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Chewing the fat
February 1, 2012
Houston-Austin connection grows through food
In today’s food section, in addition to a fun profile by the indefatigable Ricardo Gandara of Tony Sousa, who is in charge of dry-aging meats at Lone Star Food Service in East Austin, you’ll find my most recent column about the growing food ties between Houston and Austin.
Uchi Houston and Farmhouse Delivery are opening in Houston within a week of each other, and within the next week or so, Houston’s Trentino Gelato will launch in Austin with eight flavors of gelato created by Austin culinary notables Bill Norris, Iliana de la Vega, James Holmes, Jack Gilmore, Plinio Sandalio (who moved from Houston to Austin just a few years ago), Laura Sawicki, Shawn Cirkiel and Ned Elliott. (You can find the gelato at both Central Market locations.)
The connection between Austin and Houston seems to me to be much stronger than that between Austin and Dallas or Austin and San Antonio, but it’s worth noting that Greenling Organic Delivery has expanded to Dallas in recent weeks, and the Hopdoddy owners recently announced that they’d be opening the first Hopdoddy in Dallas in October.
Two Houston restaurateurs — Joe Phillips, who went to school at St. Edward’s University and runs the Oh My Pocket Pies food truck, and Scott Tycer, who went to UT and owns Kraftsmen Baking — put the connection into perspective: Lots of people go to college in Austin and then return with a certain nostalgia for their college days in our little (but growing) city, and, for Austin businesses, there’s a lot of money to be made in these large metropolitan areas.
But Phillips hit the nail on the head when he acknowledged the importance of the “weird Austin” brand. “We love anything that says Austin. Anything with a funky, relaxed dining experience that is open and feels free and super casual.”
Photo by Adam Brackman.
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January 31, 2012
What's your secret food pleasure?
When I was a kid, I used to eat peanut butter and syrup on Eggo waffles just about every morning for breakfast.
It was a decadent treat that I’m happy to admit that I still indulge in every once in a while. Some people would call this a guilty pleasure, but just because I don’t broadcast to the world that I’m a sucker for cottage cheese topped with black olives, raisins, sunflower seeds and crunchy chow mein noodles doesn’t mean that I feel guilty about eating it.
It’s just a food pleasure — like Campbell’s chicken noodle soup mixed with handfuls of crumbled Premium saltine crackers — that I hold near and dear to my heart.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m doing a story about the special relationships we have with these sometimes weird or unique foods that we love eating as much as grandma’s brunch or a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant.
Whether you drink out of the milk carton and then squirt chocolate sauce in your mouth or go weak in the knees for Cheez Whiz on Cheez-Its, I want to hear about it. I’ll be publishing many of the responses in a story in next week’s food section, so leave a comment, send an email to abroyles@statesman.com or tweet your responses to @broylesa. Heck, you can even phone them in if you like by calling 912-2504.
So, what is your secret/guilty/indulgent food pleasure?
Photo by deedoucette via Creative Commons on Flickr.
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January 24, 2012
El Greco: The most heartbreaking "Kitchen Nightmares" of all time?
Ouch.
After hearing months of chatter about Austin restaurant El Greco’s appearance on Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” the episode finally debuted last Friday night and it was everything I’d hoped it wouldn’t be.
The family that owned the business didn’t look like much of a family at all, with son/chef Jake Konstantinidis cussing at his mom, Athina, and aunt all the way up until the “make nice” segment, which even Ramsay said he wasn’t sure was going to happen. We find out that Athina and the rest of the family had poured $800,000 into the restaurant since opening it in 2007 and that Jake, who only showed up a few hours a day, was insisting that the food be reheated in the microwave.
After much yelling and name-calling (often times in Greek, with subtitles), the family appeared to have reconciled, and all the way until 35 seconds before the end of the episode, the production team led us to believe that things were looking up for both the family and the restaurant. “In the months that followed, El Greco received positive feedback from the community, and it appeared as though the restaurant was going to be turned around,” the narrator tells us. “But Jake and Athina’s insurmountable debt was too much to overcome and the mother and son were forced to close El Greco.”
No one in Austin had been able to confirm with the El Greco folks that they’d closed the restaurant for good, but customers had been reporting since mid-December that the restaurant hasn’t been open.
Julio-Cesar Florez, the chef behind the newly opened Gusto Italian Kitchen and Wine Bar, says that Anthony, one of El Greco’s primary cooks, is now “doing well” as a cook at his restaurant.
Although it’s interesting to read the back-and-forth on the restaurant’s Facebook page and on a few of the Chowhound boards about who is to blame for the restaurant’s closure and how much Ramsay’s intervention either helped or hurt the restaurant, all we know for sure is that an Austin family has closed a restaurant that they put a lot of money and emotional and physical effort into.
I haven’t been able to get a hold of the Konstantinidis family or any of the other staff to find out how they are doing, but I wish them well. If it was hard for us to watch, I can’t imagine how hard it was for them to see themselves through the lens of a national production team that won’t ever have a lack of struggling restaurants who want to be featured.
Photos from Fox.com.
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November 21, 2011
Cuneo's rum cake is light on the booze, heavy on the nostalgia
It’s been 50 years since Cuneo’s Bakery on Guadalupe Street closed, but people can’t seem to forget the bakery’s legendary rum cake.
Monica Kass Rogers, a longtime food writer in Chicago who digs up long lost recipes for her site, LostRecipesFound.com, received a request for Cuneo’s rum cake earlier this year. She was able to track down Rita Bruton and James Kennedy, whose dad, Ray Kennedy, was the production manager at Cueno’s for many years. After Kennedy left Cuneo’s in the early 1950s, he worked another 25 years at Ms. Johnson’s Bakery. Ray Kennedy was in his 60s when he retired, says his son, James. “A lot of people tried to get him to open a specialty shop, but when we retired, he was ready to be done.”
Ray Kennedy died in 2003, but his children still had the recipe for the famous cake, which the Statesman ran in 1977 and Kass Rogers adapted for home cooks who aren’t baking on a commercial scale.
When Kass Rogers served the cake to guests at her house, she realized why memories of the cake outlasted the bakery. “People were going crazy over that cake,” Kass Rogers says. “It really has something to do with that syrup. … One of my sons says this is now his favorite cake ever.”
Next year, the site will evolve to allow readers to help one another track down lost recipes, but for now, it’s Kass Rogers who gets to hunt down almost forgotten favorites. “Everybody has a recipe that they’ve loved, but lost,” she says. You can read more about Kass Rogers’ hunt for the rum cake - and find stories about other recipes and tell her about one you’ve always wanted to find - at LostRecipesFound.com.
When I got to work this morning, I had an reader email about this article, which ran in Food Matters, that made me laugh.
Thanks so very much for the historic article about Cuneo’s Rum Cake.
My mother was chief deputy county clerk in Longview, Gregg County. She had to come to Austin during the first week of December every year for a conference concerning new laws which would become effective or other such matters pertinent to county clerk operations statewide. I remember it was always the first week of December because she was never home for my birthday.
She always took orders from other courthouse employees for the famous Cuneo’s Rum Cake for upcoming Christmas parties. Every year she would “bootleg” 30 to 40 cakes back to Gregg County. She often commented that if she ever had a wreck with all those rum cakes in her station wagon and their attendant aroma, the highway patrol would lock her up so far in a back cell of the jail they would have to pump her sunlight.
Sterlin Barton Thrall, Texas
Cuneo’s Famous Rum Cake
For cake:
4 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup shortening
6 eggs
1/2 tsp. lemon extract
1/2 tsp. orange extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup milk
For butter-rum syrup:
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup water
2 Tbsp. corn syrup
2 Tbsp. butter
2 tsp. rum extract
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Generously grease 10-inch angel-food tube pan. Trace and cut out a paper liner for the bottom round of the tube cake pan. Place in the bottom round and grease again over the paper.
Sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In bowl of a standing mixer, beat sugar and butter and shortening together. Slowly (one or two at a time) add eggs in, beating between additions. Beat for three minutes. When batter is fluffy, add extracts. Mix in dry ingredients in two batches, alternating with the milk.
Pour batter into the prepared tube pan and bake for 1 1/2 hours. Test for doneness by poking a toothpick into the center of the cake. When the toothpick comes out clean and crumb-free, the cake is done. (Be sure to bake this for a full 1 1/2 hours at 325 degrees. The cake forms a crust as you bake so touching the top won’t indicate doneness.) Remove cake from oven and let rest for 15 minutes.
While cake is resting, make butter-rum syrup. Stirring constantly, mix sugar, salt, water,corn syrup and butter in small saucepan and heat until syrup begins to thicken and bubble. Remove from heat. Let cool slightly. Mix in rum extract.
Using a sharp knife, loosen cake from sides of the pan. Invert pan onto a foil-covered plate and remove pan center, using a sharp knife as needed to separate pan center from what is now the top of the cake. Remove paper from top of cake. Brush or pour syrup all over cake. Remove cake to a clean platter and serve. Cake keeps well wrapped in foil.
— Adapted from a recipe by Ray Kennedy
Photo by Neal Douglass, Austin History Center.
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November 17, 2011
"Top Chef: Texas" recap: Snakes, plates and quinceaneras
Who knew Padma had such a sense of humor?
Well, the best line of last night’s “Top Chef: Texas” episode, edited slightly for sensitive readers — “I better see some mothereffing snakes on some mothereffing plates” — was probably written by the producers, but Padma said it with such conviction that it was easily the highlight of the third episode.
This was the first episode with all 16 contestants competing in the traditional “Top Chef” format. (The first two episodes were dedicated to whittling down 29 contestants to the top 16, which included Uchiko’s Paul Qui. Andrew Curren of 24 Diner was among the 13 who lost in the first round, but he managed to hang on by a thread in the Last Chance Kitchen. More on that below.)
La Gloria chef Johnny Hernandez helped introduce the quickfire challenge to use snake meat. Qui produced a Asian barbecue snake that I thought easily looked the best of the bunch, but Hernandez didn’t like it. Dakota’s dish of beer-battered tempura snake ended up winning her immunity from elimination and a cash prize of $5,000. Not too shabby for the first quickfire, I’d say.
Snake was an interesting choice as the first quickfire, but it makes sense. Even though snake isn’t as prevalent in the Texas diet as its presence on the show might suggest, rattlesnake round-ups (and the subsequent dishes made from the harvested meat) are one of the fun, quirky things that happen in our great state, but they aren’t nearly as common as the focus of the main challenge: quinceañeras, the 15th birthday party celebrations that are a rite of passage for most girls in almost all Latin cultures.
The contestants had to cater for the quinceañera of sweet girl named Blanca. She told them what kinds of food she liked, and the teams tried to create a menu that appealed to her and her family.
It didn’t look good for contestant Keith as soon as he picked out precooked shrimp at the store. Adding insult to injury, his team served enchiladas made with premade flour tortillas, which clearly put them in the bottom of the heap.
Keith complained at the judge’s table that his teammates turned on him, using the old “they are throwing me under the bus” excuse, but they judges had no problem sending him home, or rather, to the new Last Chance Kitchen webisode series, which gives chefs who lose another chance to get back in the competition.
Clams were among the ingredients they had to use in a single dish, and though Andrew thought he had a strong dish, head judge Tom Colicchio ended up picking Keith’s dish as the winner, which officially ends Andrew’s stint on “Top Chef: Texas.” (Or so we think. They are always changing the game, so who knows if he’s really out for good.)
Photos from BravoTV.com.
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October 26, 2011
When is pickiness a problem?
Julian still remembers the time he almost choked on one of those lime after-dinner mints.
He might have only been two-and-a-half, but it was traumatic enough for the event to be ingrained in both our memories.
My husband, Ian, doesn’t remember the exact moment in his childhood when dinnertime became a stressful affair, but to this day, he’s too anxious to eat if there are a bunch of people around or if there’s any drama in the hour or so before it’s time to eat.
It’s no wonder so many of us have issues with food: eating too much of it, not eating enough, only eating certain things, etc. In today’s food section, I have a story that touches on some of the many aspects of pickiness, which blurs into the realm of eating disorders more frequently than you might think.
The problem is, few in the medical community have treated severe pickiness seriously until recently. For the past year or so, researchers with Duke University have been collecting data in an online survey about adult finicky eaters, and a TLC show called “Freaky Eaters” has helped raise awareness about certain disorders in adults, but with kids, it’s harder to tell what’s normal finicky eating and what’s not. Many times, extreme pickiness in children can indicate a more serious sensory or mental disorder that can be treated through occupational, speech or other therapy.
The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is slated to come out in 2013, will likely contain about a half a dozen eating and feeding disorders, including sensory food aversion and post-traumatic feeding disorder, which could be triggered by a near-choking like Julian had or other traumatic experience like being physically abused after refusing to eat a certain food.
Just because the DSM acknowledges these disorders doesn’t mean that the general public will, but it’s a good first step. Too often, parents (and even well-intentioned grandparents, friends and family doctors) insist on going to extremes: Either making kids sit at the dinner table until they clear their plate or becoming a short order cook and serving the same chicken nuggets or pizza at every meal.
Neither approach helps kids get over their pickiness, experts say. In fact, you can be causing more long-term harm than good, which is what I suspect happened with Ian. (He’s always been a skinny guy, so he still gets teased at family gatherings for his weight and for not eating more. No wonder he doesn’t want to eat around others.)
