GourmandeMom™

Airplane and Airport Food : le Tapas Box and the so-not-a-Croque Monsieur

Thanks to a kind, on-the-ball ticketing agent at Reagan National Airport, I scored a seat on an earlier flight back to Texas.  This was good news and bad news.  Good news because if I caught the next leg of the trip, Houston to Austin, based on risky stand-by status, I'd get in two hours earlier ending three days of hotel living and working.   The bad news was that this really messed up what and how I would eat that day.  With memories of perhaps one of the most expected yummiest meals ever - at Zaytinya (Greek, Lebanese, Turkish small plates) - I had a feeling this would be a very different food day.  So why not make the best, or worst, of it.

If I did make stand-by, there would be no time to eat.  I had been subsisting on protein bars mostly while in D.C., better get something on the plane. Mary-Kate and Ashley needed to be tended to while this 10-days-old Parisian cold lingered on top of no real sleep while in D.C. (M-K & A is my code name for flawed adrenal system I've been working on improving: think back on their dark, goth, pale, about-to-fall-over-if-a-mild-breeze-came-by selves - yep, that's what the old non-operative adrenal system felt like before I found wise miracle worker Eleanor McCulley at Austin 3-D Health).

And so it was that I made a reluctant foray into those purchased "snacks" on United Airlines. I went for the Tapas Box.  Seemed fairly healthy.  Roasted red peppers, almonds, hummus, pita chips.  With the UT Food Lab's Food, the City, and Innovation Conference from just a few days earlier fresh on my mind, I immediately silently gasped in horror at the amount of packaging that went into this item:  a box, yes.  But plastic wrapped around the box.  Open the box: an array of items, all individually packaged. 

Of special note was the interesting packaging for the hummus.  Which on arrival I noted, with some concern for its ingredients, was called a "hummus dip."   It is contained in that green waxy cardboard multi-sided package above, tucked to the right of the Roasted Red Pepper "Bruschetta" (which was not awful, if I ignored the slight resemblance it had to Pace picante sauce, which continues to grace America's grocery store aisles, to my complete bewilderment)).  The hummus packaging was such that you could just squeeze it out onto your carb of choice: three types of crackers in there.  I went for the pita chips for that, which meant the Pace picante sauce-flavored "bruschetta" (as we know, bruschetta refers to the ensemble of topping on crisped/grilled baguette slices), had to go on just a regular cracker.  Weird.  Sure, I ordered some wine - that mini bottle of what for me is barely even one glass of wine.  The AV system was lame on this not-yet-upgraded plane: I figured I needed something to pass the time. 

Once we arrived at IAH, it was first rush from Terminal E to Terminal B to see about that Stand By status.  Realizing I had plenty of time though, en route I stopped in at Le Grand Comptoir, a nice-enough looking wine bar, with locations at just Newark and Houston it looks like for now.  And with a French name, I could not resist. Sure, I knew, at some deep unconscious level that another glass of wine was a bad idea.  With the cough increasing, the Sudafed cycling down, and the Hall's eucalyptus cough drops creating vague numbness in the back of my throat...I was more deleriously tired than full from the environmentally unsound Tapas Box.  I went for the wine at the wine bar. And, why not, let's check out the Croque Monsieur.  

Service was nice enough. Pleasant.  And the crowd up at the bar was a nice group of folks. A little more upscale than the types I was seeing at Chili's, which as we know has that plastic mug thing for beverages that throws me into an apoplectic fit for inexplicable reasons.  Okay they are explicable: The plastic.  The thought of having any anything - water, iced tea - out of a plastic mug with a handle.  The handle and the plastic.  Therein lies the horror.

In the meantime, the European, in a good way, -looking guy next to me was ordering the Penner Ash - at a price I had noted and marvelled at on the menu - before I went for anything I could find below or at $10.00.  

And then le croque monsieur arrives.  Uh, excuse me.  The menu made it sound like you knew what a croque monsieur was.  As I Tweeted that moment in abject disappointment, ceci n'est pas un croque monsieur.  What is wrong this picture: 

 Right.  It is a ham sandwich with a little but of cheese, and a mustard-dipping sauce. I was too numb with travel fatigue to make some clever conversation about this not being a croque monsieur - which I am sure would have impressed everyone around me. I just left and checked out my standby status in Terminal B.  The flight was already oversold. No go.

Back I had to go, back to Terminal C, after being at Terminal E upon landing, and then Terminal B. I passed by Le Grand Comptoir again on the way back.  My cough and I just kept going, but next time -- it is the venue of choice there at IAH.  Just think "Americanized" sort-of French food.  And it sure beats a plastic-wrapped Tapas Box.

 

Snowy Sunday Night Dinner - Paris (2013)

I was delighted to get the chance to eat with the family again.  Amazing leftovers on the last Sunday night supper with them a few months ago.  But this Sunday night was very different. They still called it a simple dinner....Here are the courses, in the order in which they were served.

Cream of Pumpkin Soup.   With an extra dose of awesomeness: slices of foie gras, which we were told to place at the bottom of the bowls into which our pumpkin soup was then ladled. This was, um, very tasty.

Salade.  With the "house" sauce - the balsamic vinaigrette they make up regularly and always have at the ready in a glass jar for serving.

