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The Bowery Beer Room at the Whole Foods store on Houston Street in New York has over a thousand varieties of beer for sale. There are six beers on tap. The store sells a glass half gallon container called a “growler” that you can fill up with draft beer and take home–just like the good old days before beer came in cans and bottles. So why did Whole Foods put this in New York and not in its home town of Austin? Don’t tell me–it has something to do with the TABC, right?
Chef Chris Shepherd made this dish of crispy fried pig’s ears and poached eggs with chopped greens for a Soter wine dinner at Catalan last month. It was a tasty appetizer, and it certainly got a lot of attention from the wine guys. I usually eat my pig’s ears pickled–they are a favorite cold appetizer at Chinese dumpling restaurants. Shepherd said it’s hard to find a wine with just the right combination of tartness and fruit flavors to pair with a delicacy like pig’s ear. I don’t know about that, but I do know they go pretty good with cold beer.
When Chef Alan Lazarus loaded me up with his homegrown tomatoes, he gave me a couple of purple Brandywine heirlooms. I used one of them along with some purple onions to make pico de gallo. It looked a little purple at first, but after a couple hours in the fridge the purple onions started bleeding into the lime juice and the whole thing got wonderfully weird-looking. If you have a purple tomato, try it yourself. Add some purple peppers or purple Thai basil if you have any. Here’s a recipe:  David Norman While I was in Austin last week, I stumbled over to Congress Avenue in the early morning murk looking for breakfast. Las Manitas wasn’t where I left it. But there was a new place called Annie’s Cafe. And there I spotted my old friend David Norman baking bread. I tapped on the glass and got him to let me in although the place hadn’t opened yet. Norman is a veteran boulanger who has worked at such famous bakeries as Upper Crust in Seattle and the legendary Bouley Bakery in New York. He started at Annie’s around a month ago, he said. In August of 1969, The University of Nebraska Animal Sciences Department reissued this pamphlet titled “The Large Quantity Barbecue.” (Click on the link to see the whole thing–the photos are amazing!) The booklet contains step-by-step instructions for building the kind of old-fashioned barbecue pit in which the meat is buried under a covering of dirt. You dig the pit three and half feet deep and determine the length by how much meat you are cooking– six feet of pit for every 200 pounds of meat. This was always the method used for the XIT Reunion Barbecue. The world’s largest free barbecue will be held on Saturday August 8 this year. If you go, please send me some photos.
Chef Randy Evans at Haven, the locavore restaurant on Algerian Way in Houston, served this simple salad of butter lettuce, wild brown shrimp and Texas red grapefruit that last time I was there. Since they don’t eat bold-flavored brown shrimp anywhere else in the country and we don’t produce enough supersweet red grapefruit to export, this is an only-in-Texas combination of flavors. It’s also a very easy salad to make at home. Only you better hurry–the grapefruit season is over, but there are still a few left on the market.
Most people go to Gerardo’s for the awesome barbacoa on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Some swear by the crispy carnitas. I like the barbacoa de borrego and the chile rellenos too. But don’t ignore Gerardo’s sublime mollejas. You can buy them by the pound or by the taco. Deep-fried sweetbread tacos are a lovely way to start the day. You’ll find them on the steam table buffet at Gerardo’s Drive In Grocery on Patton St. just east of I-45 in Houston.  Will our Tex-Mex joint serve fried eggs on cheese enchiladas? This morning, the Sidedish Newsletter from My Table Magazine reported that I am a partner in a new Tex-Mex restaurant venture.  Aaron Franklin is serious about BBQ Aaron Franklin grew up around barbecue and country music. His parents owned a barbecue joint in Bryan and his grandfather once played steel guitar for Bob Wills. After high school, Aaron headed to Austin and became the drummer in several rock and roll bands. After he got that out of his system, he settled down and started cooking barbecue. His barbecue trailer on I-35 near 32nd St in Austin has the Texas Q scene all abuzz. |
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Copyright © 2010 Robb Walsh :: Texas Eats - All Rights Reserved 
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