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July 2010
Patricia Vonne: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
The Austin-based musician and singr has appeared in a number of films directed by her brother, Robert Rodriguez, including “Sin City,” “Spy Kids” and “Machete,” which comes out in September.
But the seductive Vonne is best known for her sultry songs such as “Traeme Paz,” which cross just about every Latin-inspired musical genre and many of which she sings in Spanish. Just this week, she opened for Los Lonely Boys at a concert at Dell Diamond.
It looks like the September 24 show at the Continental Club will be your last chance to catch her before she heads off to Europe for a tour this fall.
What
What’s your favorite condiment? Old Bay
What’s your favorite post-concert late-night snack? Pizza from Homeslice (I buy slices for the crew and band)
Fridge photo by Patricia Vonne.
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How to juice (or How I learned to love my grandmother)
Making juice isn’t nearly as complicated as making nice.
For most of my life, my dad’s mother has been this weird figure in my life. I lived near her when I was a small child, but during the 20 formative years during which I really became the person I am today, we had little or no contact.
She was this aunt/grandmother hybrid who always lived far away and to whom my father had his own rocky relationship. But in the past few years, by some magical turn of events, they have reconciled, and although I was always delighted that they were reconnecting, but I was ambivalent about making the effort to do the same.
After all, she was still living a few states away, and I was tending to my own life in Austin.
Enter, The Juicer.
In today’s column, I wrote about how her giving me an old Champion juicer when she recently moved to Austin was like a peace offering after all these troubled years. (I told you the cover she made for it makes it look like a Scottish terrier.)
It’s much more complex than that, of course, but there’s a lot to be said about food (and food gadgetry) being a language of love.
I’m having fun making all kinds of juice with this new-to-me beast of a juicer, which I’m sure would grind meat if I put it to task, but I’m enjoying even more this newfound grandmother-granddaughter connection. It takes two to reboot a stalled relationship, and for the first time in our lives, we are two adults who are playing on the same team.
Have food or kitchen appliances played a role in a reconciliation in your life? If not, are you a juicing guru with tips to share?
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Watch Austin shine on ‘No Reservations’ segment with Anthony Bourdain
Thanks to the YouTube gods, here are Austin’s 7 minutes of “No Reservations” glory from the episode that premiered a few weeks ago.
By the number of times Anthony Bourdain drops the f-bomb in reference to our cuisine, I think it’s safe to say that he likes it. (Mike Sutter has a much more detailed — not to mention entertaining — review of Bourdain’s Austin segment over on Forklore.)
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Fruits, vegetables losing nutrients, former UT researcher finds
Fruits and vegetables in the U.S. just aren’t as packed with nutrients as they once were.
This decline was first reported in produce from the UK more than 10 years ago, and in 2004, a former UT researcher found that the same thing was happening to conventionally grown crops in the U.S.
In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on? Davis believes it’s due to the farming industry’s desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce’s ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.
Sarah Burns has the full report in Prevention magazine this month, including details about why organically grown produce often have higher levels of nutrients and tips on how to get the most out of the fruits and vegetables you do buy.
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Pure Luck goat cheese family: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
For 15 years, Pure Luck Dairy has been producing some of the best goat cheese in the state.
Amelia Sweethardt and Ben Guyton run the Dripping Springs farm and dairy, which was started by Amelia’s mother, Sara Bolton, and to celebrate 15 years in business and the first birthday of their son, June, this summer, they redesigned the company’s logo and launched a new cheese called June’s Joy.
You can find Pure Luck’s fresh and aged cheeses in cheese shops and higher end grocery stores like Central Market and Whole Foods throughout the state, and starting today, the just-opened H-E-B in Dripping Springs will be selling Pure Luck’s cheeses just a few miles from where the goats are raised. (To say folks in Drippin’ were excited about this store is an understatement. Check out this photo gallery of the people who showed up before dawn to be among the first shoppers.)
Amelia and her sister Gitana also run cheesemaking workshops in the spring and fall, which is the only time the farm is open to members of the public.
What three things are always in your fridge? Peanut butter, eggs from our own chickens, and mustard.
What’s your favorite condiment? Some sort of jelly or fruit spread. I like to put it on cheese and sandwiches. My husband, Ben, has been known to make peanut butter and jelly tacos with flour tortillas for kids.
What’s the first thing you pull out of your fridge in the morning? Milk for my tea.
Photo by Amelia Sweethardt and from PureLuckTexas.com.
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Book tells tale of LBJ, the food pirate
If you like quirky food facts, you’ll likely enjoy “What the Great Ate: A Curious History of Food and Fame,” a new book about the crossroads of food and celebrity by brothers Matthew and Mark Jacob.