Homemade Quiche.  Imagine an enormous ceramic quiche dish, the size of a small wagon wheel, or so it seemed.  And two of such vessels for the quiche(s):  This was dinner for 12+ after all.   One type of quiche was not enough for Matriarch (and superb cook) Anne apparently. She made two, each with a  superb buttery homemade crust, one a cheese quiche; the other a leek and goat cheese quiche. One slice of each was served to each of us. (Whew, because I was going to be hard-pressed to pick which one I wanted.)

Cheese.   Anne announced that because there was cheese in the quiche, she was not planning to serve cheese...(so reasonable and moderate these French), but would anyone want a little taste of cheese?   She looks over at me.  I look at her.  I really want some cheese.  The cheese here is no doubt, again tonight, from master cheese vendor Laurent Dubois.  Liz, would you like some?  Well, okay, maybe just a taste.  They were raving about this particular goat cheese after all.   And the wine that night, a nice Bordeaux, yes, that sounded so right for a nice Laurent Dubois cheese.

An array of cheese arrives.

The guys go nuts over one of them.  Me, my eye is on this chevre (pictured here in the middle).  I will need to ask Anne, again, for the name of it.  The one they are loving is, I learn, a Mont-d'Or, and comes with a spoon to scoop it out.  That's all I need.  Another cheese to add to my favorites list.  

Benoit and, I think it was Gregoire, are digging into the Mont d'Or remains.  They love it.  And I understand why after I try it.  This, with a garlic bruschetta as in this recipe, it's almost too much decadence to think of consuming, but I am absolutely going to make this.  Soon.

Anne exclaims how happy she is when the family finishes up the little pieces of cheese hanging around.   I, in the meantime, am sneaking sliver after sliver of this goast cheese.   Benoit: can you please pass the wine?  

Dessert.   Yes, there is more.  Anne says she has a very very simple dessert.  

It is lovely and classic:  A tureen of pears poached in red wine.   Anne says it is the first recipe she ever made.  I agree with her: the sauce this dish creates is divine.   Some little butter cookies go around to go with it.  I do not get many pears - all that cheese you know - but nevertheless try the little biscuit to get in the sprit of things.

And then we are done.  The kids (adults all of them) do the dishes.  A new batch of sauce is made to replenish the glass carafe that is almost empty of the week's supply of truly a "house" vinaigrette. The guys start to gather around the TV.  A big (soccer) match is on TV.

I say my good-byes.  I would catch an early train the next morning for Angers.  I go out one last time into the Paris night in this unbelievable snow and near the Seine and the vistas of the two islands, to get some cash.  I meant to be gone for a few minutes.  I was gone for an hour.  Paris, on a Sunday night covered in snow, was very quiet.  Hardly any cars.  Hardly any people.  Could not help but walk.  And walk. 

The First 16 Hours in Paris (A+) but first, l'Avant Comptoir

I read a lot about Paris.  Food, restaurant, wine bar reviews.  But I know enough from flawed experiences that someone else's good review and experience may not be mine.   It was with optimistic anticipation that I nevertheless headed to l'Avant Comptoir yesterday, a wine bar, for a quick re-fueling after 6 a.m. Paris arrival at CDG, RER trip into the city, coffee with my hosts--where we discussed the U.S. jury system and the purview of the judge and jury in questions of law and fact--and a five-hour nap.

The obvious choice was to use the first of the limited, not already-booked nights in Paris to try the Verjus wine bar.  The restaurant, yes, sublime experience in April, but need to get in and try that wine bar my fav food writers love so much.  Closed.

What now.  Paris by Mouth's list of wine bars, by arrondissement, comes in handy. If I am not walking all the way to Palais Royal in the bitter cold, I should try a new place that is close.   L'Avant Comptoir, already on the list I always keep in my head (when my post-45 ailing memory can recall the list), is on their list.  Done.

It is a short walk away, over at the Carrefour de l'Odeon.   Straight shot down Boulevard St. Germain.

Enter.  Let's see what this is all about.

Unassuming at first.  A group of young 'uns from a country in Asia is placing a large order for crepes and gauffres (waffles).   I ask them, after politely waiting and studying the food items signage hanging from the ceiling, if they are waiting for wine.   (When I am hungry, and food/wine is just right there, I do not mince words). They were not.  I squeeze by and settle in at the counter (the "comptoir") and work on figuring out the drill here.

I ask if I order right there, from the master organizer of everything I figure out (and whose name is Eric/Erik/Erich (with red hair, en plus)).  I admitted I wanted a little help with the red wine selection.  Well, he says, what do you like?  "Uh, everything?" I say. (Bad start to new year's reoslution to increase wine vocabulary).

He says, smiling:  "What matters is what interests you right now."

Me: "Well, I just arrived from Texas this morning.  I have not slept much, have not eaten much, and am starving." (rough English translations from the French, or what I recall of it...)  

He ponders.  He turns around look through the wine array.   I order in the meantime what Dorie Greenspan must have been talking about as "voluptuous" in terms of some fried ham croquette thing.  

Dorie was right.  Yes, voluptuous might just work as a description here.

The wine comes.  One sip in and I am writing the name down to email Austin Wine Merchant and see how this can become the new go-to red wine at Chez Liz. Because what do you know, it is a Cotes du Rhone.  I'm not sure I need to drink any other wine for the rest of my life. 