When I started researching this story, a number of people pointed me to Lea Gebhardt, a registered and licensed dietitian with Nutrition Therapy for Kids. Lea has a number of techniques to help kids overcome their fear of trying new things, including a learning plate, which encourages kids to explore food, not necessarily eat it.
Without the pressure to actually put the food in their mouths, kids can become more familiar with the food, even if it’s just looking at it. Then, they might get the courage to smell it, touch it, kiss it or lick it, all baby steps toward actually putting the food in their mouth to chew it.
Just like everyone has a preference when it comes to movies, music, clothes, hobbies, etc., it’s natural that we’ll have food preferences, too. It’s possible to have a healthy dislike of certain foods, especially if you continue to try new foods, including the ones you’ve always struggled with (for me, it’s celery and green bell peppers). If your eating habits interfere with your interpersonal or even business relationships, like they did with PickyEatingAdults.com founder Bob Krause, it might be time to start a conversation with your doctor.
Photos from “Freaky Eaters” and Lea Gebhardt.
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October 13, 2011
JMueller BBQ opens with a bang, some killer brisket
John Mueller is back.
It’s been a bumpy road to get here, but after five years since closing his eponymous barbecue joint on Manor Road, one of the living legends of Texas barbecue is smoking briskets again out of a trailer in South Austin.
Mueller, who hails from the great barbecue family whose name is pronounced “Miller” for those of you new to town, opened up JMueller BBQ last weekend at 1502 S. First St., right across the street from what will be Elizabeth Street Cafe (from Perla’s chef Larry McGuire and company) and a Thai restaurant (from La Condesa chef Rene Ortiz and company), and today, I finally got to check out the new operation.
I had a lunch date with Tiffany Harelik of Trailer Food Dairies (who is coming out with a trailer cookbook on Oct. 22, the same day as her Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival at Auditorium Shores, but more on that next week) and her PR rep, Karen Frost, and we all went for the same thing: brisket sandwiches.
Mueller is known for his brisket and sausages, and both were exceptional, especially for city ‘cue. The chipotle slaw was good, but the butter, cheesey baked squash was downright sinful. (I’m already planning on bringing some to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Another side note: I was so hungry and excited to eat that I forgot to actually take photos of the food. My bad.)
The good food, I expected. The number of businessmen in white collared shirts, on the other hand, was a little surprising. Out of the thirty or so people eating lunch at 11 a.m. today, there were only four women, including the three at my table.
Not that businessmen don’t eat barbecue, but there were just so many of them, including a few at the table next to ours who were fans of his when he had the Manor Road restaurant and who were just so excited about the food I had to put a camera in their face so they could tell you themselves.
After lunch, I chatted briefly with John, who seems to be doing really well considering the immense amount of pressure he’s experienced this week. In addition to running a trailer that everyone knew would be popular from the minute it opened, he’s having to be in the middle of the media spotlight, which isn’t an easy feat for a guy who is more comfortable tending his pits at 3 a.m. when everyone else is asleep.
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September 15, 2011
Who knew hot dogs could be so sweet?
I’m a sucker for well-told stories, even if they are commercials for a giant corporation that doesn’t really need the publicity.
This week, Google Chrome released a commercial that features Jenn and Daniel Northcutt, the couple behind Frank, the hot dog eatery in the Warehouse District downtown.
The short video is in the vein of the It Gets Better or Johnny Cash Project videos, which capture the spirit of what it means to belong to an online community that isn’t just about keystrokes and page views.
Google has done a good job of tapping into the humanity of the virtual world, and the Northcutt’s story — starting a business in the middle of a recession, getting support from diners who love them and, ta-da, announcing that they are having a baby — certainly gave me warm fuzzies and forget any worries that the Big G is getting too big for its britches.
Congrats on the baby, Jenn and Daniel. Just don’t name him Frank.
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September 7, 2011
Comfort me with sprinkle-covered fudge pops: Food memories of Sept. 11
You don’t need any reminding that the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are coming up.
And me telling you that I ate a sprinkle-covered fudge pop that day certainly doesn’t make any difference in your life, much less the lives of the families who lost loved ones that day or in the war-filled years that followed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It might not save lives or reverse the past, but comfort food is important and worth acknowledging. It helps us feel better in the middle of turmoil and can give us a sense of normalcy in an otherwise chaotic time.
We’re seeing this right now as restaurants, farmers and grocery stores are donating food to give a little bit of nourishment and comfort to the families displaced from their homes because of the Central Texas wildfires and to the firefighters who are fighting the flames.
As soon as the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, I was on the phone with my editors at The Maneater, the student newspaper at the University of Missouri that I’d just started working at. They needed me and another reporter to head to St. Louis to cover what was going on at the airport and the Arch. Without hesitation, we hopped in her car and headed east for a day of intense reporting.
The adrenaline of covering the day’s events made me forget that I was an 18-year-old college freshman far from my family. Although I surely ate breakfast, lunch and dinner that day, the only thing I remember was a sprinkle-covered fudge pop that my reporter friend got out of her family’s fridge when we stopped by their house outside St. Louis on the way home.
I don’t even like sprinkle-covered fudge pops, I remember thinking to myself.
But we ate them together, listening to news reports on the radio as we headed back to Columbia to develop film (I wouldn’t get a digital camera for another four years) and file our stories.
What foods comforted you that day ten years ago?
Photos from Candy.com and cadinlee via Creative Commons on Flickr.
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August 26, 2011
Ask Addie: I dropped the Crock-Pot
In this week’s Ask Addie column, I answered a question about how to keep your kitchen cool in this ridiculously hot summer, and in an attempt to explain why turning on your oven for an hour a few times a week won’t actually cause your energy bill to spike, I forgot to mention one of the most wonderful cooking devices of all: the Crock-Pot.
A reader emailed me to explain why I “blew it yesterday” by telling people that using an oven for a short period of time actually isn’t as big an energy suck as you might think it is and that the Crock-Pot is clearly the best choice for cooking this time of year.
Well, well, well.
I was remiss in mentioning that Crock-Pots are an awesome option for cooking foods like pot roasts that would require turning on the oven for longer than 30 or 45 minutes. Instead of hanging the story on the golden slow cooker, I gave a few ideas for cold soups and salads, as well as reminding people that one option is to simply cook more when you do cook so that you can have leftovers to work with later.
So today, I did a little digging around to find out exactly how energy efficient these Crock-Pots are. And the answer, like everything, is, it depends.
Gas ovens use less power than electric ovens and can get the job done much quicker than a slow cooker, so it kind of depends on what you’re cooking. Analytical Mom figured out that for some dishes, like soups, it’s often more energy efficient to use a stove.
Squawk Fox crunched the numbers and figured out that it costs about 20 cents to run a conventional electric oven for one hour, compared to 10 cents to turn a Crock-Pot on for seven hours.
Another variant to factor into the equation is that an oven cycles on and off in order to keep the heat consistent, while the slow cooker stays on.
The City of Seattle came up with this little chart to give you an idea of how much it costs to run various kitchen appliances over a two-month period:
Refrigerators and electric ovens, if you’re using them for an hour a day, are clearly the biggest energy sucks in the kitchen.
As you can tell, it’s a tricky question to answer because there are so many variables, especially variations among individual appliances (the source I talked to for the story says many appliances pull more energy than they claim on the box). I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to ponder your own energy use this weekend, when the 110 degree weather has trapped you inside.
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August 9, 2011
"The Help," Julia Child, Betty Friedan: What did food look like in 1963?
The food depicted in “The Help” — from ambrosia salad and deviled eggs at bridge club to Minny’s special chocolate pie and fried chicken — paints a vivid picture of food in the South in 1963.
And boy does the food look good. When I saw the movie a few weeks ago so I could write the review for tomorrow’s paper (In short? I loved it.), I left the theater with a major craving for fried chicken, but a few days later, I was thinking about the bigger picture of food in 1963, the year the movie is set.
That’s the same year that Julia Child made her television debut in “The French Chef” and Betty Friedan made the (at the time) blasphemous declaration that a woman’s place was not in the kitchen in “The Feminine Mystique.”
This was a turning point for food and cooking as we know it, but I wasn’t around to experience it myself, so I want to know: What do you remember about food in 1963?
What you remember eating, cooking or being served; who cooked it, where they got the ingredients and what dishes from that year still grace your table. I’ll round up the responses for a post next week on Relish Austin, and you can either leave a comment here or email your stories and memories to abroyles@statesman.com.
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August 3, 2011
UPDATE: Chef Paul Petersen joins Vivo Lake Creek
Updated with photos of Petersen’s new dishes and link to story on Thursday’s Austin360 magazine.
Petersen, who competed on the TLC show “BBQ Pitmasters” a few years ago, is focusing on Tex-Mex barbecue fusion, adding dishes like brisket tacos, crab enchiladas and pan-seared queso fresco with mango and papaya salsa to the menu. Margaritas will likely always be a bestseller at the restaurant, but Petersen has revamped the wine list since starting there, too. (To find out more about Petersen’s return to Central Texas, check out this story in Thursday’s Austin360 magazine.)
Petersen first made a splash on the Austin scene with Little Texas Bistro in Buda, which he was opening at the same time Roger Diaz was opening the original Vivo on Manor Road. They knew each other then and reconnected as Petersen was leaving Rick’s ChopHouse in McKinney.
Photos by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Eating out
July 26, 2011
Send me your culinary queries for new Ask Addie feature
If you haven’t noticed, there have been a few changes around here.
Mike Sutter, the Statesman’s restaurant critic for the past few years, took an early retirement offer from the newspaper last month. His voice, humor and observations on the Austin food scene will be missed, but I’m looking forward to reading the reviews of Matthew Odam, a film and features writer who will now be writing a few restaurant reviews a month.
Odam is another funny guy. You might have read his blog, The M.O., which he put to bed when he took on movies earlier this year. He now mostly blogs on Austin Music Blog and will contribute restaurant posts now and then on Relish Austin. (And before you and your friends get in on the “To Catch A Critic” silliness, yes, his photos are up all over the Internet. He’s not making any claims to be anonymous, and I’m sure he’ll explain in due time.)
For as long as Mike was reviewing restaurants, I tried to stay out of his way to let him cover the restaurant beat, but now that Matthew is covering both movies and restaurants, I’ll be picking up a lot of the non-review restaurant coverage, so you’ll be seeing more restaurant posts and stories from me on Relish Austin and in the print edition.
But for the past three years, I’ve really grown to love the non-restaurant side of food writing. (Yes, there is such a thing. I wish I had a dollar for every time I told someone I write about food and they replied, “Oh, so you review restaurants?”) Learning more about ingredients and cooking isn’t just fun, it’s more relevant to my day-to-day life. My husband and I cook at home far more than we eat out, and cooking food, as opposed to reheating it from the freezer or melting cheese on toast, is an empowering skill that I’m determined to help pass on to others.
Which leads me to a new Q&A feature on Relish Austin called Ask Addie, which makes it debut in the food section tomorrow.
Cook and restaurant Q&As are certainly not new, but I think they are a valuable source of information for readers. I’ll be answering both cooking and eating-out questions, but unlike the Dale Rice column that ran for many years in the newspaper, the focus of the restaurant questions won’t be giving recommendations for where to host your rehearsal dinner or take your visiting in-laws for brunch. I’m thinking more along the lines of how do you use one of those daily deal coupons at a restaurant without feeling like a cheapskate or how to sniff out a fake Yelp review.
As for the cooking questions, if you’ve always wondered about something, chances are, someone else has been wondering the same thing. (My mom recently asked me, for instance, what flavor paprika really added to food.)
Send your questions to abroyles@statesman.com, and, depending on how many I get, I’ll try to post the questions and answers that don’t make it in print on the blog.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Cooking
July 19, 2011
A crash course in physics, how to host a supper club
When I first met Navin Sivanandam, he was a contestant at a cooking contest during South by Southwest called the Pork Experiment that I was judging.
His polenta cake topped with pork rillettes, pork belly and and bacon candy crumbles ended up winning the competition, but little did I know that four months later, the theoretical physicist would be teaching me the very basics of cosmology over a cup of espresso in his UT office.
I found out after the Pork Experiment that Sivanandam hosts an elaborate supper club at his house. It took a few months for me to finally make it to one of his dinners, but when I did, I realized that Sivanandam had a story worth telling.
Like most stories I end up writing for the paper, this article about Sivanandam’s supper club is really about the relationships we build through food.
For the Texas feast supper club I went to in early July, Nav spent almost 24 hours over the course of several days preparing homemade pickles, quail sausage, jicama slaw, pickled cherries, sous vide chicken-fried steak and a number of other dishes for about a dozen of his friends and colleagues.
These five-hour feasts are coming to an end, though.
In September, the London native is moving to South Africa, where he’ll continue his work figuring out how the universe got started for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
He’s bringing most of his cookbooks and cooking supplies, except for the electric appliances and an espresso maker he keeps at his office. That’s going to Dan Carney, a UT grad student (left) who will now be the keeper of the proverbial watercooler.
“Erdos said mathematicians are machines that turn coffee into theorems, except in America because the coffee is too weak,” Carney says. “Luckily Nav has saved us from that curse.”
Photos by Alberto Martinez and Addie Broyles for the American-Statesman.
