more chops of a knife and a little less of the vinegar, and you might think you were eating a mayonaise-free cucumber slaw.
I posed the question on Twitter and Facebook, and got a number of interesting responses:
Pickles are frequently in bigger pieces than slaw, which is usually comprised of shreds or, as New York Times food columnist Amanda Hesser called it, slivers.
Slaw needs a touch of sweetness, says Elaine DiRico, and a pickle leans to savory. “Maybe a slaw is fork food and pickle is finger food?”
Brittany Darwell of He Cooks, She Cooks says, “When I think slaw, I think grated or julienned veggies.
“Pickled vegetables are fully submerged in a brine and then taken out when they’re eaten, whereas a slaw is tossed with the mixture and eaten all together,” she writes.
Pickles also sit in their brine for longer than slaws last in their marinade. @Pfillipp notes that less liquid in slaw means that less flavor is imparted, and more pickle liquid equals more flavor.
But Darwell poses some good questions: Does a slaw require vinegar? Does any acid make something picked? “Say I make a buttermilk, citrus or tamarind dressing for shredded vegetables. It’s still slaw, right? But you wouldn’t call sliced vegetables in those acids pickled, would you?”
On the other hand, Andy Alford, a metro editor at Ye Old Statesman, says a slaw isn’t a slow without mayo or cream of any kind.
This is food geekdom at its best, my friends.
Kimchi and sauerkraut are two dishes that really make this discussion interesting. The vegetables, often cabbage, are shredded and then pickled and fermented. @fooddewd puts it best: Slaw over time is sauerkraut.
Amount of liquid, time in liquid, size of pieces all seem to play a role in determining whether something is a slaw or a pickle, but what other big differences do you see? And remember, we’re not just talking traditional summer coleslaw here…
Retro photo from the National Agriculture Library.
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Hot Links: Cooking Channel launches, free doughnuts on Friday, Gary V in New Yorker
Food stamp report: A former restaurant critic in Washington state, who once enjoyed a $1,300-a-month expense account for food, found himself without work and relying on food stamps. He turned his experience into a very thoughtful story in the Seattle Times, a different animal than the hunger awareness project that Austin food bloggers participated in in April.
Free doughnuts: For National Doughnut Day, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts are offering free fried dough. No purchase necessary at KK, but you’ll have to buy a drink at DD.
What, no ‘Peaches’? On the Huffington Post, 11 songs about food from the 80s and 90s.
More Food TV: The Food Network launched The Cooking Channel over the long weekend with a gimmicky attempt to get food bloggers to take a break from blogging and promote the new channel (all for the small chance of getting a T-shirt. Whee!) I’m among the growing number of people who have dropped cable altogether over the past few years, so I’m permanently out of the food cable TV loop. Am I missing much?
Getting in the food biz: The L.A. Times reports on the increase in the number of people selling food they’ve grown, hunted, foraged or put up. “At the Orange County Swap Meet, officials said the number of people selling home-canned beans and other homemade edibles grew to 30 vendors this month, up from eight vendors in early 2007.”
Gary V is your friend. Not! Tad Friend, aka Mr. Amanda Hesser, has a pretty funny, sarcastic and spot-on snapshot of Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk in this week’s New Yorker. “What Gary V is really all about is relationships. According to the theory of Dunbar’s number, you can’t have relationships with more than a hundred and fifty people. But you can if you redefine what a relationship is.”
Grilling through the ages: Just in time for summer, a photographic flashback of grilling through the past five decades through the eyes of Magnum photographers.
Salty dough: A Pizza Girl tells her side of our pizza-making morning on Slice, including the honest truth about how unenjoyable whole wheat dough is when you go from flour to oven in less than two hours.
‘Filthy’ reporting: A Houston blogger stands up for taco trucks everywhere when a local TV station seems to go out of its way to portray local vendors as “filthy.”
Lard love: The Pioneer Woman shares her love (and a recipe) for homemade flour tortillas.
Maybe her name was Gretel: The British magazine Healthy admitted to fattening up a model whose “bones stuck out too much” by airbrushing her image before publication.
Photos by Katie Falkenberg for the L.A. Times, Elliott Erwitt for Magnum and Ree Drummond for The Pioneer Woman Cooks.
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Summer side dish: Grilled corn with cotija cheese, lime, butter
Hope you got your fill of hot dogs, sunburns and cheap beer this Memorial Day weekend!
Grilling season is year-round in Texas, but like everyone else in the country, we seem to cook outside more once the days get longer and the heat makes that cold beverage taste just a little colder.
I went to a few barbecues this weekend, and my last-minute contribution at one of them was a mix of roasted corn, cotija, lime and butter inspired by dishes I’ve had at the upscale interior Mexican restaurant La Condesa and Frank, the downtown hot dog joint.
La Condesa serves the traditional elote, roasted corn on the cob rolled in cotija cheese and ancho chili powder. At Frank, grilled corn is cut off the cob and mixed with chili mayonesa, lime juice, cilantro and cotija cheese.
This time of year, grocery stores often sell whole corn still wrapped in their husks for cheap. Super cheap, like six ears or more for $1 cheap.
At a neighbor’s barbecue yesterday, I made a combination of elotes and that buttery, lime-y corn dish at Frank from corn I’d bought on sale at the store just a few days before.
As I husked the corn at the picnic table, my fellow guests quickly brought up the to-husk or not-to-husk debate. I fall decidedly on the to-husk side: Corn doesn’t need much cooking at all, much less to be “steamed” by the husk. Direct heat will cook and caramelize the kernels quickly, giving them more flavors and texture than if you leave the husk on. Cook’s Illustrated recommends soaking the unwrapped cobs in a saltwater brine before grilling, but I just rubbed on a little butter and salt and grilled them straight until some of the corn had started to turn brown.
In a bowl, I cut off the kernels (or “upzip” as the frisky cooks like to say) and mixed them with more butter, crumbled queso fresco and a lime pepper salt mixture I had hidden in the spice cabinet.
I would have prefered to use cotija, if I had it on hand, but I didn’t, so queso fresco it was. (Cotija is aged and stronger than fresco, but in a pinch, either will work.)
I rarely cook with recipes for dishes like this, so for you fellow renegades, feel free to add ancho chile powder, chipotle chile power, cayenne, cilantro, fresh lime juice, mayonnaise or any number of additional ingredients to make your own version of this dish.
For those of you after a recipe, here’s a basic outline, but feel free to mix and match with the ingredients you have and like:
Roasted corn with cotija cheese, lime, butter and ancho chile powder
6 ears corn
4 Tbsp. butter, divided
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cotija cheese
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp. ancho chile powder
Pull back the husks from the corn, but don’t remove them entirely. Leave the husks attached to act as a handle to rotate the cobs while grilling. Rub half the butter on the cobs and sprinkle with salt. Place on the grill and cook, turning every few minutes, until the kernels have started to turn brown, about 8 minutes.
As you hold the corn by the husk over a medium bowl, cut off the kernels from the cob. Mix in the rest of the butter, cheese, lime juice and chile powder. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, if needed.
— Addie Broyles
Top photo by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman. Bottom photo by anotherpintplease on Flickr, via Creative Commons.
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