At the comptoir, there are plates of enormous blocks of butter, with butter knives plunged deep into them. There are giant crocks brimming with cornichons, wire baskets of a Poilane-like bread.   And Eric the Red is preparing all of the delectible bites in a space the size of tiny Manhattan closet, a tiny "kitchen," right there (cooktop and toaster oven), with all the ingredients incredibly well-arranged in plastic containers in a tiny regrigerator.  

As Eric left the bottle of my new favorite wine right in front of me, I ask if I just help myself, as he had chosen to place the entire bottle right there in front of me. He smiles again and says, non, though it does look that way, j'arrive to pour your wine for you.  (I really love having wine poured for me.)

Next item to order: I opt for the foie gras brochette.   Eric asks if I am from California - non, I say, foie gras still legal in Texas.  Thankfully.

More orders for crepes at the window.  Eric manages the food orders, deliveries coming in.  He handles all the food prep - except the crepes and gauffres. He handles the friendly banter with old and new friends.  He speaks great English to the English couple that had come in and, to my surprise, just stared ordering in English without even asking if he spoke English.  It is an amazingly well-orchestrated operation in this small space.

The fois gras brochette arrives: hot, seared tiny pieces of yummy fatty melt-in-your-mouth foie gras, roasted red pepper bites in between - a balsamic vinegar tangy glaze. Now this just feels dream-like.

I tell Eric this wine could not be more perfect for me tonight.  He chose well.  Thank you.  And when he launched into the tutoyer with me too, I get that everyone gets the friendly tutoyer, not just longtime friends.  And, enfin, I say:

"Monsieur Eric - I will need the addition when you have a minute."

He stops in his tracks.  Stares at me.

"Madame Texas, I will get that for you right away."

He smiles and asks my name.  We shake hands.  Tell him I will see him again very soon.  

I wonder why people never listen to me when I try to steer them away from what they think is a quintessential Paris experience.  A friend of a friend told me her family would be dining at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower over a holiday.  I had on good authority from  American almost-chef friend that the food there was lifeless and a waste of time.  This was someone who could afford to eat and drink anywhere and everywhere in Paris - and has, so knows full well there is far, far better food to be had in the city.  I tried to subtly suggest to the friend of a friend not doing this - a stupendous waste of money.  Why not hang out and see what Paris is really like?

I said something to Eric like this place was "pas mal."  He smiles, getting the joke, because he knows it is awesome, and says I came at a good time to really enjoy it. Not the huge crowd (I can barely move by now it is getting so crowded). 

I step out into Paris and it starts to snow.  

Later on, in a cozy cafe on the Ile St. Louis, over French Onion Soup, and a nice chat with a table of Professors from Toronto, whom I let have the last of my carafe of Bordeaux as I could not polish it off, I watch the snow come down harder, and watch snowball fights in the street in front of me.  

It was a short walk home over the Seine, past the Christmas trees now covered with snow.  Not a bad first 16 hours in Paris.

Thanksgiving Brisket: Cooper's in Llano

The road home to San Angelo - Llano to Brady to Eden - is a gorgeous drive.  Once you get out on Highway 71, past that new metropolis around the Hill Country Galleria on Highway 71 and 620, and past Bee Cave, at about the 40-miles-to-Llano mark, the landscape starts to spread out and fill the windshield and then some.  It's rough terrain, but filled the trees and grasses and brush-covered hills.  Sometimes the road goes narrow and tunnel-lilke, with the highway blasted through the middle of a small mountainous hill, and the car seems wedged between granite slabs for a few dramatic moments, until the vista spreads out again with clear views to the horizon of nothing but the brush, hills and grass.  It's about this time you turn on the country music.  As we did.  And before you know it, you're in Llano.  

There is of course, at this time of year, the Welcome Hunters banner down the main street that runs in front of the ornate courthouse, a few adorable facades for small cafes, then the bridge over the Llano River.  

Heading out of town you can't help but notice the cars crammed into a small parking lot right up near the road, acrid smoke everyewhere, and, though early still, a line of people.  This was Cooper's of course.  Pit BBQ.  

The heat and the smoke are a full sensory assault right away.  No wonder.  Rows and rows of pits.  And a pulley system handling the raising and lowering of those lids covering the entire length of the pit filled witih mesquite coals.

Burning hot coals turned to ash all right there, out in the open. 

The pits start at 4 a.m.   That's when they put the brisket on.  With a dry rub, which they make up themselves of course.  (I just had to chat with one of the guys about all that.  And about Lockhart BBQ versus Llano, and my decades of driving this road home to San Angelo.) 

Up toward the front, the pit closest to the line-up of folks, the pit is full of all the good stuff to serve up right there.

It was not even 11 a.m. yet.  We, the son and I, could not eat just yet.  But plenty of others were lined up to load up their plates for lunch.   We drove away.  And I would soon regret this, as we were half an hour later or so ordering at the Sonic in Brady, having just left behind all that sausage and brisket dripping and juicy greasy.

My sister Cathy and her group, a half hour behind us, stoped and ate lunch there at Cooper's -- while we were pining for Cooper's brisket and ribs at the Sonic drive-through in Brady.

But the universe has a way of fixing food mistakes.  It turns out we'll get a Cooper's fix anyway.  Cathy had orders to bring back a few pounds of brisket to add to the Thanksgiving Day foodstuffs.  And so she did.