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July 12, 2011
Amy Simmons of Amy's Ice Creams on 'The View' on Friday
It’s not every day that “The View” calls and wants you to fly to New York with 100 pounds of ice cream packed on dry ice.
Late last week, a producer from the ABC talk show called Steve and Amy Simmons of Amy’s Ice Creams to see if they could be on a show for a segment about national ice cream month.
Steve Simmons said Tuesday afternoon that once they figured out how to take all that ice cream on a plane without getting it confiscated, they headed to the Big Apple for a taping earlier today. “You can take 5.5 pounds of dry ice per person,” he said, so they packed dry ice around 107 pounds of ice cream and checked the box in the belly of the plane.
“The segment was on unique flavors, so we brought our Shiner ice cream, Canadian bacon brittle and smoked jalapeño,” Simmons said while he and Amy were sipping on a celebratory cocktail after they’d taped the segment that will air during the show on Friday, which airs at 10 a.m. on KVUE.
They also brought a “trickster” named Evan, one of the store’s scoopers who can do tricks with the ice cream, who did his trick in one take. “We took photos with Whoopi and hung out with Denis Leary in the green room,” Simmons said. “I don’t know who Bethenny Frankel is, but she was there and Denis was going crazy for her. She just looked like another tall lady to me.”
Photo by Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Desserts
July 5, 2011
UPDATE: Is 'Top Chef' filming in San Antonio, Dallas and Austin? With Paul Qui?
UPDATE: Eater posted an item earlier today saying multiple sources have said that “Top Chef” isn’t just filming in San Antonio, but that the hit Bravo show is headed to Dallas and Austin in coming weeks.
Rumors have been flying around the Internet today about the next season of “Top Chef” being filmed in San Antonio after an Alamo City food blogger had what has turned out to be a very public run-in with the “Top Chef” hosts and production team at the Esquire Tavern, a bar on the River Walk that the Austin-based Tipsy Texans helps consult on when it reopened earlier this year.
SymiGoddess, who doesn’t use her real name on her site, was at the bar and saw “Top Chef” judges Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio, former contestant Tre Wilcox and host Padma Lakshmi. (Oh, and Emeril Lagasse was there, too.)
She sent several gushing tweets about them, and then an unidentified man approached her and asked her to stop tweeting. SymiGoddess says that Gail Simmons later said something along the lines of, “You tweeted this location and have compromised our…”
It makes sense, then, that if Qui only had to be in San Antonio to film next season’s “Top Chef” that he could still attend a benefit dinner for Daniel Curtis on July 13th in Austin.
What an honor for San Antonio’s evolving food scene if this is the case. With the Culinary Institute of America, the newly opened Luke and Michael Sohocki’s Gwendolyn, an intriguing concept in the former Le Reve space inspired by the way we ate before the invention of the refrigerated rail car in the 1860s.
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June 6, 2011
Five things I learned at the IACP conference
Well, that was fun.
The International Association of Culinary Professionals’ annual conference wiped me out as much as South by Southwest Interactive Conference, but I learned so much and met so many enthusiastic food folks that it made all the panels and social events worth the energy and time away from home.
I sat down to write the top five things I learned that you might be interested to learn, too, and here’s what I came up with:
Taco Bell, Domino’s and a number of other national brands have figured out how to turn even the most negative publicity into a positive outcome for their companies, and this whole “contrition is the new PR” isn’t going away any time soon.
Before Cortez arrived, the Aztecs used corn as a currency.
Chicory, which famously gives a special kick to coffee in New Orleans, comes from the root of endive and has been used as a coffee substitute or enhancer for centuries.
Tea rooms, restaurants where women could eat without an escort in the pre-Civil Rights days, are a nearly forgotten element in women’s history. Millie Huff Coleman of Atlanta, who started a master’s program in women’s studies when she was in her 60s, is trying to change that.
The unspoken rule of succeeding in the food world — well, any industry, really — actually has a name: The Pork Chop Theory. Cookbook author Virginia Willis shared Nathalie Dupree’s advice that stems from the idea that if you put one pork chop in a pan, it’ll burn, but if you put two, they’ll feed off the fat of one another and cook up nicely. “Loving what you do is more important than money as long as you are supporting yourself as well as your contemporaries in other fields,” Dupree said in a recent interview with Monica Bhide. “The more we see there is room for all of us, and that another person in the field enlarges it and makes more for all of us, the better the field will be. Competition makes everyone grow.”
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May 2, 2011
The fascinating world of grocery lists
“If you buy more rice — I’ll punch you.”
Since 1997, Bill Keaggy has been collecting grocery lists, one of which included that not-so-subtle hint to not buy any more rice.
Grocery lists are just one of the many collections, lists and virtual projects that Keaggy keeps on his immaculately curated site. (Don’t you wish you had a running list of every band you’ve seen? What about every day of the year you turned 30? Shoe-shaped rocks, anyone?)
The St. Louis-based designer/brand marketer/graphic artist has personally found many of the lists, and like Found magazine, people often send him lists they find in the bottom of grocery carts, near the check-out line or in the parking lot outside. Yes, some of them are mundane, but usually, there is some element that is funny, sad or in some other way worth noting. (Here are his top 10 lists from the past 10 years.)
Keaggy turned his collection of lists into “Milk Eggs Vodka,” a book that came out in 2007 that was released in paperback last month.
Last year, he went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to talk about the book and why it’s so fascinating to read other people’s lists.
Don’t believe him?
I found the grocery list at the top of this post at HEB last week. “Chow mein crunchies” are definitely worth a chuckle, but “something for calming” made me pause.
Have you ever found and kept a grocery list from the store? Do you even write grocery lists anymore or has your mobile device replaced the need for a paper list?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Grocery goods
April 26, 2011
Can't get into Franklin Barbecue? Hitler can't either
Hitler parody videos might be oh so 2008, but that doesn’t make this one from @jgold03 about not being able to get Franklin Barbecue any less funny.
Hat tip to @jneece for tweeting this earlier today, as well as a handful of folks who shared it over the weekend. Looks like I might be the last one to this parody party that smells like espresso barbecue sauce.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
April 19, 2011
Austin author's new book extols the lost but empowering art of homemaking
Americans lost interest in self-sufficiency when it stopped being something we needed to survive.
When your shirt got a hole in it or a button fell off, you threw it out or gave it away.
When you ran out of Windex, you bought more.
When the grocery store sold mealy watermelons and tomatoes in December, you put them in your cart.
When your IKEA chest of drawers fell apart only two years after you bought it, you went right back to the store to buy another set.
Payne, who recently moved back to Austin with her partner, photographer Jo Ann Santangelo, after a two-year stint in Brooklyn, has packed a lifetime’s worth of advice and tips on how to make the space you live in not only more comfortable, but more reflective of your personal style.
As a recent college graduate who works as an editorial assistant near me in the office said while flipping through, “It’s basic life stuff. I’m the kind of person who needs this.”
But Payne’s book isn’t just a how-to manual. She offers philosophical observations about what might be considered mundane housework:
“When I’m feeling particularly uninspired by the relentless daily mound of dishes, I adopt a classic Garrison Keillor-inspired approach: It could be worse,” she writes. “I think about all the people in other countries who have access to only use a fraction of the water we use here in the United States, and feel immediately grateful that I didn’t have to carry home my days’ water supply on my head or boil ever drop of my water before using it.”
The food chapters — one on basic cooking skills like grocery shopping and making bread and another on preserving food and canning — are particularly good. (Payne recently started the ATX Food Swappers group that meets once a month to swap handmade foodstuffs.)
It’s nice to read a realistic approach to getting dinner on the table. Not necessarily recipes, but advice on overcoming your fear of making bread (and excuses why you can’t) and how to take a more zenful approach to your fridge: “Your fridge right now, as is, comprises your ecosystem. You’re not working toward anything. You’re operating in the everyday realm, making improvements and adding depth as you go.”
Payne’s writing style throughout the book carries an equally as empowering tone: there’s nothing you can’t clean with vinegar, baking soda or dish soap and that you don’t even need a needle to make curtains.
“Why homemaking? Because it’s cool to have a cool house. It’s damn gratifying to throw down a loaf of homemade bread with your home-preserved blueberry jam. Because feeling in control in your own house does wonders for every instance when you’re not under that sweet roof.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Chewing the fat
A new take on Thanksgiving and 4 other lessons from my first seder
“HAPPY JEWISH THANKSGIVING!”
Before Sarah Silverman’s tweet yesterday, this Midwestern gentile hadn’t really put it together that Passover seders could be thought of as a Jewish Thanksgiving.
Immediately, I thought she was referring to the food. Ahead of my first seder last night, I’d read and heard that food was a big deal at Passover, but it wasn’t until we’d been sitting at the table for more than an hour without much more than a relish tray to nibble on that I realized the Thanksgiving reference goes way beyond food.
Yes, by the end of the night, we’d eaten so much matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, turkey, brisket, meatballs, potato kugel, spinach souffle and matzo brownies (see No. 2 below) that we could hardly sit up straight, but throughout the four-hour affair, I was struck by the reflective, socially conscious and grateful nature of the conversation that our hosts led.
From the beginning, the dialogue shifted back and forth from the stories of Joseph and Moses to the modern day tribulation of people in northern Japan, Libya and Egypt. We talked in remembrance of the family and friends whose presence we felt but could not see. It was a celebration of our freedom and a reminder that oppression and imprisonment are alive and well, be it in the form of a dictator or disease.
In the many years of my Protestant religious experience, God was always the one to whom we prayed to ease the world’s burdens, but around the seder table, we encouraged each other to take on that task. As people blessed enough to be free, how can we make the world a better place?
As I’ve said before, my own family Thanksgiving usually turns into a mostly stressful affair, with less emphasis placed on the thanks and more on whether or not the stuffing and gravy are made “correctly.”
We’ll spend a few minutes at the beginning of the dinner thanking God for the food, the family and the people who are serving our country and the rest of the dinner praising those who made it.
But to have an entire dinner revolve around the essence of what it means to be thankful — for our internal and collective struggles, our rituals, our unique personal faith, our families and yes, the food on our plates — was really something special.
So, that was my big takeaway from my first seder last night.
Here are four more:
2 . Matzo is delicious, and not just the crispy, unleavened cracker-like bread or matzo balls. We had brownies with the distinct flavor of matzo toward the end of the seder that I would prefer to eat over most other brownies any day of the week.
3 . Wine should be an official part of more religious and nonreligious holiday celebrations. The four glasses of wine at a traditional seder might be a bit much for the conservative members of my own family, but I’d love for once not to be the only person drinking wine at the holiday dinner table.
4 . Fruit gummies might be my favorite candy. Hard-to-chew orange slices of my own childhood can’t compare to these tender “slices” of sugar-coated gummy wonderfulness.
5 . Even ritualistic ceremonies can be amended. Many seders nowadays include an orange as a symbol of the inclusion of women and gays and lesbians, who for years had been marginalized within the Jewish community.
A special thanks Mike Krell, who runs Austin Food Carts and is a fellow founding member of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance, and his family for including me in their seder last night. I thought I was there for the food, but they gave me so much more.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat
April 13, 2011
Chef Daniel Olivella on his native Spain, his next restaurant and why he left San Francisco for Austin
Most days, I try to harness my obsession with Spain.
It’s been almost 10 years since I spent a year living in Alicante, a coastal city of more than 300,000 people just south of Valencia, and not a dayfew hours pass that I don’t think about the place that left an indelible impact on who I am.
So, when Central Market invited me to a preview event last night of their two-week Passport Spain celebration, starting May 11, I didn’t just show up with bells on, I showed up early, which never, ever happens. (This might or might not be because living in Spain made me OK with always running a little late.)
Olivella is one of six chefs working with Central Market to put on this showcase of Spainish cuisine, but they didn’t just fly him in to consult on the project. For the past year and a half, Olivella and his wife and their two daughters, ages 6 and 11, have been living in Austin while Daniel commutes back to San Francisco for a week or so each month to make sure things are running smoothly at the restaurants, B44 and Barlata.
Olivella and I got to gush about all the quirky, wonderful and sometimes maddening aspects of Spanish culture that are sometimes hard to understand unless you’ve lived there. (Their affection for dubbed films is something neither of us could grasp.)
Yes, the food itself is fascinating (we tried some delicious cheese, olives, jamon, croquettes and empanadas prepared by the Central Market staff), but I was really interested in what he had to say about the way Spaniards approach food.
Curiosity and a desire to get outside your comfort zone is essential to why food has become a national obsession here, he said. Food blogging, in particular, reflects a culinary exploration that is only happening on a small scale in Spain, primarily, he says, because there are so few restaurants that serve anything but Spanish cuisine, and even fewer that do it well.
The worst Mexican and Chinese meals I’ve had in my life were in restaurants in Alicante, and I searched far and wide for sushi to no avail. So why go to Spain and seek out sushi? For the same reason that people come to Texas and do the same thing: We have diverse palates, and we like variety.
With a much longer culinary history than America, many in Spain hold on tightly to the traditional way of cooking everything from paella to tortilla española, even as the some of the world’s foremost molecular gastronomists like Ferran Adria and Juan Mari Arzak are pushing the definition of “culinary arts.”
Olivella says that in more diverse cities like Barcelona, you’ll find an array of chefs cooking cuisines from many corners of the world and an enthusiastic dining community to embrace it, but nothing like the vibrancy of the food scene in the U.S.