Mark was kind enough to pull out some of the Texas-specific anecdotes from the book and send them to me:
- President Lyndon Baines Johnson was a food pirate at banquets. “Most of the time, he had no manners,” former Texas Gov. John Connally once recalled. “He’d eat off of the plate of either person on either side of him. If he ate something that he liked and they hadn’t finished theirs, he’d reach over with his fork and eat off of their plate.” Aide Bobby Baker said LBJ ate “like a starving dog.” And if the president didn’t like the fare, the server might get bit. One time, LBJ berated a secretary: “No wonder you don’t have a husband. You can’t make a simple cup of coffee.” Another time, he brought House Speaker Sam Rayburn home for a meal, and lashed out at Lady Bird: “Can’t you serve the speaker of the house anything better than turkey hash?”
- When billionaire Howard Hughes learned in 1966 that Baskin Robbins was discontinuing his favorite flavor of ice cream, banana-nut, he instructed his personal staff to buy 350 gallons of the stuff.
- Actress Joan Crawford, born as Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, had many inspiring film roles, but none more memorable than her depiction of an invalid tortured by her sister in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” In a shocking scene, Crawford’s character is served a large rat on a platter. After the movie opened, co-star Bette Davis hosted a cocktail party, featuring a pate in the shape of a rat.
- Bonnie Parker, who was born in Rowena and whose crime wave with boyfriend Clyde Barrow terrorized the American southwest, was eating a sandwich when she and her gang were fatally ambushed in Louisiana in 1934
- Desperado Jesse James reportedly refused to rob a bank in McKinney, because his favorite chili parlor was located there.
- Michael Lee Aday, the Dallas-born singer known as Meat Loaf, was a vegetarian for nearly a decade.
- Mary Kay Ash, a native of Hot Wells in Harris County, struggled before launching her successful cosmetics business. She and her husband sold kitchen cookware, demonstrating their wares by cooking free meals. “Each dinner was fabulous,” Ash said, “but it was food we couldn’t afford to buy for ourselves. If there was any food left over after the demonstration, it became our dinner. If our prospective customers ate it all, we just didn’t eat that night.”
Photo via daylife.com.
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Big Red and Big Tex: Sharing your Texas food traditions
I wish Missouri had as many food traditions as Texas does.
After you list the biggies (Kansas City barbecue, baked ravioli, Ted Drews custard, Springfield-style cashew chicken) and the traditions we share with many other Midwestern states (church potlucks, casseroles, schnitzel, apple pie), even native Missourians would be hard-pressed to come up with other unique foodways.
But Texas has some of the most diverse and interesting food traditions in the country, and Texas Folklife, a nonprofit that works to preserve the state’s cultural history, wants to hear about them.
The group is conducting an online survey to collect stories and details related to Texas foodways that will eventually become part of future exhibits and documentaries.
Texas Folklife wants to hear your holiday eating traditions, food memories and observations on how food has changed during your life. No detail is too small, and as I’ve written about before, when it comes to food, the juiciest tidbits are always found in the details.
Photo by Rich Anderson via Flickr Creative Commons.
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Hot Links: Wine bra, baby in a watermelon, free chips for checking in
Take that, Anne Geddes: Serious Eats points us to all kinds of fun this week: A blog that shows the insides of fruits and vegetables via MRI and a baby in a watermelon.
Feeding a Need: The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas got props from Mashable last week when its IPheedaNeed app was named one of the top 5 nonprofit iPhone apps in the country.
Is that wine in your bra or are you just happy to see me? Just in time for the Austin City Limits music festival: The wine bra!
A traveling friend: Claudia Alarcón, the soccer-obsessed food writer I wrote about a few weeks ago, has launched CuisineXplorers, a guided travel service focused on food. Alarcón is a native of Mexico City, so the first food trips will be to there, but she says she hopes to expand to other locations in Mexico soon.
Finally, an incentive for ‘checking in:’ I’ve been waiting for restaurants to start giving us a real reason to tell all our friends on Twitter and Facebook that we’ve stepped foot in their space via Gowalla or Foursquare, and Chili’s has stepped up to the challenge. The chain is offering free chips and salsa to people who check in on Foursquare.
May the peach be with you: From The Kitchn, a beautiful ode to summer. “May you be thoroughly, completely, absolutely in the middle of summer…(It) is for ripening, for allowing the sugar to come forth and the protective layers to soften.”
Got milk? Oh Joy Eats tells us about so-called magic straws that turn regular milk into vanilla-, chocolate-, strawberry- or cookies and cream-flavored milk. ($2.50 for five straws, available online or soon at Target.)
‘Cause nobody wants foam in their nuggets: Chicken Nuggets and Silly Putty share a common ingredient: dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent.