Because two turkeys for the day - one roasted the other smoked by a friend of the family - are just not enough.  Brisket is definitely a good side dish to that.

All of this will match well the two dressings - cornbread and oyster - and the two gravies.  

There will two gravies because Cathy and Dad will be trash talking all day and fighting for control over the turkey drippings and the milk/flour debate that happens every year over the gravy and the thickness and consistency, with Mom doing her New Orleans thing and wanting the thinner, not creamy gravy of those massive holiday feasts of her childhood.  

The gravy war never gets resolved.  Which is how it should be.  

Lessons in Swiss Chard / Onion Creek Kitchens at Juniper Hills Farm

(view from my Casita Roja, one of the cabins on site at Juniper HIlls Farm, over the fire pit and bocce court; the Casita Roja is the only one on a second floor and ergo these types of views)

As much as I love food -- food per se, and food as a family and friends event, and food as source of nostalgia and general warm fuzzies -- I am not all that super creative or gregarious when it comes to cooking at home.  It is just the son and I, and there are only so many hours in the day with work and momhood.  I have purchased so much kale, with the best of intentions but that I have never used, it only pushes me deeper into my child-rearing-related food guilt.

(view from my Casita Roja looking down on another nearby casita; yes there are "cabins" to rent on the property; really, really recommend this)

So along with the shocking food facts and revelations about me that I do not like olives or oysters, it may come as no surprise that I'm a little late to the party when it comes to greens.  And swiss chard in particular.  

At the Fall Menu cooking "class" this weekend at Onion Creek Kitchens at the oh-so-very charming rustically scenic Juniper Hills Farm out near Dripping Springs, the list of dishes looked daunting:  

But we should have known, from the last visit there, that Sibby the cook/owner runs a tight ship in terms of timing, resources, dish-washing, and keeping (some) increasingly tipsy guest cooks from falling behind on the job.  

Forgot to set that iPhone timer for toasting those almonds in the convection oven?  Not to worry - someone magically appeared just in time to take them out and leave them on one of many stainless steel prep areas for you.  Going a little slow on the making the sliver in the 2 dozen large dried figs to insert the gorgonzola/goat cheese mixture topped with pecan then wrapped in strips of prosciutto?  Sibby appears and diplomatically offers up some tips to show you a more, ahem, efficient way of getting that important appetizer dish done in time.

It's not really a "cooking class," but you will learn some great new recipes and great prepping and cooking tips from consummate hostess and cook Sibby.  This night we were divided into two "teams," with each team executing the same menu.  Then individuals on each team decide on what they want to make.

We are not ones to stand idly by while others pondered what to make.  Mollie grabbed fast and grabbed well.  Recipes I mean.  She scored the Rosemary Almond Crackers recipe (does not nearly describe how delicious these delicate "crackers" are, infused with rosemary-rubbed sugar and shortbread-esque texture for the finished product). She also scored the swiss chard recipe that I had been eyeing:  "Swiss Chard with Creme Fraiche."  What's not to love about eating a good-for-you vegetable with creme fraiche.  Easy to make. Gorgeous to look at. It screams Christmas.

Start with 1.5 pounds of swiss chard that someone has already washed for you. 

Start tearing the leafy part off of the stems and ribs.  I loved this part.  I was a little more meticulous than Mollie...ahem...did it matter in the end?  Of course not.  A rib with a little leaf (or a lot) does not matter at all.

Off they go to boiling water.  The chopped ribs and stems first (4 minutes).

Then the leaves (2 minutes).  Drain.   Cool.  Squeeze out water. 

Heat oil in pan.  Add the well-drained swiss chard, which won't look like much at all by now after squeezing as much liquid as possible out of them.  Add globs of creme fraiche.  Add salt.  Add pepper.

Done.

Set it to rest and/or keep warm until the rest of the meal is done and it is time to serve yourself up a plate.  

In the meantime, enjoy lovely red wine - thank goodness Mollie brought some La Crema Pinot Noir along - and enjoy meeting lots of great new people (can't wait to try the wine bar in Bulverde we learned about!) while others continue to slave away in the kitchen.

Eat.  Drink more.  Vow to wake up early and swim the next morning at the lovely pool on the property near the "cabins" (assuming you are staying overnight).  

Or just look at the pool while walking around the cabins the next morning while drinking coffee made in your Casita.  Which is what I did.

I am back in Austin now after this soul-satisfying getaway.  And I am thankful, again, for friends who get me out and about and out of work mode.  I brought my laptop there to work, but I never even glanced at it.  (Tip: Don't bring the laptop.)  

I get back to Austin only to learn a dear, dear friend will have a portion of her lung removed on Thursday.  Even if not cancer, the lung has to go.  She will be in the hospital for a week.

More deep breathing and more living - without the laptop - are definitely the life lessons from this weekend.  

Outstanding in the Field Farm Dinner - A Day, and a Meal, in a Field in Brenham (and unexpected realizations)

I had been looking forward to this for months.  

A beautifully sited dinner table winding into a vast landscape of rocks, fields, cliffs or even coves for an Outstanding in the Field dinner out in the middle of nowhere.  

Outstanding in the Field is a series of "farm dinners" - getting people out into the land, the landscape, a farm ... the earth.  Then getting a great local chef onto that land - and a team of cooks, servers and organizers - to prepare a multi-course feast for well over 150 people.  Through this setting and the people and the food, you are reconnected with where your food comes from.  This was Jim's founding vision.  And it took years to catch on.