A better environment for families was the primary reason for moving to Austin, Olivella says — “You can almost sleep with your windows open here. In Oakland, no way” — and he’s already scouting locations around the city for his next restaurant.
He’s looking for a small, intimate place where he can recreate the feeling of a true Spanish tapas bar, similar to what he’s done with Barlata, where people can be elbow-to-elbow enjoying small plates of patatas bravas, blood sausage, stuffed red peppers, anchovies, mussels, shrimp or jamón ibérico, the specialty cured ham that has only been allowed to be imported in the U.S. for the past few years.
“I want a neighborhood place, you know,” said Olivella, who is a cyclist and member of the castell or human tower team of his hometown in Catalunya. “What I’d really like to do is find an old gas station. Do you know any?”
Not off the top of my head, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for just the place near my house so the Austin version of Barlata can be my neighborhood bar.
It’s not exactly another year in Spain, but it’ll do.
Photos from sanfranannie and ZagatBuzz via Creative Commons on Flickr.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Chewing the fat
February 2, 2011
This Omnivore's Dilemma: Logic, risk and bacon
“Forks Over Knives” — and the level-headed commenters on a blog post I wrote last month about the new movie featuring former Austin firefighter Rip Esselstyn — make a compelling, logical case against eating meat, dairy and oils.
They’ve got the science and the anecdotal evidence to back it up, but I couldn’t put my finger on why I wasn’t completely convinced.
I did some thinking and reworked the blog post into a story that ran in today’s paper to emphasize that moderation is likely the best strategy to get the majority of American eaters to increase their veggie intake and reduce their meat consumption.
And then Jack LaLanne died.
The pioneer of the modern fitness movement — I first remember him in an infomercial for his juice maker — reportedly hadn’t had dessert since 1929, and Food News Journal asked a good question: Was it worth it?
How much are you willing to give up to prolong your life? What foods would you opt out of to improve the quality of your life?
When I pester my husband about smoking cigarettes, he likes to remind me that he could die tomorrow in a car accident instead. Jack LaLanne lived to be 96, which isn’t bad for someone who dedicated his life to fitness and health, but how did the 114-year-old woman from East Texas who died this week live so long?
We take all kinds of risks that might or might not impact how long we’ll live and the quality of our health in the years until we die. We jump out of planes. We bike to work. We repel off cliffs. We puff on a cigar while we sip brandy. We eat cheesecake. We pump melted butter on already buttered popcorn at the movie theater.
We eat bacon.
It was apropos that I came across this New Yorker cartoon while eating a very animal-product heavy breakfast one morning.
Do we choose eternal life, which doesn’t exist anyway, or do we choose bacon?
What we choose to put into our bodies is a complicated decision. We have to balance the risk of the consequences to our longterm health with immediate pleasure, and our choices change as our experience changes.
For me, I don’t want to live to be 96 if it means I can’t eat chocolate-covered raisins at a movie theater and a really nice steak on Valentine’s Day.
Moderation in all things — even moderation — is my philosophy, but it doesn’t have to be yours.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
January 26, 2011
How to start a food (or seed or homemade beer) swap
Food swapping isn’t just for neighbors anymore.
In today’s Statesman, I wrote about one food swap group, ATX Swappers, which is just getting underway in Austin thanks to Kate Payne, author of the soon-to-released book “Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking.”
ATX Swappers from Jo Ann Santangelo on Vimeo.
ATX Swappers is open to anyone who wants to trade handmade foods of all types, not just shelf-stable items like preserves, but you might know a handful of neighbors, homebrewers or seed fanatics who’d be interested in doing a smaller swap.
Here are some tips for getting a swap group started:
- Decide if you want to limit the swap to your neighborhood, to people you already know or by the kind of food item you want to swap. (A salsa-making friend of mine is starting a salsa swap group so he and his wife don’t have to eat all those jars of carrot chipotle salsa by themselves.) Other ideas for swap groups: frozen meals, homemade baby food, vegetable seeds, granola or breakfast bars.
- Pick a date and place for the swap, and create an event invite on Facebook, Eventbrite or other event-organizing site. Make sure you clearly list the expectations of the swap; i.e., if everyone is supposed to bring the same number of goods to swap, or if there are food allergies or dietary restrictions of which to be respectful. Remind people to bring a bag or box to carry home their swapped items, and invite them to post what they are bringing.
- If you know your guests, invite them directly by e-mail or phone. If the swap is open to the public, get the word out through Twitter, Facebook or any other word-of-mouth platform, such as a bulletin board at church or your favorite coffee shop. (Feel free to e-mail me about your swap, and I can help spread the word online.)
- The day of the event, offer some light food items and drinks for people to nibble on while they swap goods. Even if you think everyone knows each other, it’s a good idea to provide name tags just in case.
- At Kate Payne’s swaps, each good to be exchanged has a piece of paper that says what the item is and who made it. Guests write their names on the pieces of paper on the items they want first dibs on. When Payne gives the green light, the swapping begins.
- Allow time for socializing before and after the official swap. The point isn’t just to exchange goods but to get to know one another and enjoy each other’s company.
Photo by Jo Ann Santangelo.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Playing with your food
January 11, 2011
Eat pie and help spread MLK Jr.'s message of peace, equality
It’s hard to disagree at a pie social.
Sure, you could banter about whose pie is the best or which pie is your favorite, but the there’s something unifying about getting together to eat something as beloved as pie.
That’s the idea behind the annual pie socials that Luanne Stovall coordinates around Martin Luther King Jr. Day next week. For the third year, Stovall is helping spread King’s message of peace and equality through pie, and this year, she has the City of Austin officially behind her.
At 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at City Hall, the Austin City Council will issue a “Peace Through Pie” proclamation. Following the reading, city officials and the public will have the chance to enjoy pies created by local chefs and Travis High School culinary arts students.
Also on Thursday, learn how to make the perfect pie crust at a demonstration by Jen Biddle from Texas Pie Kitchen at noon at the Spring Terrace Apartments, 7101 Interstate 35 North (St. Johns & I-35).
There are a total of six pie social happening in the next week. One of the biggest will be at the Sweet Home Baptist Church, 1725 W. 11th St., on Saturday and will feature the 3rd annual pie contest.
(These photos are from last year’s pie social and contest at the church where Leeann Atherton, above, with fellow Peace Through Pie coordinator Toni Tipton-Martin at right, won the ‘Best Nut Pie’ for her pecan pie )
At 1 p.m., home bakers can bring two pies, one to share with guests and another for the judges. A program featuring a reading of King’s “I have a dream” speech will take place at the church at 2 p.m.
Also on Saturday, the Victory Grill, 1104 E. 11th St., will host a pie social from 10 to 11 a.m., followed by a peacemaking discussion circle from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
From 1 to 2 p.m. on Sunday at St. James Episcopal Church, 1941 Webberville Road, enjoy pie at a social and bid on pies during a live and a silent auction that will benefit the church’s youth group.
On Monday, the Art Institute of Austin, 101 W. Louis Henna Blvd. in Round Rock, is hosting another pie social from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. featuring pies from culinary students and cooking demonstrations.
Photos by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Desserts, Eating locally
December 8, 2010
Rachael Ray talks school lunches, puppies and why hunger isn't a partisan issue
How did Rachael Ray spend her summer vacation?
Lobbying for six cents.
Every five years, Congress revises the Child Nutrition Act, which, among other things, determines how much money schools get reimbursed for the lunches they provide students. Until this year, it had been almost three decades since Congress had increased above inflation the amount that schools would get per child.
Ray met face-to-face with dozens of lawmakers and held press conferences to help bring attention to the bill. In the end, both the House and the Senate agreed to provide an additional six cents per student to schools.
“It’s not as much as we wanted, but it’s something,” Ray said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Every penny makes a big difference in the quality of food” schools can provide to kids not just during the school year, but after school and during the summer.
“It’s important that the public schools offer something on a year round basis,” she said. “For children who are at risk for hunger, these are the only options they’ve got.”
Even though she would have liked to see even more funding going to schools, she’s “thrilled” that the bill is on its way to President Obama’s desk.
She emphasizes that making sure that kids have access to healthy food isn’t just something that parents in America should be concerned about. “I don’t have kids,” she says. “I have a dog,” but the impact that poor diets are having on the nation’s children “should be insulting to everybody.”
“Young children are having to take grown-up pills that aren’t even formulated for them.” Eight- and 9-year-olds shouldn’t have to take cholesterol medication. If we continue to let things spiral out of control, we’re looking at “catastrophic health care costs,” she says.
“We cannot afford to pay for this generation’s health care,” she says. “Do we really want to raise a nation of dull-minded, sickly kids? It’s our responsibility as a nation. Everyone should demand change.”
If you’re a gardener, why don’t you plant and help maintain a garden at a school, she suggests. Take your kids or nieces and nephews grocery shopping. Take them to a farm instead of an amusement park.
One thing Ray says she was surprised at was how both Republicans and Democrats seemed concerned about helping kids get access to better foods. “This is one issue that everyone can get behind,” she says.
But no matter how you slice it, politics aren’t near as fun as planning her annual South by Southwest party. Ray says they are just beginning to plan the big bash in March that combines her love of food and music. “We just want to try to match last year because, for me, it was spot on perfect,” she says.
Except for the weather.
She and friend Bob Schneider are still talking about how cold it was that blustery day in the middle of the music festival when everyone from Matthew McConaughey to Neko Case and Jakob Dylan bundled up to take the stage.
Ray might not be able to do anything about the weather at this year’s party (no word on the date, venue or lineup yet), but she is watching out for local dogs and cats that need adoption. At each stop on her “Look + Cook” book tour, Ray is pairing up with a local pet adoption agency.
At Tuesday’s event at BookPeople, Austin Pets Alive will be hosting an Adopt-A-Thon starting at 5:30 p.m. outside the bookstore, 603 N. Lamar Blvd.
Photos by David Hartzler, Evan Vucci for the Associated Press and Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Chewing the fat, Food in the news
November 26, 2010
The good, the bad and the unbelievably delicious of this year's Thanksgiving
All is well if it ends with a meal like this.
My family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner yesterday had its highs (the corn pudding and pecan pie, both courtesy of Paula Deen) and its lows (the kitchen chaos was particularly — and unnecessarily — stressful this year), but by the end of it, all 18 or so of us were able to sit down together at my uncle house just west of Austin and enjoy one of the best Thanksgiving dinners in memory.
I counted a dozen dishes on the buffet line, not including the cranberry sauce and rolls. Everyone brought a dish or two: broccoli casserole, two kinds of stuffing, two kinds of 5-cup ambrosia salad (one with grapes, another with mandarin oranges), mashed potatoes and marshmallow-and-pecan-topped sweet potatoes.
(My caramelized onions with green beans, asparagus and toasted almonds was my attempt to contribute something relatively green and healthy.)
UPDATE: OK, I should ‘fess up. My grandmother saved my hurried attempt at gravy. It would not have been much more than giblet sauce without her.
With the help of my uncle’s friend Bob, we fried up two turkeys. (Both injected with Tony Chachere seasoning. One regular, one jalapeño. Fried in cottonseed oil.)
Now, I’ve had fried turkey before, but I’ve never had fried turkey as moist and well-seasoned as this. The stalwart cooks in my family were vocal with their concerns about breaking from tradition and frying the birds, but the resulting turkey was better than any we’ve ever had. I doubt we’ll be hearing any protests in the future.
In another break from tradition, my cousin Carlee baked three kinds of pies, including an outstanding, not-too-cloyingly-sweet pecan pie made with cream cheese. (Thanks again, Paula Deen!)
We overcooked. (Of course. I tried to tell them that 7 1/2 pounds of potatoes was enough and that we really didn’t need to buy any extra.) We overate. (Of course.) We all went home with leftovers. (Of course. I even packed up one of the turkey carcasses to make stock.)
I know expectations for Thanksgiving are high, but they seem particularly so on my dad’s side of the family. Everything from the meal and who cooks what is set in stone, and apparently, it’s just not Thanksgiving without kitchen chaos, which leads to people barking orders and, unfortunately, making hurtful attacks on loved ones.
I tweeted some of my frustrations yesterday, and fellow food writer Mary Margaret Pack replied with just the insight I needed to read: “Hang in there. Have learned that we become in charge soon enough. And we’ll miss them. Not about the food, really.”
I’m not sure how many frantic Thanksgivings we’ll have left with this same group of family members, so I did my best to just enjoy the day, even if it didn’t go as kindly or stress-free as I would have liked it.
After all, nothing better than a near-perfect dinner to make you forget about the bumps it took to get there.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Chewing the fat
November 24, 2010
Turkey troubles? Help with Thanksgiving dinner is here
The most food-intensive holiday of the year is upon us. Are you ready?
Butterball paved the way almost 30 years ago with one of the first Thanksgiving Day hotlines for cooks who’ve gotten themselves in hot water on the big day.
But now, if you run into trouble on Thursday, you have more resources than ever before.
From 10 a.m. to noon on KUT 90.5, Splendid Table host Lynne Rossetto Kasper will be answering questions live on air during a “Turkey Confidential” call-in special.
If you’re clueless about where to start or run out of time to make that fancy casserole you’d planned, Chow.com has a great beginner’s guide featuring the simplest recipes for every element of the dinner.