Don’t squish the bread: Ready, Set, Bag! is a new documentary about the world of competitive grocery bagging.
In a pickle: Can’t get enough of pickling this summer? The Atlantic tapped Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook to give 10 new ideas to inspire even the most seasoned picklers.
Paella party: Has Spain’s World Cup win given you la fiebre espanola? Here are 9 classic Spanish dishes to make at home and a primer on sangria.
Soda man: CHOW was nominated for an Emmy for this short documentary on a soda shop owner in Los Angeles.
Kombucha love: Tolly Moseley, Statesman Social Media Award winner and Austin Eavesdropper blogger, is getting in on the kombucha action with this illustrated post to help you make your own. (What, you don’t know about Tolly and her bleet-ups? If you’re a blogger in Austin, check out this summer’s blogger meet-up from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday at TRIO.)
Mug envy: I love Esty. Mustache beer glasses.
Hate Starbucks? You are most certainly not alone.
Photos from Serious Eats, Oh Joy Eats and Etsy.
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In the mood for Indian? Curries by Design offers same-day delivery
Some nights, especially during the workweek, you just don’t feel like cooking.
Eating out is always an option, but Curries by Design, a local catering and meal delivery service company, allows you to order Indian fusion meals for same-day delivery during the first half of the week.
Owner Aparna Nayani says that as long as you order online by noon on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, one of her staff will deliver your order between 6 and 9 p.m. the same day. (Delivery to just about anywhere in Central Texas is free for orders over $40.)
Nayani, who first started to cook as a teenager living in Houston, says the menu is different each week because she’s always coming up with new dishes like tikka paneer quesadillas, spicy creole pasta and kebab-inspired sliders and meatballs to serve alongside traditional fare including samosas, curries, korma and keema. “I take world cuisine and try to incorporate Indian flavors into it,” she says. “It’s a never-ending process.”
During the second half of the week and weekends, Curries by Design switches gears into catering mode, preparing food for corporate events and weddings.
In a few weeks, the company is launching “Lap of Luxury,” a line of cookies that will feature flavors including masala chai, rose pistachio and saffron cardamom.
Photos by Jarrad Henderson for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Bloggerly Love: Gelatin never looked so sexy
Gelatin is so hot right now.
More than a century after Jell-O introduced the product as we now know it, gelatin-based desserts are back in a big way (Brooklyn’s Jello mold mistress was recently featured on the Splendid Table), and Austin blogger Casey Grim is making just about the sexiest jiggly treats I’ve ever seen.
Her blog, the Modern Gelatina, features creative boozy desserts like this vodka-infused basil blueberry lemonade.
Forget Jell-O shots. Using fresh fruits, quality spirits and inventive simple syrups, Grim makes desserts that are in line with the serious approach bartenders are now taking to cocktails.
Grim shares a handful of tips and tricks for making your own, but not all the posts come with a recipe.
“I don’t want to give away all my secrets,” she writes.
Photo by Casey Grim.
Do you write a blog about food? E-mail me about it, and I’ll add it to the blogroll on the left side of this page. There are more than 200 food blogs in Central Texas, and the Austin Food Bloggers group on Facebook is our hub.
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Kitchen Confession: I’m on team bouillon
I know it’s the middle of summer, and soup isn’t on anybody’s mind (well, except everyone buzzing about the Soup Peddler’s new walk-up, quick-service venture on South Lamar Boulevard with Daily Juice owner Matt Shook).
But just because it’s too hot for soup doesn’t mean I’m not going through my fair share of bouillon.
Truth is, I’m a bouillon fan. I know, I know. Homemade stock is best. It has less sodium, more flavor and is easy to make, but you couldn’t pay me enough to give up my stash of Knorr bouillon cubes.
Tomato, beef and chicken bouillon are staples in my spice cabinet and in my cooking. I rarely make rice without plopping a cube of chicken bouillon in the water as it comes to a boil. The secret to killer pulled pork from the slow cooker? Shred the pork after it has cooked and heat it over the stove with additional spices and a cube of tomato bouillon.
And the juiciest confession? Almost every time I make chicken stock from scratch, I end up having to add bouillon to amp up the flavor.
Kitchen Confession is a series of blog posts highlighting the bad habits we refuse to break in the kitchen.
What’s your dirty kitchen secret? E-mail me at abroyles@statesman.com. Photos are optional, but encouraged.
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Dorsey Barger and Susan Hausmann: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
It’s been 22 years since Dorsey Barger and Elaine Martin started Eastside Cafe, the Manor Road restaurant that has been a pioneer of the eat-local movement in Austin. The restaurant staff had always grown some of its food in a garden on site, but it wasn’t until about three years ago, when Barger started working the beds herself, that the garden bug bite her.