(Jim, the founder, talking about the tough beginnings, how a Range Rover commercial saved the concept (by providing a revenue stream for him)  and kept him in it to try one more time ;  years later, here we are)

Whatever.  What I was looking forward to was a beautiful meal, in a simple, beautiful, tranquil setting with friends.  And a lot of nice wine.

From Austin, we drive, and drive and drive.  Finally there, at Jolie Vue Farms, the site for the dinner - and in not Brenham actually - but Independence, Texas.   And our gracious hosts, who have developed this property into the organic farm and ranch it is today, are Glenn and Honey Ann Boudreaux.  

The land was a mess when they got it.  Torn up and dried out, worn down and out from decades of fertilizer, pesticides -- all the stuff of modern agri-business.  They didn't want any of that.  If God thought the sun and the earth were good enough to make food, why bother with all that extra stuff.  So Honey said, or something like that.

So they brought the earth back to life.  No more chemicals.  No more artificial fertilizers.  And the land rewarded them for the efforts.  So many natural grasses came back to fill the fields they had to summon folks from Texas A&M to make sense of it all. All told, 16 native grasses: all gone before, all brought back to life now.

(Honey talking in the field of natural grasses about the history of the farm, farm/ranching life, and telling us about heffers and steers and what not)

We learn where the pigs roll around, and how the animals get rotated to different pastures to let the earth rebound in one pasture over enough time; how this summer and last summer went for them and how they and the livestock survived (barely);how the new water tanks/troughs for the pigs save water and waste less of this precious resource; how smart the pigs are, how they rolled around in the summer with the rain shower waterheads and made giant pools of mud that you can still see dented into the earth; how the water hole is so low now - but it used to be so much more and used for the kids' fishing and swimming - and for helping to catch their own food.  Some weekends, the kids would be tasked with making do on their own: if you don't catch or find your own food, you don't eat.

Thus prepped with the idea of working for your food, we have to work to reach our food.  The table, the hallmark table of these Outstanding in the Field farm dinners, is way up high on another hill.  We would have to walk up there.  

Clearly this is part of Jim's founding vision.  

Jim surely wants us to walk up and honor the table as part of the earth we are walking on, earth that literally did produce some of the very food we would be eating. 

Another ritual, or tradition, is the bringing of your own plate.  You drop it off with the organizer upon entering the farm.  

You retrieve it later up the hill, as you get closer to the table.  There also was a pile of plates for those who had forgotten to bring a plate, a pile made up of plates forgotten at previous farm dinners.  And then, the table.

 

Just out there.  In a field.  Just as they say.    And then some food.

(the first course - including among other things scrapple, blue corn grits, a 63C egg, which I expertly, so proud of self, identified as sous-vide prepared and the 63C was the temperature, in celsius; on my blue Sasaki wedding gift plate (1 of 10) that I brought for the event)

And more food.   And then more food.  The bycatch fish - looking all prehistoric.  I loved that the best perhaps.

And by now, with wine at each course, and the sun setting ever so slightly, and the chill of these cooler days descending, we start to get a little feisty in our well-fed comfort zone pf this community of a long long table.  

We get up.  We walk out and around and out into the vast field.  The moon is starting to rise, just as the sun is setting.  

Dessert comes. 

Then it is over.  

On the ride home, we talk a lot to stay awake.  But back here, and even while there, I realize that what I expected was not what I got.  Not exactly at least.  

I expected a super high-end gorgeous meal, with exquisite wine, and maybe more than a little bit of food snobbery at the table, with carefree chatter of friends all around you.  It was sort of that, and there were glitches to be sure.  We almost got forgotten entirely, our group of 8, on that first course.   The wine was a little skimpy on the serving sizes I thought at first.  The courses came slowly. I almost had to whip out a protein bar. 

But all logistical glitches faded - soon.   And the most I got out of it was something entirely unexpected.  

As Honey Ann was talking, without judgment for our wasteful ways in the city at all, I realized, as if a cow patty had been thrown at my head to wake me up, was how much my life affects what I eat.  Duh.  

The water I use to water my lawn is water that is not going to help keep the animals alive that are being fed on thriving native grasses nourished in only the old-fashioned ways.  My choices to eat fruits and vegetables out of season only encourages the food system machine to spend more resources to produce an artificial food cycle that knows none of the ebb and flow of nature.  

  

In the heat of the moment, on that farm among the people helping to bring back a more natural and normal way of living and eating, I vowed I would stop watering my yard.  I hate doing it anyway - the cost, the waste.

I am back in Austin, and as it is fall I am not tested on the no watering rule.  I only watered one a week anyway when I did water.  But the farm dinner worked for me, and in this awakening way I never imagined.  

Outstanding in the Field takes its show on the road - in Asia and South America, for example. It was in Brazil recently.  But never France. Almost one time, but it did not work out. So I learned from Jim during the farm tour.

They wash all the plates by hand when everyone is done with the last meat course.   It is there for you to pick up as you leave the table for your walk back down the hill and through the farm.  

I chose to leave my blue Sasaki plate.  I like the idea of it being used by some other haggard single working mom who barely got her act together to get her ticket and get to the farm site for the dinner and so forgot she was supposed to bring a plate.  