One of my favorite online tools is Fine Cooking’s stuffing maker, where you pick and choose the ingredients you want to use and it churns out a customized recipe. Epicurious claims you can make this Thanksgiving meal in under an hour.
If, like me, you aren’t hosting but were asked to “just bring a side,” check out Food Network’s list of the 50 most popular Thanksgiving side dishes.
After all the craziness related to cooking, not to mention the stress of family, you’re probably going to need a drink.
Better Homes and Gardens has you covered with some new ideas for what to do with your Thanksgiving leftovers, so you don’t have to look up how to spell tetrezzini. Or is it tettrizini?
And remember, the turkey has already been pardoned, there’s nothing that gravy can’t fix, and, as Kat Kinsman, editor of Eatocracy, says in the video above, “It’s not about the food; it’s about the company.”
Photos from Epicurious and Win McNamee for Getty Images.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
And I thought I was a Thanksgiving grinch
Last year, I opted out of Thanksgiving.
It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. My family got some quiet time together on the coast. I got a break from my (sometimes crazy) family and the (almost always tension-filled) holiday dinners.
My absence from the Thanksgiving table has made me fonder of it. Because we took last year off, I’m really looking forward to this year’s dinner, even with its mushy stuffing, cold rolls and dry turkey.
But I don’t hate turkey as much as food writer Josh Ozersky, who apparently loathes everything related to this holiday more than I ever have. And honestly, after watching this rant on turkey and all things Thanksgiving, I realize that his putrid attitude is more about him than the traditional meal itself.
We all have a love/hate relationship with holidays. Need a place to vent about yours? Consider this your invitation to share, but try to find something positive to end on.
Otherwise, I’m going to call you Josh.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat
October 14, 2010
Soap candy, floral gums and other Canadian confectionery oddities
The hunt for soap candies is finally over.
After five years of getting strange looks from every single candy shop owner he asked, my husband finally tracked down one of his favorite Canadian candies by going back to the source: Welch’s Chocolate Shop in Waterton Lakes National Park.
As a kid, soap candies were as essential as the boating on his family’s annual summer trip to the area just north of Glacier National Park in Montana.
Ever since I’ve known him, he’s always talked about these fragrant hard candies that tasted like, you guessed it, soap. (At first, I swore he was trying to pull a prank on me with a sud-producing gag gift like this one.) Dial hand soap isn’t exactly at the top of my list of favorite flavors, so I wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t find a single candy shop on this side of the border that carried them.
This summer, as much to prove that he wasn’t crazy as to place an order, he finally called up the original shop that he’d bought the candies at as a kid. Sure enough, they not only still sold soap candy, the red crescent-shaped candies at right, but they also carried floral gums, the small Dots-like treats that taste more like perfume than soap and apparently are one of the most divisive candies in the history of the UK.
A nice woman named Carol packed up an order and included a few other surprises like rock candy (not the crystallized sugar that we think of but rock-shaped chocolates) and Wolf droppings (self-explanatory in name, made with coconut and chocolate, which Ian also says are called macaroons).
The chocolate-based sweets were about what you’d expect, but I’d never tasted anything like the fragrant floral and unmistakeably soap-like notes in the other two candies. “It’s like licking a hand soap dispenser,” said a friend of ours who tasted them for the first time last week.
So what’s the appeal? Like lavender or rose hips, flowers can add a subtle layer of delicate flavor to both sweet and savory dishes, such as chocolate or chicken. I don’t mind a hint of floral in my tea or pastries, but this candy was like stuffing a field of blooming wildflowers into my mouth.
Oh, don’t forget the texture. Both floral gums and soap candy, which apparently are also called red moons or cherry lips, are relatively hard gummies when you first put them in your mouth, but suck on them long enough and they become so sticky that are nearly impossible to get out of your teeth.
Several British sites that specialize in nostalgic candy sell the floral gums, plus there’s a Facebook page dedicated to them, but I can’t find near the dedication to soap candy.
Have you ever come across these treats or tasted anything that blurred the line between “flower” and “soap”? What’s the furthest you’ve gone out of your way to get a favorite food or treat from your childhood?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Chewing the fat
August 10, 2010
In defense of 'foodie'
If you want to insult someone who likes to eat, just call them a foodie.
As Americans have grown more aware and interested in food in the past decade, a scornful attitude has developed toward the name most frequently used to describe them.
In a post yesterday, my friend Katharine Shilcutt over at the Houston Press spoke pretty loud and clear on behalf of the anti-foodie movement: “Foodies are just in it for the big show: to talk up their meals, to rub elbows with chefs, to write nonsensical ‘reviews’ on Yelp and to scrabble together some bizarre version of popularity out of the whole shebang.”
Shilcutt, who prefers to call herself a food nerd, points us a piece by Jason Sheehan for Seattle Weekly in which he calls foodies:
Those coup-counting, lock-jawed, cake-eating, nose-in-the-air dimwits who, with sticks planted firmly in their flabby asses will make their weekly cruise out to the hottest addresses in town, get weak little culinary boners over year-dead trends, focused-grouped Frog-humping menus and anyone doing New American comfort food or French-Asian fusion in million-dollar spaces; who will swoon after “discovering” restaurants with 200 Yelp reviews, dismiss cheeseburgers and chicken-fried steak and sloppy tacos and Americanized Chinese food as beneath their notice, but go fucking bonkers for any restaurant that name-checks a farm on its menu.
If you scroll through the comments on both posts, you’ll find a quite a bit of backlash against their tirades on people who are just a little too obsessed with food. The running theme: Are not Twitter-obsessed food bloggers, including Sheehan and Shilcutt, the tastemakers at the heart of this food-crazed movement they claim to despise?
Food is important, interesting and worth getting excited about. It’s also intimate, polemic and worth arguing about. Names, labels and lines drawn in the sand just get in the way of a healthy discussion.
If you’re reading this blog, it’s because you enjoy eating food and possibly even cooking it, too. You might think it’s interesting that a store dedicated to Pop Tarts just opened in New York City or that there’s a new farmers market open on Burnet Road selling local produce five days a week. You, too, might make the occasional grilled cheese sandwich and want to get tips on how to make them better from a professional. You’ve probably heard of this Rachael Ray person and might get a chuckle at seeing her face made out of Cheetos.
You might or might not take a picture of that sexy slice of pizza you just bought at Homeslice and tweet it to your friends. Maybe you’re the kind of hungry Austinite who likes to be the first among your friends to try a new place and then tell everyone what the experience was like on Yelp. Maybe you even love food enough to, gasp, spend your evenings blogging about it instead of — or perhaps in addition to — watching “The Bachelorette.” (See blogroll at left.)
You might just be one of those dirty “foodies” everyone keeps bashing.
I’ve had some pretty interesting discussions with food-loving friends of mine about whether or not they define themselves as foodies, and the general consensus seems to be that the negative connotations that the word carries outweighs the benefits of having a universally understood word to describe people who are enthusiastic about food.
I’ve never had a problem with the word foodie. To me, it’s just a generalized term to describe someone like me who thinks/reads/cares/writes/tweets about food more than the average person. Sure, “foodies” in the past few years have taken this love of food a few steps too far to over-hype perfectly valid food trends (see: trailers, cupcakes, bacon, ramps) and to create cult-like obsession with high-end chefs and food glitterati, but what sub-culture in America doesn’t have its share of crazed fans who embarrass the rest of them?
It’s the difference between a fan and a fanatic. Imagine your run-of-the-mill Longhorn football fan and the sad schmuck guy who sobbed for three weeks after the team lost the national championship to Alabama and who, one of these days, will go into cardiac arrest after a bad call. It’s the difference between a fashionista who likes to flip through the September issue of Vogue and one who rings up $10,000 on a credit card at Neiman’s the day after it comes out.
Food — and the growing number of people who pay attention to where it comes from, how to cook it and where is the best restaurant eat it — just happens to be getting a lot of attention these days. Good for us for finally caring about something as important to our lives as what we eat three times a day, but do we really have to spend a lot of energy attacking the people who take it too far? Won’t they burn themselves out eventually?
It doesn’t matter what you call them/us. Until I find a better word, I’ll keep using “foodie” in a non-pejorative way (I’ve run out of ideas for alternatives: Food enthusiast? Gastronaut? Gourmand? Food lover? Food geek? What do you call yourself?) and continue exploring the complex, beautiful and ever-growing food world.
I’ll keep reading the hilarious blog Shut Up, Foodies! for a healthy criticism of the industry I write about and contribute to, but I won’t turn on my own kind.
Photos by ldanderson and silvertje via Flickr.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Chewing the fat
June 28, 2010
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.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Chewing the fat
June 15, 2010
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.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Playing with your food
June 14, 2010
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.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat
June 2, 2010
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.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Snacks
May 24, 2010
Getting to know 'Splendid Table' host Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Kasper and the show are based in St. Paul, Minn., and Austin is one of almost 260 markets where the show can be heard. The affable host doesn’t just know how to eat; she was a cooking instructor in Colorado and New York City before moving to Europe in 1985, where she researched and wrote her first cookbook. Kasper and “Splendid Table” producer Sally Swift are in the middle of finishing their second book together, a followup to 2008’s “The Splendid Table: How To Eat Supper” that is set to come out in fall of 2011. Kasper took a break from the book last week to talk with me about how the show came to be, how food blogging has expanded our consciousness about food and why there’s so much more to a dish than its recipe.
Because ‘Splendid Table is new to so many Austinites, give us a quick introduction to you and how you got into food.
I was born and raised just outside New York City, when I reached the age of reason, I moved into the city. I started a cooking school in Denver in the 1970s, and it grew into the biggest teaching school in the state. I loved starting something from nothing, and it was the right moment to do it. I also taught Chinese cooking in New York City before we moved to in Brussels in 1985, where my husband was based and I was writing about food. I vowed I would never teach again, but I ended up teaching all the new things I was discovering.
I wanted to do a book that looked at the origins of Italian food. What is it about this food that makes it so beloved around the world? It’s just about everyone’s favorite foreign food. “The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland or Northern Italian Food” came out in 1992 (and won awards from both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.) about Emilia-Romagna, the only place that can produce Parmesan, balsamic vinegar and Parma ham. It’s about 500 years of eating, and it asked the question, “Why this food in this place?” You can say the land is rich and all that business, but I realized that there was so much more going on there.
The second book, “The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchens,” came out in 1999 just when agritourism was beginning. It was the perfect entre to be able to sit down with a family and in an environment to see how the land was worked. You have to understand agricultural systems to understand what the food is about.
Tell me about how the radio show came to be.
We started the radio show in 1993 right after the first book came out and had gotten a lot of attention. I got a call from a woman who says, “You don’t know me, but I’ve worked in radio and television, and I have your book and I think you could do a great radio show.” I had written a book that was filled with stories, history and folklore. Food has so much more to say than its recipe. Everyone had told me, “No one’s going to fund a book or a show that involves history and storytelling.” But the woman who called, Sally Swift (who is still the show’s producer), knew you could do both. We created the show together. We did a six-week pilot in 1993 and then went national in 1995.
The show has a nice balance of cooking and eating out, the history of food as well as current issues. As food has become so political, how do you tackle such a serious subject?
We keep trying to find that balance between taking the subject seriously but without taking ourselves too seriously. We were talking about these issues 15 years ago. You go to any kind of editorial meeting and people are asking, “What’s going to be the trend?” A decade ago, I said, “You will be hearing, sustainable, organic and local.” People smiled, but they didn’t believe me. I had been working in the organics field and had a sense of what was coming. It was obvious to me that we would be looking for alternative sources for our food. We are a small team, so we often illustrate these big picture problems through guests like Paul Roberts (author of “The End of Food”) and Raj Patel (author of “Stuffed and Starved”)
One big realization has been that if something is going to be sustainable, it must be sustainable across the economic spectrum. One of the major flaws we have is that most of what is accessible in terms of food choices is accessible to a fortunate few. A significant percent of the population doesn’t have this access. It’s a big issue. We’re talking about changing the world. You’re talking about changing subsidies, changing how commodities work, etc.
What have been some of the other big developments you’ve seen in recent years?
One of the trends that’s not new but I’m interested in is this world of food blogging, where you can find amazing information about food from every point of view. There are some people doing some incredible things. One of the blogs I thoroughly enjoy is Eating Asia, and we’ve had (the author Robyn Eckhardt) on the show. She’s writing about the life she leads and is looking at the food, culture and people with a background of history and anthropology.
We’re beginning to have a vague understanding that Southeast Asian food isn’t all the same. It’s nook-and-cranny eating. We’re no longer thinking solely in terms of Chinese, Italian, Spanish or South American, and we’re looking at the cultural microcosms in our own country. For instance, we’re discovering the differences between northern and southern New Mexico. That kind of awareness and curiosity has been a huge change. Our lexicon about food has changed dramatically. It’s become far more challenging and confusing as well, but the overall awareness about food has grown so much.
So what do you think about celebrity chefs on TV?
The Gordon Ramsey model — the chef as pure personality — is interesting in its popularity. You look at a Jamie Oliver, who at 24 was doing a restaurant in London. His whole appeal was young and charming, but now as a man is attempting to change the world. I think we’re seeing people reinvent themselves and the models being played with. Rachael Ray has a talk show that’s not necessarily about food, for instance.