Now, she and partner Susan Hausmann have their very own 2-acre organic farm located just a few miles from the restaurant in East Austin. “We don’t buy eggs anymore,” Barger says proudly when I ask her how much of what they produce goes to Eastside Cafe. HausBar Farm has also provided just about every single tomato that has been served this summer at the cafe.
She and Susan have added a beehive and, most recently, goats, which means Barger will get to start experimenting with making goat milk cheese pretty soon.
You can get a sense of Dorsey’s delightful personality from her answers to the questions below. (Longtime readers of this blog will remember a post from last year that told the story of Dorsey’s connection to the Washington D.C. school that President Obama’s daughters attend. She attended as a young girl and her grandfather was one of the founders.)
What three things are always in your fridge?
1) Charcuterie from Dai Due Supper Club and Butcher Shop. Since Susan and I are both always on the go, we stop by the Dai Due booth at whichever farmers’ market they happen to be on Saturday and pick up an assortment of meat, preserves and condiments. Add some crusty bread and you have an instant meal.
2) Farmers’ market vegetables: We can walk out the door to pick fresh produce for ourselves, so our own veggies are never in our refrigerator, but those veggies we don’t have the space to grow, we buy from our farmer friends.
3) A selection of Real Ale brews (we buy the mixed 6 packs) and a good bottle of wine or two or three. Lately, we keep Adelsheim ‘07 Chardonnay from Willamette Valley, Oregon in supply. It’s the best Chardonnay I’ve ever tasted from anywhere in the U.S.
What’s the first thing you pull out of your fridge in the morning? Containers of organic grains, fruits and vegetables that I’ve prepared for our 3 birds, Asher the African Gray, Chloe the Meyer’s parrot, and Elliott the cockatiel. I feed them first thing every morning while I sip on a strong, dark cup of Katz Coffee. I nibble on their fruit while I feed them since I’m not a big breakfast eater.
What’s the one vegetable you couldn’t live without? That is way too hard a question! I could list 20 that I couldn’t live with out, but for the sake of trying to answer the question, the one vegetable I couldn’t live without would be heirloom tomatoes. Or wait, beets. No, carrots. But then there’s cauliflower. Damn! That’s 4.
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Think you know the ratio for vinaigrettes? Think again
Vinaigrette: A dressing made with 1 part vinegar emulsified in 3 parts oil.
We’ve all been trained to think of vinaigrettes in this ratio, but when working on today’s story about the oil-and-vinegar dressing, I had a revelation: 3-to-1 only works with certain oils and certain vinegars to certain palates.
During a tasting tour at his store, Jeff Conarko of Con’ Olio Oils and Vinegars explained that vinegars vary widely in their levels of acidity. Aged vinegars, like the balsamic vinegars he sells in his store, have half the acid as non-aged vinegars (red and white wine, rice, apple cider, etc.) like the kind found in most grocery stores, which means you can use a ratio closer to 1 part oil to 1 part aged vinegar and still not have a dressing that is as tart as the kind that comes from a bottle.
And just like any dish, our palates have different tolerances for tartness and sweetness, not to mention oil. (When I lived in Spain, my Spanish roommates usually only dressed their salads with salt and about twice as much olive oil as you or I would typically use.)
The good news is that it’s easy to add a little more oil or vinegar (or garlic, salt, sugar, herbs, mustard or any other flavoring) as you go when you’re making your own dressing. (The folks at Patsy’s Cowgirl Cafe made this particular vinaigrette, but I needed a sexy salad photo for this post, so there you have it.)
(Homemade dressings still not for you? Check out this 2006 story by Kitty Crider about the dozens of locally made salad dressings in Central Texas.)
Top photo by Jarrad Henderson for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Get kids cooking (and don’t worry about the mess)
There aren’t many cooking schools that cater to kids as young as Julian.
Kids’ cookbook author Barbara Beery knows that 3-year-olds like him have the reputation of being more mess makers than competent cooks, but she says that’s more parents’ fear than reality. (The mother of three has been teaching kids how to cook for 20 years, so she knows they can make a mess, but makes a good point: Isn’t cooking inherently messy?)
Beery recently opened Kids Cook!, a cooking store and activity center on Far West Boulevard in Northwest Austin where kids from 2-12 can come in between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday for 15-minute drop-in activities.
We took Julian recently, and he was pretty thrilled to get to decorate (and then devour) an Independence Day-themed cupcake. (The activities — kids can choose between a healthy one and a sweet one — cost about $11 and include some supplies to take home.)
Beery is also offering scheduled classes ($13.99 to $29.99, including cooking products and tools to take home) for various age groups on Tuesday and Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons: toque and toddler (for ages 2 to 5, 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays), koodie (6 years and older, 3:30 p.m. Wednesdays) and general interest (various age ranges, 10:30 a.m. Saturdays).