I also like the idea of seeing my plate again someday at another Outstanding in the Field dinner...maybe in France.

(A bientot my blue Sasaki plate! ...Bon voyage, safe travels, and see you in France!)

Le Marche des Lices - Rennes - and why I need yet another picture of a pile of radishes??

(Le Marche des Lices, Rennes, France)

From my extremely comfortable bed in the surprisingly well-appointed-for-the-price Hotel Mercure in Rennes, I heard the bells of a nearby church ring.  It would have been easy to stay there for another couple of hours in that delightful state of cozy semi-consciousness.  But the lure of a market proved too much.  Despite jet lag still weighing me down, everything I had read kept nagging at me that I just had to get up and get the tired self over to the Marche des Lices.   The market is said to host some 300 products from all over Brittany.  Rennes is the capital of Bretagne, or Brittany en anglais, and this, the Marche des Lices, is the second largest market in all of France.   How could I lounge in bed when the second largest market in all of France was but a 12-minute walk away....

I couldn't, and I didn't. I got up and got over there.

 

It did not disappoint.

The first assault on the senses was all saliva-inducing savory stuff: sausage and chicken dripping with butter and fat.  Waffles, or gauffres, steaming hot just off the waffle iron.  

The next assault is a visual one.  A mass of people.  Organized.  Focused.  Intent on the food, comparing the food.  This mass of people was organized in that there were vague yet well-defined lines moving slowly, deliberately.  And most had shopping baskets--real baskets, the woven kind, not the kind made of metal with 4 wheels and a coffee cup holder and a hook for the purse--winding up and down and up and down the many aisles of produce piled high and stretching, at some point, literally as far as the eye could see.

I have pictures of vegetable and fruit stands and fish markets and oyster stands from all over France dating back to my high school trips.

And there have been others like me, though not so much here at the Marche des Lices which is very not tourist-y at all despite its gorgeousness, but in other market strolls, who are snapping pictures just as insanely as I am.  And of nothing but giant piles of radishes, romaine, cabbages and garlic.

Why do we do this?  

I have an inkling why I do it.  We eat with our eyes so the pleasure of seeing the earth's voluptuous bounty piled riotously high has to be part of the visceral joy of eating ... Whole Foods Market gets this.  Their produce displays evoke this - even under artifical light - where we can indulge in a little fantasy life of market shopping in a charming old-school back-to-the-earth way. 

"Flowers, as everyone knows, are among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth. Which is why fresh flowers are placed right up front--to "prime" us to think of freshness the moment we enter the store. Consider the opposite--what if we entered the store and were greeted with stacks of canned tuna and plastic flowers? Having been primed at the outset, we continue to carry that association, albeit subconsciously, with us as we shop.

The prices for the flowers, as for all the fresh fruits and vegetables, are scrawled in chalk on fragments of black slate--a tradition of outdoor European marketplaces. It's as if the farmer pulled up in front of Whole Foods just this morning, unloaded his produce, then hopped back in his flatbed truck to drive back upstate to his country farm. The dashed-off scrawl also suggests the price changes daily, just as it might at a roadside farm stand or local market. But in fact, most of the produce was flown in days ago, its price set at the Whole Foods corporate headquarters in Texas. Not only do the prices stay fixed, but what might look like chalk on the board is actually indelible; the signs have been mass-produced in a factory." 

Of course I realize, somewhere at some level, that there is a well-studied marketing scheme all behind this, playing to my senses, as the author of this article quote above notes.   The author wrote this while taking in one particularly bucolic faux market setting: the Whole Foods store in Columbus Circle in NYC.  I get it.  I'm being played.  But I go along, enjoying the fantasy, because I want to.  We just can't all be in France at the Marche des Lices all the time after all.

But here at the Marche des Lices, there there is another big difference from the pretend market experience (aside from this being the real thing).  In Rennes, the Market is set up nicely to be a spectator sport as well.  Cafes are strategically placed up on the higher elevation of this Place.   I thought hard about sitting and watching. Drinking a double espresso at 10h with that Market stretched out before me was tempting.  But how much better to just be in it.  Not just watching it.

And so it was that I said no to the cafe and yes to getting really into the Market.

Ducking into the larget metal and glass structure - an halle - full of still more foodstuffs: the local honey, breads, confits, salts and herbs and spices, charcuterie...I dived into the laughter and the chatter of these happy smiling vendors, who let me sample and compare, for example, the difference between honey made from spring flowers versus summer flowers, and let me eavesdrop for a long stretch an extremely long-winded conversation about goat milk yogurt.

I only recently unpacked my suitcase.  

I think a certain government agency that will remain unnamed (but who left a little love note in my luggage about their gentle search of my bag) may have lost an item or two I had in the suitcase while handling it....but at least I still have my goodies from the Marche des Lices in Rennes: salt, spices ... and honey made from springtime flowers.

Foie Gras Fan Club and The French Connection with Food

(Le diner chez Sophie...yes, fine cuisine, but first, superlative munchies for the aperitif ritual, accompanied by this perky rabbit-eared gadget for serving up the toothpicks; who says the French are stuffy?!)

I am back from France.  I am back with a newfound love for foie gras, which I think I just thought I liked or pretended to like more than I did (gasp!).