I’ve always had this fantasy about doing a theatrical show about food. Turn it into a performance with sounds, light, dance and music. If I could tap dance a cookbook for you (laughs). Food is about all of the senses and all of the sensibilities. It’s pure theater. I really am waiting for people in media to get that. On TV, it’s still that business of standing in a kitchen and cooking. I’m a firm believer that everyone needs to know how to feed themselves, but food takes on a meaning far beyond that.
Have you eaten your way through Texas yet?
I have barely begun to explore Texas, and I am looking forward to coming and exploring. I’ve spent some time in San Antonio, and what’s not not to like. I’m intrigued by the state’s cultural mix. I’m excited to be in the Austin market because I got the sense from reading the (“The Soup Peddler’s Slow and Difficult Soups” by David Ansel) and being around cooking teachers from Austin that it’s one of the neatest parts of the country.
Do you call yourself a foodie?
I don’t like the word “foodie,” but I haven’t found an alternative. It diminishes the importance of food. Eating is the single most important thing that we have to do on a day to day basis. We have to breathe, and we have to nourish ourselves to stay alive. “Foodie” makes it seem like it’s a private society.
Permalink | | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Chewing the fat
April 20, 2010
Dig into your family's past through food
In 1891, my great-great-grandmother boarded a ship in Sweden bound for America and for a husband who’d left for a wagon factory job in Springfield, Mo., when she was pregnant seven years before.
In tow were two children, one a 7-year-old girl who’d never met her father, and a suitcase that carried just a few necessities, including a bread knife and a rolling pin from a country Carolina Sophia would never visit again.
Almost 120 years later, the sturdy black-handled knife with razorlike teeth and the long, smooth rolling pin are still in use in my grandmother’s kitchen, less than 40 miles from where her grandmother first unpacked them after the long journey.
I retold this story in today’s column as a way to get people thinking about their own past through food.
Dawn Orsak, an expert in Texas and Czech foodways, knows how powerful food is connected to personal history. She offers tips in today’s story about how to get relatives talking about their own past by asking them about food and what to do with the information you get.
“Talking about food is just another way to get to the information about your family’s past,” says Orsak.
Homemade cookbooks with family memories woven in with the recipes is one of the first things that people think to make, but Orsak encouraged people to think about ways to bring these traditions alive by hosting heritage dinners or meals where everyone brings a significant dish. Writing personal narratives can be a good way to document your discoveries, which you can then pass along to your kids or other members of the family who are interested in genealogy or family history.
And I’m preaching to the choir here, but colorful bits of family food stories make great fodder for a blog, too.
To get you thinking about questions to ask yourself or your relatives, here are a few prompts that will hopefully lead to deeper insights about who you are today:
- If you were given a dollar to buy treats when you were a kid, what would you buy?
- Was dessert a special treat or a nightly ritual?
- What food do you throw out? Do you eat leftovers?
- What kind of cooking did your father do when you were growing up?
- Who did the grocery shopping?
- Did your family say grace before meals? What was said and by whom?
- Where did your family get meat from when you were a kid? If you don’t eat meat, why and what prompted that decision?
- What did you feel your kids when they were babies or toddlers? Did you restrict your diet when you were pregnant?
- What was your life like as a newlywed? How did you accommodate your wife/husband’s food preferences when you first got married?
- What was the first product you remember scanning? First candy bar?
- Did you ever steal a pack of gum?
- Did you make your own beer or wine?
- Did you share food with your neighbors? Could you borrow a cup of sugar from them?
- What did your mom make you when you were sick?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat
February 17, 2010
Chefs using Twitter to pick fights, fight back
In today’s New York Times, Julia Moskin writes about how chefs are taking to Twitter to voice their frustrations with customers, bloggers, other restaurants and event restaurant critics.
I’m fascinated by the power that social media gives people on both sides of the table. Moskin offers this quote from the wife of LA chef Ludovic Lefebvre:
“Before the Web and Twitter, restaurants were completely controlled by the press, and chefs and restaurants just had to sit back and take it. Now we have a voice.”
Now, how easily could we replace “restaurants” with “diners”? I’ve always thought that Yelp and other similar sites have given a voice to customers who previously didn’t have a place to air complaints or sing praises of a restaurant.
Two can play this game, but some chefs aren’t too happy about it. “Yelp is for cowards,” Moskin quotes a tweet from a California chef, who don’t have the courage “to say anything while in your restaurant.”
Clearly, people on both sides are taking it too far.
It’s too bad more chefs aren’t taking the high road like Houston’s Bobby Heugel, who owns Anvil, one of the premier cocktail bars in the country.
Earlier this week, he tweeted: “Anvil has a new staff policy. They are NEVER allowed to talk negatively about another bar or restaurant. … We want to be part of a supportive industry and community and will now require our staff, at Anvil or not, to handle themselves accordingly.”
(Heugel doesn’t mention not slamming customers, but I think he implies that by saying he wants to be a part of a supportive community.)
I guess people are just now figuring out what a powerful tool social media is, and with power comes responsibility.
Do you think the food world — from restaurant staff to chefs, critics and diners — does a good job of wielding this power? Were we better off when the restaurant critics were the only one with a public voice? How should chefs/restaurants respond to negative comments online?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
January 28, 2010
Whole Foods to offer bigger discount to healthier employees
Earlier this week, Jezebel posted about a new program for Whole Foods employees that allows them a greater in-store discount if they don’t smoke and have low blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI, or Body Mass Index.
Part of an initiative from CEO John Mackey to reduce the company’s health care costs, the program will allow employees who have a BMI of less than 24, blood pressure of 110/70 and a cholesterol of 150 to get a discount of 30 percent on purchases from Whole Foods. The sliding scale leaves employees with BMIs above 30, as well as those who choose not to participate, with the standard 20 percent discount.
This program comes less than six months after Mackey’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that argued for less government control over health care. “Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey wrote. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
What do you think? I’m the first to admit that I’d love a discount on, say, the cost of my own health insurance if I can prove a low BMI and blood pressure, but this Jezebel writer has an important point — and please note the sarcasm: “Because if public health research has taught us anything, it’s that reducing people’s buying power totally makes them healthier. Stay classy, Whole Foods.”
Organizations like the Sustainable Food Center work hard to make the public aware that access to affordable healthy food isn’t a reality for many people, most of whom don’t have the luxury of getting a discount at stores like Whole Foods. Everyone knows a burger at McDonald’s costs less than a pound of apples, so how do we make sure that people who are most in need good-for-you-food can afford to buy it?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
January 12, 2010
Grocery store check-out lane is more than a point of purchase
Just before Christmas, I donned a red polo shirt and a nametag and showed up for duty at one of Austin’s busiest H-E-B stores.
I’d approached Leslie Lockett, director of public affairs for H-E-B, a few weeks earlier with a crazy proposal: Could I work the check-out line at one of H-E-B’s Austin stores?
To my surprise, she said yes.
In tomorrow’s food section, you’ll find the resulting story, which — to my surprise — ended up being less about the logistics of being a checker and more about the brief, but meaningful interaction with customers. (Click here for a photo gallery.)
Food is such an intimate part of our lives, and it’s the checkers’ job to handle everything from your kids’ favorite breakfast cereal, the frozen dinners you’ll be eating for lunch all week to the ingredients you’ll lovingly turn into lavish meals for guests. Both cashiers and customers probably don’t think twice about this interaction, but if you step back and look at it, it’s a pretty unique relationship.
Have you spent time on the other side of the register? What lessons (good or bad) did you learn?
Video by Kelly West.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Grocery goods
January 11, 2010
What apps do you use in the kitchen or eating on the go?
Just a few weeks into life with an iPhone, I’ve already found it to be an indispensable tool in the kitchen, not just for tweeting while I’m cooking.
As you can see, Epicurious is my recipe application of choice so far. I’ve downloaded the All Recipes app, but haven’t used it, and more than once, I’ve found myself wishing that Fine Cooking had a dedicated app.
As for using my iPhone to find something good to eat, Yelp and Urbanspoon have both been helpful. Mando Rayo of TacoJournalism.com pointed me to the journalistas’ new app, iTacos, which helps you find taco joints in Austin.
Statesman tech writer Omar Gallaga says it’s worth the $4.99 to upgrade from Grocery Gadget Lite to help make grocery lists, but I’m still pretty stingy when it comes to paying for applications that I’m not sure I’m going to use.
But here’s where you tech-minded folks come in. Seeing as how most of you are easily a year or two ahead of me in the world of food apps for your phone, I’m hoping you will give me tips on what is worth paying for and what isn’t.
What are your must-have apps for pairing food and wine? What about menu planning or tweeting food photos? Do you keep track of your calories through programs like Livestrong’s calorie counter?
Over the next month, I’ll be diving into this world of food apps for an upcoming story, and I’d love to hear your favorite ways to use mobile technology to be a better cook and a better eater.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Cookbooks
January 4, 2010
After cheese balls, latkes and paella, let the holiday recovery begin
The holidays are meant for overindulging, and I did my fair share this year.
No need to rehash every delicious meal, cocktail or food tradition, but here are a few of the highlights to remind me, and hopefully you, too, of the wonderful time spent with friends and family over the past few weeks.
Santa brought me perfectly ripe, heirloom backyard tomatoes! OK, maybe not Santa, but my nice neighbor who has the magic touch of growing fall tomatoes. He picks them while they are still green just before the first frost, lets them ripen near a window and then, just a few days before Christmas, gives a little piece of summer to friends.
Not too long after Christmas, I found out that I’m 1/64th Jewish, which explains my previously hard-to-explain desire earlier in the month to host a Hanukkah party complete with a menorah (thanks, Jodi and Adam!) and latkes with applesauce.
I’d never made latkes before, but it wasn’t nearly as difficult (or smelly) as I thought it would be. Next year, I’ll just have to think ahead and make the applesauce, too.
At both the Hanukkah/winter solstice/birthday/Christmas party and Christmas Eve dinner, my mom brought cheese balls, which are one of my family’s traditional Christmas foods. Made with several kinds of cheeses, onions, parsley and nuts, the cheese ball is standard holiday fare at Christmas parties in Missouri, but I found that many friends in Austin hadn’t had one before. What do you think? Are cheese balls more of a Midwestern party food?
My mom and Julian tried to make a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve, but it turned into gingerbread cookies that, despite looking anything but edible, Santa seemed to enjoy when he made a stop at our house. (Julian also insisted on serving him chocolate milk with cherries, which he also drank.)
And Thanksgiving, er Christmas Eve, dinner, with dressing, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, marshmallow-topped candied yams and green bean casserole. Almost made me forget what holiday we were on, but when nearly every branch of the family tree is represented at a single, bustling dinner, does it really matter?
We rang in the new year with friends who made three different paellas (Cajun, veggie and traditional) and set up a very cool make-your-own-barbecued-oysters bar. With a firepit out back, the oysters kept guests entertained while the hosts worked in the kitchen. A fabulous entertaining idea to remember for next year.
(And you might notice the meh quality of the paella and oyster photos. I am now officially among the ranks of the iPhoners, and I upload all my wandering snapshots to La Vie Addie, a tumblr blog.)
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! I’m looking forward to a turkey- and cookie swap-free 10 months, and then hopefully I’ll be recharged enough to do it all over again…
UPDATE: I used this recipe for latkes from Epicurious, but Rob Moshein, the blogger behind Austin Wine Guy, shared this recipe for his Grandma Rose’s famous latkes. Hanukkah isn’t for another year, but you can make potato fritters any time.
Grandma Rose’s Latkes
2 lbs Russet potatoes
1 large yellow onion, outer skin peeled off.
2 eggs
1/2 cup Wondra flour
1 tsp. salt
Black pepper to taste
Line a cookie sheet with brown paper from a grocery bag and place in an oven set on low, which will keep latkes warm after frying until ready to serve. Heat 1/4 inch of fat or oil in large cast iron skillet to 350 degrees (Grandma Rose’s test was when the wood end of a kitchen match bubbles when placed into the oil. A dry chopstick will do the same thing.)
(Note on the fat: Grandma Rose used schmaltz or rendered chicken fat. We use Crisco. I will put a little goose fat into the Crisco if I have some left over, which adds a great flavor.)
Grate the onion into a bowl using a large box grater. Add the eggs and beat until well mixed. Add salt and pepper and slowly beat in the flour until smooth.
Shred the potatoes using the large shred side of the grater. (NOTE: we have tried the Cusinart here, don’t bother with it. The texture is all wrong, so this part has to be done by hand.) When you have the last 20 percent or so of each potato, grate that part on the grater side, for a lumpy puree with the shreds; this adds a nice soft inside to the pancakes. Add the potatoes to the egg/onion mixture and stir well. Work quickly here on out or the potato will turn brown.
Spoon the mixture into the fat and flatten out with a spatula to about 1/4 inch or so, you can make them as little or large as you like. We like ours about 4-6 inches across, or 4 latkes per large skillet. Don’t crowd the pan. Let them cook at least 2 minutes before flipping. Cook evenly on both sides until dark golden brown and the outsides are crispy. Place in the warm oven on the paper. Repeat until all the potato mixture has been used.
Serve ASAP with Apple Sauce! Perfect side dish for anything in the winter time.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Cooking
December 30, 2009
The Decade in Food: Local is the new black
Heirloom tomatoes have never had it so good.