In addition to the classes, the store offers a colorful selection of cookbooks, cookie cutters, cake molds, candy kits, kid-sized utensils and other adorable products that are as appealing to adults as their young chefs.
In today’s Relish Austin column in the paper, I listed a bunch of other cooking classes in coming weeks targeted to young chefs (here are more photos from a Central Market cooking class and Kids Cook!), but I forgot to mention the Kids Chef Camp at Faraday’s Kitchen Store in Lakeway.
The four-day camp ($189) is open to children ages 7 to 13 and runs in the mornings and afternoons through the middle of August. There are also two remaining camps for teens ages 13 to 18 (1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., August 2-5 and August 9-12)
Each day at the camps, students prepare two or three recipes in addition to basic cooking skills, menu planning and nutrition, and each week is a different theme. Sign up for the classes through the website or call the store (266-5666).
James Brosher photos for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Smithsonian chef to prepare Native American dinner in Goldthwaite to raise money for museum
Goldthwaite is best known in the food world for its annual goat cook-off, but this weekend, the small town about an hour and a half northwest of Austin will host a fundraiser dinner that will feature the chef of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Richard Hetzler was the executive chef at the Museum of Natural History in 2003 when he helped develop the idea for a cafe serving seasonal indigenous foods that are the staples of native cultures in North and South America. The result is the Museum of the American Indian’s Mitsitam Cafe, which Hetzler now runs. (He also wrote “The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook,” which comes out in November.)
Earlier this year, Fischer was dining at the cafe in Washington D.C. when she asked Hetzler if he wouldn’t mind sharing a few ideas for what to serve at a Native American-themed fundraiser dinner for the new museum. ” ‘How about if I cook it for you?’, he said,” Fischer recalls.
This weekend, Hetzler and several other officials from the Museum of the American Indian will be in Goldthwaite to consult with members of the Native American Interpretive Center’s board and attend the dinner on Saturday night, which will feature Native American dishes including sweet corn cakes, corn-infused crab cakes, grilled rosemary quail, calabaza squash soup, buffalo tenderloin and warm chocolate tamales.
Brennan Vineyards in Comanche will provide wines paired with each course. Fischer says there are still a few tickets ($200) available and that you can buy them by calling her at (325) 642-7527.
Photos from the Native American Interpretive Center and the National Museum of the American Indian.
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Hot Links: Roger Ebert’s cookbook, Pekar and Bourdain, California goes cage-free
Roger Ebert, cookbook author: The film critic, who lost the ability to speak and eat solid food because of cancer of the jaw, has published a book on ways to use a rice cooker.
Cage-free in California: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that requires that all eggs in California come from chickens that can fully extend their wings without touching other birds or the sides of the enclosure. Not exactly a law insisting on free-range birds, but it’s a start.
Yuck: If this photo of a British kid in front of all the junk food he’ll likely eat in a year doesn’t shock you, maybe McDonald’s CEO’s defense of the use of toys to sell fast food food to your kid will.
Bears and homovores: While Eater invents the (cringe-worthy) “homovore,” the Dallas Voice reports that Tom Colicchio, who embraces his sex object status within the bear gay community, will ride will not ride on a bear float at next year’s L.A. pride parade.
Gulf Coast update: Oil from the BP spill in the Gulf has been found on blue crab larvae. Big deal, right? It is when you consider that larvae are the primary source of food for many small fish, which are then eaten by bigger fish and which you then eat. Torchy’s Taco’s Taco of the Month this month is the shrimp taco called “Damn BP.” Torchy’s is donating a dollar for each taco sold to Gulf Coast relief efforts. This weekend, the all-star Houston Chowhounders are hosting another of their famous throwdowns, and this Monday, it’s a ceviche throwdown to benefit coastal families and fishermen struggling after the oil spill.
No more drive-thrus: In Baldwin Park, Calif., where the drive-thru restaurant is said to have originated, the city council has banned any more new drive-thrus at restaurants.
Tired of stadium hot dogs? A traveling baseball producer from Seattle has figured out that all that eating he does on the road has made into something of a restaurant critic on the radio. (Too bad he’s not blogging his efforts so we could all enjoy food from the baseball trail.)
Cranky meets cranky: Comic book icon and subject of the 2003 film “American Splendor” Harvey Pekar died this week, and Eater dug around to find the Cleveland episode of “No Reservations,” where the notoriously cranky artist took Anthony Bourdain to lunch.
Austin, deep in the Heartland: Austin got wrapped into a “Heartland” episode of “No Reservations” that premiered on Monday. (Apparently, any place that isn’t on the East or West Coast is the heart of America.) Bourdain on East Side King: “Come, all ye hipsters, with your mutant mash-up food, your strange and wondrous treats, to my neighborhood. And soon.”