I also bring back a renewed wonder at the learning process of a person growing up French in French culture.  I base these observations from a field study including pointed questions of real French people, maybe about 8-10 of them.  They include people I like to call friends in Angers - Pierre, Sophie, and Anne-Sophie; and Jean-Luc in Nantes, as well as the superb concierge/front desk man at the Hotel La Perouse in Nantes (we also talked about food) who spent some time in St. Louis, Missouri. And of course I base this on the advanced studies in French cultural/gastronomic life done in the kitchen over meals with the family in Paris, my hosts, Anne and Jean-Louis, at surely the most elegantly unique "bed and breakfast" ever. 

I fell in love with foie gras over a lovely dinner at Sophie's house outside of Angers in a village-like atmosphere of her backyard that is a grassy knoll along the water.  Along with the other elegant food items for the before-dinner aperitif time, which included Anjou specialty rillaud prepared by her husband, Sophie says she has made a foie gras.  She swears it is an easy recipe and that I could make it too.  Well, I confess I did not realize you had to "make" foie gras. I know, I should be ashamed of myself. She asks if I would like to have some.  Uh, yes.

I follow Sophie into the kitchen to check into this.

I am surprised to see her take out of the refrigerator a big fat roll of stuff in plastic wrap that looks like an on-steroids roll of refrigerated Nestle Toll House cookie dough.  This thick round of stuff in plastic has string wrapped around it.  Sophie is unwrapping.  I can't help but pick up some of the strings.  She chides me for getting my hands all greasy because - attention - it was very fatty.  And, yes, she is right.  Very slippery, fatty those strings from being wrapped around that plumped plastic wrapped foie. 

I learn that hers is made with white wine and is well cooked.  This I figure explains the lighter color for this - far lighter than I had ever seen for a foie gras (ok, have only had twice: Jeffrey's in Austin (now closed alas) and Boulevard in San Francisco (before the ban)).   This foie gras was a revelation.  Maybe it was the thinner slices.  Or the well-cooked style of it.  I had 3 slices. This is a lot in foie gras terms. Especially when dinner is not even served yet.

At Christmas time Sophie says, there may be several foie gras made to get everyone through the holidays.  Heaven forbid one run out of foie gras over the holidays.  (Yea, I hate it when that happens.) Indeed, she says, one of the most treasured holiday moments: on Christmas morning, early, one makes up with coffee and perhaps takes just a tiny smidgen of foie gras onto a piece of toast for Christmas morning breakfast.  She sighs wistfully.  Done.  I am convinced.  I will ramp up the gourmande-ness this holiday season chez moi with my very own foie gras recipe, and it would be Sophie's, and we will smear it onto Poilane bread from Paris. 

I would learn the next day, from Anne-Sophie who would accompany me to the opera in Angers that sunny Sunday afternoon, that there is an ugly side to foie gras preparation.   No, not the gavage.  The actual making of it.  I learn this as we sat outside the opera house in Angers at a cafe near the small harbor, with the Chateau d'Angers to our left, the opera house with its wide open enormous 3-story tall sliding glass doors to the right, and the Maine river, a tributary of the Loire River, in front of us.  Here, over a glass of red wine and slices of wild boar sausage, I have my disenchantment.  I learn the making of foie gras requires extracting and tearing out by hand all sorts of tendons and strings of stuff.  This sounded disgusting even in French.  I am sad.  There will be no foie gras making at my house after all.  I cannot even handle touching boneless chicken breasts some days.

I also learn though from Anne-Sophie that she has a signature foie gras recipe too.  She does hers with cognac or armagnac and will do it to a mi-cuit, or less well done on the cooking time.  And so obviously families can have their own foie gras recipes and thus very strong opinions about a proper foie gras.  I asked if this is a problem when individuals marry and they are brought into a household with a conflicting foie gras philosophy.  Oh, yes, she says. Not a problem with her extended family though, where her style of foie gras is warmly welcomed.

I would have foie gras again on Monday at lunch, at a really lovely restaurant in the countryside, Le Rabelais, to break up a day full of meetings that Pierre had organized for me.  

Here, Pierre tells me about a fish on the menu, sandre, and how the wine chosen matches this local fresh fish based on how the vines grow and how the soil lends itself to a particular type of vine and a particular type of grape. 

The next day, Tuesday, I would be in Nantes, with another colleague, Jean-Luc, also hosting me for meetings.   A couple of slices of foie gras and aged ham atop greens was the special entree of the day at the hip restaurant along the Loire that was our lunch venue. 

And, yes: I said yes to the foie gras.  I tell Jean-Luc I am smitten with foie gras and share my newfound knowledge from Angers. 

But, really, I ask him--though I have been going to France for years I just want to know from the source:  how is it that everyone with whom I had dined thus far has what seems to me an elegant and high-level vocabulary and knowledge that only (very generally speaking) food magazine writers in the US have, such as the fact that the vines for a certain wine grow to a certain depth that will create a particular taste that goes so well with the fish from the river nearby, or that the aged quality of this particular cheese means it goes better with this particular wine. 

It is the French connection with their food he tells me.  They just feel connected to it.  So they want to know, and they grow up knowing about these issues, being surrounded by others who also are asking or telling where it came from, who made it, and why or how it's here.  And so agreed the concierage/front desk man at l'Hotel Perouse in Nantes, when I brought up this subject on checking out the next day from his lovely hotel.  I tell him I am intrigued by the signage at his minimalist yet delicious "buffet" about personal responsibility about the buffet to avoid waste, the local sourcing, the organic everything.  I mention my conversation the day before with Jean-Luc about this connectivity the French have with their food.