Back in 2000, most omnivores didn’t know they had a dilemma, much less the extent that Monsanto, Cargill and their well-dressed friends controlled the food supply.
As authors and moviemakers spread awareness of what goes on behind closed doors at factory farms, the perils of genetically modifying seeds and the long-lasting damage caused by pesticides and herbicides, people started to pay closer attention to what went into growing and producing their food.
New farms including Johnson’s Backyard Garden, Green Gate and Rain Lily sell food directly to customers through community-supported agriculture programs, where people buy a share of the farm in exchange for produce.
And because it doesn’t get any more local than from your backyard, victory gardens made popular during World War II are back, empowering a new generation of people, including the First Family (whose garden surely looks much better than my backyard garden, below), to grow their own food.
This is the fifth of a series of five of the top food trends of the past decade. Restaurant critic Mike Sutter blogged his top 5 over on Forklore, and the story will be printed in today’s paper.
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The Decade in Food: The world wide cookbook
During the decade of the blog, people who like food and cooking suddenly had a way to connect with each other, to find new places to eat or share favorite recipes. An explosion of food blogs and recipe Web sites meant that you didn’t have to have a shelf full of cookbooks to find a recipe for just about any dish you could conjure up.
In 2008, AllRecipes.com surpassed the Web sites for both the Food Network and various food magazines to be the site with the highest Web traffic, and now home cooks’ biggest challenge isn’t finding a recipe but wading through them all to find one that works and is up to par.
When Gourmet magazine folded this year after nearly 70 years of publication, many with a stake in traditional publishing pointed their flour-covered fingers at food bloggers without realizing that the suddenly powerful and prolific food bloggers were some of Gourmet’s biggest fans.
Cook’s Illustrated and several other publications are having some success charging readers access to online recipes and food content, but the vast majority of users would rather spend money on ingredients instead of recipes.
This is the fourth of a series of five of the top food trends of the past decade. Restaurant critic Mike Sutter’s blogged his top 5 over on Forklore, and the story will be printed in today’s paper.
Cartoon by Married to the Sea.
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December 29, 2009
The Decade in Food: There's a salmonella in my spinach
Peanut butter, spinach, tomatoes, jalapeños, pistachios, raw beef and even chocolate bars and cookie dough have been pulled from shelves after people have been sickened or even killed by pathogens.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of beef — almost a half pound of meat per person in the country — in one of the largest recalls in U.S. history. The FDA even has a Twitter account dedicated to food recalls.
This is the third of a series of five of the top food trends of the past decade. Restaurant critic Mike Sutter blogged his top 5 over on Forklore, and the story will be printed in Wednesday’s paper.
Photo illustration by Smart Choices.
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The Decade in Food: Cupcake mania
Cupcakes are cute, easy and cheap to make and portable, so it’s no surprise that cupcake fever has swept the country in the past 10 years. In an episode of HBO’s “Sex and the City” in 2000, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character eats a retro cupcake outside Magnolia Bakery in New York City, a scene that continues to draw thousands of tourists a year to the Bleecker Street bakery. (In case you missed the scene, here’s a bootleg version on YouTube.)
Just as with the frozen yogurt and doughnuts trends, the cupcake craze was slow to trickle to Austin, but even as we close out the decade, more than a dozen bakeries and cupcake catering companies, including Hey Cupcake and Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop, are still shelling out frosted gems to eager customers.
This is the second of a series of five of the top food trends of the past decade. Restaurant critic Mike Sutter’s blogged his top 5 over on Forklore, and the story will be printed in Wednesday’s paper.
Photos by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman, Tim Sharp for the Associated Press.
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The Decade in Food: Queen Rachael takes her throne
Ten years ago, Rachael Ray and Anthony Bourdain were nobodies, struggling like thousands of other wannabe celebrity chefs to carve out a niche with their quirky personalities and cooking know-how, and the Food Network and PBS still had the monopoly on food-related television shows.
As the highest-paid person in food, Ray now sits at the top of an empire that includes a magazine, daytime television show, a number of other Food Network shows and even a pet food line.
Like Ray and her Food Network brethren including hosts Guy Fieri and Sandra Lee, Bourdain will probably never work in a commercial kitchen again, but that’s where “Top Chef” comes in.
In 2006, Bravo mashed together two American obsessions — chefs and reality shows — to create a hit series about the thrilling drama Bourdain so eloquently introduced in his book. The show, entering its seventh season, is launching the careers of a new wave of celebrity chefs and non-chefs, including red hot host Padma Lakshmi.
This is the first of a series of five of the top food trends of the past decade. Restaurant critic Mike Sutter’s blogged his top 5 over on Forklore, and the story will be printed in Wednesday’s paper.
Photos from Online TV and Links, Bravo and Amazon.
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December 15, 2009
Need a last-minute kid gift? Sew a pint-sized apron
(If your name is Harriet and you are 6 years old, stop reading this blog post or else your Christmas surprise on Wednesday is going to be ruined.)
Whew, now that I know that Harriet, one of the cutest little girls in the history of my son’s day care, isn’t looking, I can tell you about the pint-sized apron I made her for a secret Santa swap party this week.
She’s a frolicking, freckled spirit, and though I can’t be sure she’s as into cooking as I am, I figured that every kid needs a personalized apron to help keep them excited about hanging out in the kitchen.
I leave the crafty blogging to my friend Etienne, who writes the Knittin’ Kitten blog for the Statesman, but I’ve been known to sew a thing or two in my life. Skirts, purses, satchels, dresses: I’ve sewn them all, but after that oh-so-public fashion bashing I got a few years back, I stick to mending and making fun gifts like pillows and this apron.
Harriet is no bigger than a teacup, so I just used a bigger apron as a guide for shape when I cut out the fabric. (And as anyone who sews knows, you almost always have enough extra fabric lying around to make something else. All the fabrics I used are from previous projects.)
What really makes this apron special, of course, is the big letter “H” on the front. Letters are easy to sew on, and they instantly personalize whatever you’re making.
Who knows if Ms. H will actually use this apron in the kitchen — I’d be just as happy if it were covered in paint a year from now — but I hope it brings her as much joy as it did for me to make it.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Playing with your food
December 3, 2009
Kitchen Confession: Opting out of Thanksgiving traditions
I skipped the big Thanksgiving this year.
Last week, I wrote a little bit about taking a break from traditional Thanksgiving dishes, but our break from tradition wasn’t just about not serving turkey.
Every year since I moved to Austin, I’ve done the holiday dance, driving 11 hours to Missouri to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family there. It’s always a lovely time together, and I really do cherish the whole idea of packing as many relatives into one house as possible for the holidays.
But sometimes you need a break.
I’m lucky to get to see my and my husband’s family several times a year, so this year, I knew our own little family needed a different approach to the holidays.
I could blame it on the fact that we have a 3-year-old who hates spending an entire day in the car as much as we do. I could blame it on the fact that all I think and breathe for the entire months of November and December is holiday food. I could blame my little hail-dented Corolla that needs a visit to a mechanic before another massive road trip.
The truth is, we wanted to do things our way this Thanksgiving.
When I first told my family that we weren’t going to anyone’s Thanksgiving dinner but our own, I don’t think they believed me. But as the end of November got closer and even my San Diego-based uncle, the prodigal son who never came home, said he was flying back for Thanksgiving, the pressure was on for us to change our plans.
But we didn’t. Feelings were hurt, I’m sure, but everyone, even you, dear reader of this blog, shouldn’t have to beg for a get-out-of-jail-free card if you want to opt out of a big family gathering.
The result? The most relaxing, drama-free, expectation-free Thanksgiving vacation I’ve ever had.
I missed being around my extended family, but most of them will be in Austin for Christmas.
I know I’ll be back on the gravy train next year, but stealing last week with Ian and Julian was one of the best decisions we’ve made all year.
Kitchen Confession is a series of blog posts highlighting the bad habits we refuse to break in the kitchen.
What’s your dirty kitchen habit? E-mail me at abroyles@statesman.com. Photos are optional, but encouraged.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Kitchen Confession
October 5, 2009
After 68 years, Gourmet magazine to close after Nov. issue
What a day for food news.
The New York Times is reporting that Gourmet magazine will cease publication after the November issue. After 68 years as one of the best food magazines around (the most recent 10 years with food powerhouse Ruth Reichl as editor), this news is a sad reminder of the changing times.
Yes, the economy is bad, but magazines have been struggling for a while. Ad sales are down. Subscriptions are down. Free content is everywhere, but you can’t find the quality of photography and articles published in Gourmet just anywhere. Especially in Bon Appetit, the “other” food magazine Conde Nast owns.
Few in the industry thought that Conde Nast could continue to publish two food magazines for much longer, but many put their bets on the less-prestigious (and to me, less engaging and enjoyable to look at) Bon Appetit. But when you look at the other food publications out there — Cooking Light, Eating Well, Saveur, Food + Wine, Every Day with Rachael Ray and even the Food Network’s magazine — readers want quick bites, tips, low-fat recipes and dinners they can cook in less than 20 minutes.
Gourmet just released “Gourmet Today,” a collection of more than 1,000 new recipes for “how we cook today.” A great concept and a fine book, I’m sure, but I haven’t seen it. Budget cuts must have forced them to reduce the number of review copies they sent out. (We haven’t received review copies of the magazine in a long time, but I subscribed anyway.)
It’ll be interesting to see what Reichl, a former New York Times restaurant critic, does next. She has a series on PBS that is supposed to air this fall and has had success with her memoirs, but what do you do after 10 years at the helm of the world’s most elegant food magazine?
UPDATE: It appears Gourmet will continue in book publishing and television programing. From an e-mail quoted on LA Observed:
Gourmet magazine will cease monthly publication, but we will remain committed to the brand, retaining Gourmet’s book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com. We will concentrate our publishing activities in the epicurean category on Bon Appétit.
As if the news of Gourmet closing wasn’t enough to digest this morning, the Federal Trade Commission announced that starting December 1, bloggers must disclose freebies or payments they get from companies in exchange for reviewing their products.
From AP: “It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers. But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.”
This is an interesting ruling that will without a doubt affect the food blogging community. Violators could face up to $11,000 in fines, but I’d really like to know who is going to be perusing the millions of blogs to find out who is breaking the rules.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
September 18, 2009
Patrick Swayze, I'd carry a watermelon for you
In a Patrick Swayze remembrance today in the paper, I reflected on my adoration of his role in “Dirty Dancing,” a movie I’ve seen more times than I care to admit and whose soundtrack I’ve listened to even more:
It was hard to feel sorry for Jennifer Grey’s character in 1987’s “Dirty Dancing.” Frances “Baby” Houseman, a do-gooder trying on her big-girl shoes one summer at her family’s retreat in the Catskills, falls for the smooth-talking and even smoother-moving dancing instructor Johnny Castle. Few actors could pull off the role like Patrick Swayze, a classically trained ballet dancer whose mother was a dance teacher in his hometown of Houston.
Swayze’s masculine appeal drives the film, from he and Baby’s first meeting after she carries watermelons to the hip-thrusting afterparty through their dance lessons in the rain and in a lake and that sexy scene in the cabin where Baby officially leaves her overprotected childhood behind.
Swayze, with his sure steps and steady gaze, gave a generation of women a muscular, lust-worthy leading man who could do a mean mambo without the stuffy pretense. Sure, John Travolta gave us a rebellious, swift-footed hunk a decade before in “Grease,” but Swayze ditched the musical theatrics for a less slicked-back and ego-driven definition of cool. I’d rather swap places with Grey than Olivia Newton-John any day.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Chewing the fat
May 22, 2009
Ramen noodles and The Maneater
The Maneater student newspaper had spread the word even before we moved on campus that if you were a serious journalism student, theirs was the newspaper you wanted to work at before you actually entered J-school (typically your junior year).
The eager beaver I was/am, I popped into the newsroom before the classes started and picked up an assignment: a grocery story-by-grocery store price comparison of foods that typically comprise a college student’s diet. I gathered my data and surreptitiously took pictures with my, gasp, SLR camera (whose film I would later develop in The Maneater’s photo lab that would only be in use another two years). I was proud to show off my first story but even prouder when it was picked as the “story of the week” (for the first and only time in four often rowdy years at the paper) at The Maneater’s auditorium-filled first official news meeting.
I’ve been reading UT graduation tweets today and thinking about college and all it means in our lives, from the 40 pounds we gain and can’t seem to shake off to the late-night pizzaPokey Stix runs, croissant-fueled trips through Europe and mid-morning brunches. Not only can see where the 40 pounds comes from, but also where our relationships with food bloom.
So, graduates, congratulations and may the Ramen be with you.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
May 13, 2009
My two cents on 'Julie & Julia'
Sure “Star Trek” just came out and wowed everybody, even the non Trekkies, and there will probably be another four “X-Men” movies released by the end of summer, but by all the talk in the food community, you’d think there was only one movie coming out this year that matters.
“Julie & Julia” won’t be released until August 7, but foodies have been buzzing about it since they found out former Austinite Julie Powell’s blog-turned-book would be adapted for the big screen by Nora Ephron and that no less than Meryl Streep herself would play Julia Child. Rising star Amy Adams was booked as Powell, and the hysteria began.
A little more about the movie: Powell hated her job in New York, and as a way to give herself a purpose, she started a blog to chronicle cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year. After a lot of cursing and aspic, Powell finished her task and eventually got a book deal, which then made its way to Hollywood and into the hands of Ephron.