Chips with your salmonella? On the Statesman’s Salud blog, Mary Ann Roser reports that between 1998 and 2008, salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo were the source of contamination in one out of 25 cases of food-borne illnesses that originate in restaurants. That’s twice the rate from 1988 to 1998.
Recalls on the go: Want to track food recalls from your phone? There’s an app for that.
I’ll have mine grilled, with paprika: What will come of the Paul, the psychic octopus who predicted eight World Cup wins? Some who want revenge have sent death threats to the eight-legged clairvoyant, while others, including Spanish chef Jose Andres, want to honor him by removing octopus from the menu.
Beer Summit, 2.0: Remember the conflict between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the cop who arrested him that President Obama settled over a beer? Obama’s back at the beer negotiations, this time with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who refused to acknowledge that beer tastes better cold. They agreed to disagree on this one.
Hot enough for you? New Yorkers, facing the kind of summer like we had last year, have been cracking fried-egg-on-the-sidewalk jokes, so the New York Times couldn’t resist trying it out. (Texans have known that it’s just a myth for years, but we’ll let the Northeasterners have their fun — and they can keep the heat, too.)
No, thanks: Footlong cheeseburgers. Anyone? Anyone?
Presidential Food Network: The White House has a cooking show. “Let’s Cook,” which is part of the newly relaunched Let’s Move site, exists only online, but it features White House chefs pairing up with other notable chefs to create inexpensive and healthy dishes.
Ebert photo by M. Spencer Green for the Associated Press, junk food photo by Murray Sanders for the Daily Mail.
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Royal Blue Grocery to open third location downtown
Royal Blue Grocery, the downtown merchant that’s more like an upscale convenience store for people who work and live in Austin’s urban center, is adding a third location in mid-October at 609 Congress Ave., in between Sixth and Seventh streets.
The store will be located in the space that Wiki Wiki Teriyaki once occupied and will feature a full kitchen, delivery and catering in addition to hundreds of food and non-food products, many of which are made by local companies.
Photo from Royal Blue.
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Olive oils, balsamic vinegars from new(ish) Dripping Springs company
We might not have the Mediterranean Sea, but Texas certainly shares the climate of many grape- and olive-growing countries in southern Europe.
In the 1970s, Texans wanting to get into the wine business figured out that they could grow varietals here that do well in the dry, hot climates of southern France, Spain, Italy and even Greece.
By the mid-1990s, the same thing was starting to happen with olive trees, and now, twenty years later, the Texas olive oil industry is a small, but growing industry.
One local newcomer is Texas Hill Country Olive Oil, a company founded in 2008 that is co-owned by brothers-in-law Rick Mensik and John Gambini.
Located on a 17-acre organic ranch near Dripping Springs, Texas Hill Country Olive Oil Company got a jump start on oil production in early 2009 by bringing in olive trees from California that were old enough to start producing fruit.
“The minute we put them in the ground, they started fruiting,” says Gambini, who noted that the company is halfway toward its goal of putting 2,000 trees in the ground. “The first batch was small, but it’ll be two more years before we’re 100 percent.”
In October, they’ll pick the next round of olives, which will be milled on site. After resting for 30 days in barrels, the oil will be bottled and put up for sale. (In early October, Gambini says they’ll be hosting a grand opening event to showcase the art gallery, tasting room and other amenities that he hopes will draw people to the ranch.)
Earlier this year, the company diversified its product line by adding balsamic vinegars imported from Modena, Italy. Gambini says that he wants to experiment with making his own balsamic next year from Trebbiano grapes imported from California.
Inspired by a segment on TV about lobster fishermen in Maine who allow customers to adopt lobster traps, Gambini started allowing customers to adopt olive trees for about $175, which guarantees them six bottles of olive oil, several of which can be printed with custom labels.
Photo of olives from Texas Hill Country Olive Oil Company’s Flickr stream.
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Seasonal ice cream, gluten-free treats at Thai Fresh
It always amazes me that Thai Fresh has only been around since 2008.
Walking into the Thai restaurant tucked away in South Austin at the corner of West Mary and South Fifth streets, you’d think the place had been there for a decade. Thai grocery goods and fresh produce line the back wall. Regulars sip on tea while reading or chatting with friends, and there’s always buzz near the counter where you order from a range of rice and noodle dishes, curries, satays, soups and other Thai specialties.
Even though it’s just a toddler in restaurant years, Thai Fresh doubled in size earlier this year when co-owner Jam Sanitchat took over the space next door that used to be a yoga studio. The extra square footage has allowed her to add an ice cream freezer stocked with 14 seasonal frozen treats, a dessert case with an array of pastries, many of which are gluten free, and a tea bar, which features local teas from Zhi Tea, Sesa Tea and Barefoot Botanicals.