Journalist-turned-chef Michael Ruhlman has seen is and says he loves Streep’s performance as Julia. They are already preselling a copy of Powell’s book with the actors on the cover. Director Nora Ephron apparently ran into Streep on the street and told her she was working on the script; Streep launched into her Julia Child impression and the deal was sealed.
I haven’t seen the movie, but as part of a book club earlier this year, I read the book, and much to my surprise, I was one of the only people in the club who actually liked it. Powell, who grew up in Austin and whose family still lives here, started this project in 2002, when blogs weren’t quite the universal force they are now. The idea of cooking every recipe from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in a year and blogging about it wasn’t as gimmicky as it would be if started today because no one was doing that kind of thing way back then.
Her strong blogging voice didn’t translate into the book, my fellow book clubbers said. It wasn’t the best written book I’d ever read, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. Women authors, especially those who start as bloggers, don’t get near the respect of their male counterparts. Instead of being “witty” or “edgy,” Powell was “annoying” or “contrived.”
From the looks of it, Amy Adams won’t have quite the sailor’s mouth or affinity for gin vodka gimlets that Powell does/did in the book, but the way Ephron appears to be weaving the two storylines together seems fantastic. Eat Me Daily is upset because now Julia Child has to share the screen with some lowly blogger and won’t get her own full-length feature. This echoes some of the criticism during the book club meeting: Child is too grand, too great a character to be the subject of such a frivolous project, book and now movie.
I couldn’t disagree more. Child was an institution for decades in the form of both her cookbooks and her shows, but where is Child now? She passed away while Powell was writing her book and never officially chimed in on what she thought of the blog project. Her shows aren’t airing a hundred times a week on television. She doesn’t have new cookbooks coming out. Think all that Jacques Pepin and Auguste Escoffier did for cooking, but how many of them will be a household name in ten years?
I think that Powell’s experience in many ways embodies what Child set out to accomplish. Wasn’t Child preaching empowerment in the kitchen? Then why would she have any objection to a depressed worker bee rediscovering herself by learning to make French food that no one eats anymore? Wasn’t the love of food what saved Child, too?
Powell’s “year of cooking dangerously” has reinvigorated Child’s legacy so it can inspire a new generation of cooks. What better way to honor such an extraordinary woman.
(Photo from Columbia Pictures)
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Chewing the fat
March 19, 2009
Graffiti keeps Austin tasty
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
January 27, 2009
The biggest compost pile you've ever seen
A few weeks ago, I was touring Sunshine Community Gardens, the 4-acre plot near The Triangle that celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and one of the gardeners there showed me this heaping compost pile. (She didn’t understand why I got all excited and started snapping photos of rotting food when I hadn’t taken a single photo of the lush winter gardens we’d been strolling through.)
I found out that twice a week, Whole Foods lets volunteers pick up crates of expired food to bring up to the community garden, where it then is mixed with clippings and leaves to create rich soil that the gardeners use. Workers from Casa de Luz, the macrobiotics place I wrote about last fall, bring Casa’s scraps to Sunshine.
Speaking of waste…
During a road trip earlier this month, we hit Jack in the Box for some grub. I’m having a hard time eating full-on fast food after reading Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” recently, so I ordered a salad (with crispy chicken nonetheless), but look at all the packaging! The salad was pretty tasty, even though the dressing was full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup, but it just seemed like such a waste to have all the nuts, crispy strips and such in their own packages.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in your backyard
January 6, 2009
In a crowded kitchen, Food Network stuck on the line
Interesting statistics on the biggest food Web sites today. Food Network, which was once the granddaddy of food Web sites, has fallen slightly behind Allrecipes.com in unique visitors. ComScore, which tracks online traffic, said that food sites attracted about 45.6 million unique visitors in September, a 10 percent increase from the same month in 2007.
Allrecipes, which boasts nearly 300,000 recipes, drew more than 8 million of those visits, a sliver more than the longtime leader, Food Network.
It seems the economy is pushing people back into the kitchen and therefore online for inspiration on what — or how — to cook.
Where do you go to find recipes? Do you search by ingredient or by recipe? I find myself doing a bit of both, and instead of going to a specific Web site, I generally do a Google search, with mixed results. I’m pretty surprised that About.com is up there; the (un)usability on that Web site makes me crazy.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Chewing the fat
November 6, 2008
Can you really get high off brown rice?
Early students of Michio Kushi were hippies looking for enlightenment, Warren Kramer says, and Kushi tried to show them that you can get high from eating brown rice.
Those macrobiotics folks aren’t lying when they say what they eat is as much about spirituality as it is food.
People may scoff at the idea that eating brown rice will get you high, but I doubt anyone can say they haven’t felt that sublime, head-in-the-clouds feeling after eating something exquisite. (Sushi, for example, always gives me a physical and mental buzz.)
Science proves that food directly affects our bodies and our brains. Why do you think we all go for soup when we’re feeling under the weather? The warm, savory liquid has as much power over us psychologically as it does physically. For some, the mere smell of cookies baking will release relaxing chemicals in the brain. How many of us have a special breakfast we eat to prepare us for a particularly challenging day?
What about that feeling after you eat a giant salad for lunch? Your belly feels good because it is digesting healthy nutrients and your mind feels good because it knows you’ve eaten well.
Macrobiotics acknowledges the power of one’s actions while cooking as well. How many of us have said, “You can taste the love in this _”? While making this video on how to make miso soup, chef Morna Neal did a few interesting things: She lovingly washed each vegetable by itself, and then after cutting the carrot or celery very slowly with a knife, she wiped the cutting board to honor the integrity of each vegetable, she said.
The best part about my job is getting to know not just people who love to eat, but people who love the food they eat with every molecule of their body.
If you do that, you are already living the “Great Life,” even if the word macrobiotics never comes out of your mouth.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat
August 20, 2008
Say goodbye to your favorite Torchy's trailer
When Torchy’s Tacos owner Mike Rypka told me he was closing Torchy’s original trailer on South First Street, I almost started to cry.
What about the basketball goal! The poison-ivy coated creekside! The grassy back yard where Julian learned to walk! With so many memories at the lot across the creek from the Texas School for the Deaf, how could he think of shutting it down?
Don’t get too sad, he reassured me. Not only was the original trailer moving just two lots down the street, it was also getting a neighbor — Shuggie’s, a burger and seafood trailer whose menu he’s been working on for months.
So, the original Torchy’s will close down on Sunday, August 24, only to reopen alongside Shuggie’s on Friday, August 29 (the date on the sign hanging on the trailer now is a misprint, Mike says).
“It’s gonna be a lot of fun once we get that thing up and rollin’,” Mike says. He’s planning a game room with pinball machines and pool tables, a tire swing, horseshoes and a kids’ area at the new spot, which will also have more parking.
Oh, and as for Shuggie’s: Prepare yourselves, folks. Greasy, hand-formed meat patties, po’ boys, onion rings, hush puppies. Need I say more?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Eating out, Food in the news
August 19, 2008
When to say "no" to leftovers?
Eating leftovers is a great way to reduce the amount of food wasted, but that pesky fine line of when something spoils is sometimes hard to spot. How brown is too brown for ground beef? Can you trim off the mold on a block of cheese or loaf of bread? Don’t condiments keep forever? ABC News asked scientists to help leftovers lovers figure it out:
Smelly, spotty or curdled food won’t necessarily make you sick. In fact, the so-called spoilage bacteria can outgrow the bacteria that can make you sick and actually act as a protection shield for the food. The ones that will make you take over the bathroom are odorless and colorless.
The key to keeping food safe is the temperature of your fridge. You can safety keep most foods for four days at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, according to one of the scientists in the article.
Limit the amount of time food is left unrefrigerated to two hours.
You’ve got three days for raw chicken and beef. If you’re not going to use it in three days, put it in the freezer.
As for that mold on the bread? As long as no one has a mold allergy, you can cut a few inches past the mold and it should be OK to eat.
If you’re still unsure, you can always call the USDA meat and poultry hotline at 1-888-674-6854.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Chewing the fat
August 18, 2008
Rachael Ray's alter ego
Cause I know you can’t get enough of America’s favorite 30-Minute-Meal maker, meet Rachael, er Rachell, the smiling faux chef behind Every Freaking Day with Rachell Ray, a parody book out that’s sure to have Ray Ray boiling in her JCrew booties.
Or maybe not. Ms. Ray, who recently topped the list as the top-earning celebrity chef with her $18 million a year salary, seems like a light-hearted gal most of the time. Maybe she, too, can get a laugh at herself.
I sure did, especially with features “Oh My Buns! Burgers of the Month,” “Swell Swill: Wines under $5.99” and an RR drinking game, in which you take drinks each time she says “totally” or “EVOO” and drain the bottle when she calls the guests on her show “kids.” (The real Rachael’s Web site has a Rachael-isms page to explain her lingo, in case “delish” or “yum-o” isn’t clear.)
Watch out for “floater” recipes — including one whose ingredients consist of flavored gelatin and Chex Mix — and a how-to on getting from the fridge to the counter with every single flippin’ ingredient you need in your grasp.
What would we do without you, RR?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Cookbooks
July 28, 2008
TGI Friday's Guy Fieri hits up Casino El Camino
I’m stoked any time an Austin eatery or foodie gets the national spotlight, but it makes me crazy that Fieri, who won the second season of The Next Food Network Star, is also a spokesman for TGI Friday’s, a chain that may be partially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of these beloved dives. I don’t know Fieri, so I can’t say for sure, but the guy is on his third Food Network show, so he can’t be hurting that badly for dollars, especially from a company so antithetical to the mission of this show.
Of course, Fieri isn’t alone. Tyler Florence hooked up with Applebee’s to promote healthier menu options. Rachael Ray looooves Dunkin’ Donuts (and if you can believe it, she just came out today with a charitable line of premium dog food), and remember, Paula Deen talks ham, not unions.
The celebrity chef sellout question is your call, but thank God — for many reasons — we’ve still got Anthony Bourdain. From this interview:
I’ve had pretty much a full spectrum of offers for business, as well as personal services! Endorsements and reality shows, you know the usual kind of (expletive). It’s a quality-of-life issue, I don’t want to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see the Tidy Bowl guy or the spokesman for Lomotil. I won’t be doing a set of steak knives
Personally, Fieri drives me nuts (or maybe it’s just the hair), but like I said, I’ll watch anything with Austin in it.
And at least he snagged a recipe for El Camino’s Amarillo Burger.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Eating out, Food in the news
July 9, 2008
French chickens and fancy hens
I had so much fun working on this week’s stories about French fowl and rabbit farmer and chef Sebastien Bonneu and the Cola Sisters, the hosts of the public access show “Cookin’ Good.” Great subjects with interesting stories to tell. Every food writers’ — well, at least this food writer’s — dream.
They raise some tasty chickens, too! We had a couple of birds a week or so ago — cut into pieces and grilled — that made me remember what chicken is supposed to taste like. Certainly makes chicken sold on Styrofoam and wrapped in plastic a little less appealing.
He’ll be at the Triangle tonight selling his goods if you want to try them yourself.
I got to listen in on some of them during a taping of a show last weekend, and let me tell you, they have some crazy fans, some of whom leave 5-minute messages professing their Cola love. (If you’ve never seen the show, it’s hard to grasp exactly why they have such a following, but you can get a glimpse of their style in this Austin360.com video.)
Someone made a full-color comic book based on them, they sold a guest spot on their show for charity recently for $100 and Arcie even was offered a ride from some fans who recognized her in public last week. All from a cooking show that would make your grandma blush. These are my kind of gals, even though I don’t think I could ever pull off the outfits.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat
May 22, 2008
Is a woman's place still in the kitchen, eating yogurt?
The way food products and cookbook are marketed and written these days, you’d think women were still staying at home to bake all day and the majority of men only touched food when they were eating it or grilling it.
Take this barbecue tool belt or just about any little kids’ cooking set. Remember the pink Easy-Bake Oven? Don’t worry, it’s still pink and “still delights with a girl’s first real baking experience,” according to the official word from Hasbro. Nearly every grilling cookbook I get features “manly men” on the cover, holding some grill tool and looking gruff. No ovens in sight.
The stereotypical marketing extends to not just cooking, but eating, too. CurrentTV recently had this piece about how yogurt makers rely on really generic stereotypes (for example, that all women want in life is shoes, long walks on the beach and a happy digestive tract) to sell more yogurt.
Missy Chase Lapine, one of two cookbook authors who’ve burst onto the scene in the past year with recipes that encourage people to sneak vegetables into their foods so that their kids will eat them (the other is Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, whose book is “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food”), has moved from teaching you how to deceive your children to encouraging you to deceive your husband in “The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on your Man (In the Kitchen).”
It’s amazing to me that not only is she suggesting that encouraging males to eat vegetables is somehow a betrayal of their love and trust, but also that men somehow won’t eat vegetables of their own volition.
“A Man, a Can, a Plan” is another book based solely on the stereotype that men can’t (or
Does this drive anyone else mad? My fiancée, Ian, is a great cook, and Julian already has a little cooking set-up that he plays with. I just have a hard time believing that with more men cooking now than ever, these companies (and authors!) aren’t changing how they sell food-related products and books.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Chewing the fat