Like the food, all of the ice creams and desserts are based on seasonal and local ingredients, including herbs from Sanitchat’s backyard garden and fruit from local farmers markets. More than half the tarts, pies, cakes, cobblers, brownies, cookies and bars ($.75-$4.50 per serving) are made without gluten, and many of the ice creams ($8.99 per pint or $1.99 per scoop), including the ever-present chocolate, are made with coconut milk and are dairy free.
During a recent visit, Sanitchat was serving scoops of ice cream in flavors such as fig, sweet potato maple pecan, Thai basil, oatmeal raisin and Sweet Desert Delight, which is made with a cinnamon, coconut and anise rooibos blend that is one of Zhi Tea’s best-selling teas.
Many of Sanitchat’s inventive fruit-based flavor combinations like ginger peach, watermelon mint and cucumber melon eventually make their way into agua frescas ($2.99) that are also a recent addition to the menu.
Is your mouth watering yet? There are few restaurant owners who take eating locally, especially when it comes to desserts, as serious as Sanitchat does. One of the best parts? She’s always sharing recipes on her blog, Thai Cooking with Jam.
Photos by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Composer Graham Reynolds: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
The composer and multi-instrumentalist behind Golden Arm Trio creates music for everything from theater productions and symphonies to full-length films, including Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly.” He recently teamed up with fellow composer and musician Peter Stopchinski to form the Golden Hornet Project, which performs Sunday night at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar downtown. (Last month, Reynolds and Stopchinski won best symphony concert at the Austin Critics’ Table Awards.)
Ahead of the Sunday night show, Graham, who has been a vegan for 20 years, showed off the contents of his fridge.
What three things are always in your fridge? Hm, lots of things. I’m vegan, so obviously that has a major impact on what I buy. Most of the time I have some sort of fresh Asian noodles from the Korean or Vietnamese grocery store (I love noodles more than anything and fresh Asian noodles are much less likely to have eggs than fresh Italian pasta).j And fresh herbs, cilantro and parsley in particular, set in water like cut flowers to preserve them. And lots of basics (soy milk, margarine, lemons, limes, garlic, homemade strawberry jam from the farmer’s market, etc.).
What’s your favorite condiment? Tough one. I like condiments; the intensity of the flavors has always appealed to me. It’s probably a fight between chili pastes/sauces and mustards. I guess I’ll go with mustard because I have so many of them and use them more as a condiment than as an ingredient, while chili pastes (I have quite a few of these as well) I probably use equally both ways.
What’s the first thing you pull out of the fridge in the morning? This is boring, but usually water. We keep two Brita containers, one in the fridge and one on the counter, because I like the water cold and Shawn doesn’t.
Fridge photo by Graham Reynolds.
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UPDATED: Vendors, customers flocking to farmers market near Cedar Park
UPDATE: Starting July 17, the Cedar Park market will be moving down 183 to the Lakeline Mall between Sears and Dillards.
Walking among the booths at the Cedar Park Farms to Market, you’d never know the farmers market has only been open three months.
Dozens of vendors line up in a parking lot behind the Market 1890 Ranch Shopping Center at the corner of 183A and FM 1431 selling fresh produce, locally raised meats and dairy products and specialty items such as pecans from Schwegmann Orchard in Georgetown, baking mixes from a Cedar Park company called Blessed Blends and homemade dips from Juanita Garcia, aka Aunt Nita, who has been a staple at local farmers markets for years. One of the most unusual products is yak meat from Texas Yaks, a ranch near Weatherford.
Market director Carla Jenkins says the market, which is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays, has grown steadily since it opened in March and that later this summer, she’ll be organizing a new market in the Lake Travis/Lakeway area.
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For summer bliss in a glass, try a blueberry shrub
If you experiment with one new thing from this blog this summer, make a shrub.
I’d never heard of this colonial-era drink until I started researching for today’s story about spiffing up summer drinks with creative flavors of simple syrups. I stumbled upon a recipe for a blueberry shrub in Denise Gee’s new book “Porch Parties” and was stumped.
Apple cider vinegar? In a drink? It sounded strange, but I’d just tried a purple basil lemonade made even more delicious with a splash of balsamic vinegar, so I gave the shrub a go.
I combined one part vinegar to two parts berries (you can use just about any kind of fruit, and I’ve recently heard of bartenders making shrubs with root vegetables like carrots and beets) and let the mixture marinate in the fridge for three days. Macerate the berries in the vinegar and strain out the pulp.
Instead of sweetening it with plain sugar and then heating on the stove like the recipe called for, I added a simple syrup I’d flavored with figs and cardamom. The result was a super sweet and tart concentrate that when combined with tonic or seltzer water made for one of the best drinks I’ve had in a long, long while.
(My mom, an avid gin and tonic drinker, said a splash of gin only made it better. I’ve got another two months of this pregnancy to go before I try a boozy shrub-based cocktail, but she’s rarely wrong when it comes to gin.)
Up next? Cherry shrub. The only question that remains is what flavor of simple syrup to add. Any suggestions?
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Urban Roots builds community, cooking skills through lunches
School is out for the summer, but the work isn’t over for local high school students who are part of YouthLaunch’s Urban Roots program.
If you’ve ever been to an Edible Austin event or shopped at the farmers markets downtown or at the Triangle, you’ve probably heard of or seen Urban Roots students in action. (In fact, Urban Roots is the benefactor of the money raised during Eat Local Week, the December celebration of all things local sponsored by Edible Austin.)
The 30 teens who made the cut for the program, which teaches leadership and development skills through sustainable agriculture, will continue to harvest vegetables and sell them at local farmers markets through the end of July.
This year, they’ll grow more than 30,000 pounds of produce, a third of which is donated to local nonprofits, and during the past few weeks, some of the food they’ve grown has gone to community lunches that the students prepare with the help of a local chef.
On an early morning a few weeks ago, a handful of teens met in the kitchen of La Condesa with chef René Ortiz, who helped put on his first community lunch last year.
“I call it a community chaos dinner,” Ortiz said jokingly as he maneuvered between stations, guiding his new cooks in how to chop chives or cut up eggplant. “This is what everybody looks forward to,” said Garza High School student Leffler Ramey as he plucked leaves off New Zealand spinach plants in the cool restaurant kitchen. “It’s a nice change to be working inside instead of on the farm.”
With the addition of a few other ingredients donated by Bastrop Cattle Company and Farm to Table, Ortiz and the students made enchiladas, chiles rellenos, fried okra, quinoa salad and jalapeño poppers that they served a few hours later under the shade of trees near rows of tomato and okra plants on the Urban Roots farm.
Ethan Holmes of Snap Kitchen will work with the students for the final community lunch of the summer on Friday, which sold out a few weeks ago. (Teresa Wilson of Aquarelle and Jack Gilmore of Jack Allen’s Kitchen led two other community lunches this summer.)
But just because the community lunches are almost over for the year doesn’t mean you can’t get involved with one of the most interesting youth development programs in the area. Visit the website for information about joining the community-supported agriculture program or buy produce from them at the farmers market on Saturday downtown and at the Triangle on Wednesdays. You can also work with the students on the farm on upcoming community volunteer days (from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and 8 a.m. to noon on July 20, 22, 27 and 29.)
UPDATE: I just found out that Snap Kitchen, which has two Austin locations, is hosting a garden/kitchen tool supply drive for Urban Roots next week. Starting Monday, bring in an item from Urban Roots’ wish list and get a free menu item.
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Tyson Cole and Paul Qui of Uchi, Uchiko: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
Two chefs, two fridges and now two restaurants.
In the past seven years, under the watchful eye of Uchi chef/owner Tyson Cole, Paul Qui has worked his way up from the tempura station to second in command at what many consider to be the best restaurant in Austin.
And on opening day Tuesday, after all the barbecues and fireworks this long holiday weekend, Qui will step in as executive chef at Cole’s newest venture, Uchiko, a sister restaurant exactly four miles up Lamar Boulevard from the original.
But don’t be fooled by the names and proximity: The restaurants are as unique as the home refrigerators of the chefs in charge of the kitchens.
Could you guess whose fridge is whose?
What three things are always in your fridge? Fat free milk, baby bottles and berries
What’s your favorite condiment? Butter
What’s the first thing you pull out of your fridge in the morning? Bottled water
What three things are usually in your fridge? Sparkling water, water and butter
What’s your favorite condiment? Fish sauce
What’s your go-to late night snack? Ice cream
With 10 years and three kids on Qui, Cole’s fridge looks like just about any other busy dad’s: Colorful drawings on the outside; wholesome kid-friendly snacks and fare on the inside.
Qui’s sparse refrigerator reflects his busy schedule — in addition to getting Uchiko off the ground, he continues to operate East Side King, a trailer featuring Asian street food in the back of the East Sixth Street watering hole Liberty Bar — and time spent away from home. “My fridge hasn’t been too exciting lately,” he admits.
Fish sauce and bubbly, er sparkling, water for Qui; butter and baby bottles for Cole.
Two different chefs who lead different lives, but Uchi, and now Uchiko, bring them together.
Photos by Tyson Cole, Paul Qui and Thao Nguyen for the Austin American-Statesman.
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