He says he did not realize he was different, as a French person, until he was in a gourmet club in St. Louis.  Not that there was anything not lovely about everyone there.  He loved St. Louis and his time there.  It just was not until then that he recognized the difference in his and his wife's profound attachment to the food and the sourcing and the ritual of the food.  I asked how: how do you get that way? Where does it come from?  He says you just grow up with this to be like this.  Your parents are like this.  Their parents were like this.  It's part of the environment.  As natural as learning the language that describes that food.

Of course many similarities can be said to exist here in the US.  There is organic produce.  There is slow food, concerns for sustainability, and community gardens to avoid sourcing from far afield.  But it's just different at the basic level.  Having said that, I myself am still so not French, though Anne in Paris described me one night as "presque française" (almost French).  I have yet to learn moderation but am getting there.  But I have learned one thing.  Again on this trip, I am told that for my French family in Tours back in my student days of 1985 to call me "gourmande" (meaning likes to eat, loosely), well, that was a huge compliment.  And it remains so. 

Or so they tell me, as I take that third/fourth/fifth slice of foie gras...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rennes - When en Bretagne....one must eat crepes...but not all creperies are worth a trip: Creperie Saint-Georges Is.

On the day I landed in Paris, I left Paris.  For Rennes.  This was a technology/diligence trip, and so western France would occupy my time for the first part of the trip.  The first stop was Rennes.   When I finally emerged from the hotel after a coma-like nap, a young hip gal with the heavy regional accent of Bretagne - Rennes is the capital of this region - told me that for the aperitif I sought in a nice ambiance, I specified, perhaps Place Ste. Anne was where I should head.  And so I did, passing all sorts of lovely and actually just exquisite architecture along the way. 

When one is sitting outside in a lovely Place such as this, i.e., the photo above, and enjoying the first aperitif in France, one tends to go overboard.  I had two aperitifs - and then realized I needed to eat. Soon.

No good calling the hotel to ask what they had recommended as the best creperie out of so many in the crowded creperies culinary space.  Too tired.  Faint with hunger.   I figured just any one of the nearby creperies on this bustling gathering spot would be a good pick. 

I would be wrong.

I picked one nonetheless.  And had more red wine.  But it could not disguise that the spinach in this crepe - which I thought would be a healthy choice along with ham, mushrooms, and hallmark of regional egg on top - for my first famous regional crepe in this the capital of Brittany.  

The equivalent of frozen chopped spinach this was.  A sour canned taste.  I was forced to order a dessert crepe: chocolate and salted caramel.  For someone who had been on no bread, no sugar, and in general just no complex carbs for weeks, this was manna.  Slowly, but not entirely, the sour canned spinach taste and memory went away.

Next day, I know better.  I ask at the Front Desk.  The nice young man does not hesitate when I say I made a mistake the night before and needed a great creperie.   The Creperie Saint-Georges, he says, and hands me a map.

I walk down the charming quais.  Then turned right and right again onto the cobblestone street, with lanterns and those hallmark half wood-framed buildings. It was perfect.  How ever did he know? 

I walk in.  It is unlike the 1970s mode creperies I recall from high school trips to Paris.  It is hip, warm, friendly, and bustling.  Mid-century modern chairs - avocado green almost, gold, lucite and shag up front. But all done up with a 2012 contemporary sensibility.  See it all here.

Even better, the music.  That lounge-y stuff that I on buying on iTunes (Soul Lounge, Gregorian Chant Lounge, Celtic Lounge).

I wanted to high-5 the guy at the hotel about now.

I walk through the cool vibe room onto that back terrace.

I am handed a menu. 

So many elegant choices for a crepe.

This is not the last night creperie-of-canned-spinach horrors.

This is about fresh farm cream and other locally sourced dairy, including all the goat cheese.

 

Even better, certain crepes had recommended wine pairings by the chef.  Have to have that.

I order the "George" something: with the chevre cendre (ashed) and pears, and lightly smattering of "lardons" (bacon).   I was unclear on the "glace (ice cream) a chevre" - how does ice cream enter into the picture?  But the pear and goat cheese with that ashen outside was calling my name. I ordered, and for 3.2 Euros extra, got the Chardonnay pairing.

"Black wheat" (ble a noir) is the composition for these crepes - darker it seems than the more traditional buckwheat.

Inside, the lardons are not overmuch and not greasy. 

Just enough to pick up and contrast that salty tasty with a sweet crisp pear, and several small layered slices of just melted oozy goat cheese with that telltale sharpness that I just never get tired of.

And that little bit of ice cream on the side on my lovely plate?  So used to "chevre" being used to refer to cheese, or that's just where my head is usually, I forget it is just the word for goat.  Therefore, if one has yogurt with "chevre" - it is yogurt made with goat milk.  And if it is "glace" - or ice cream - a la chevre, it is ice cream made with goat milk.

It was such a French, tiny, just-right portion.  It was a thick, rich vanilla taste, with a tart tangy bite to it.  I loved it.  Loved it all.

And then I ordered coffee.

And then I finished my coffee.

And then there was nothing left to order.  I had to leave.

Here, one pays at "l'accueil" - at the welcome desk up front. The two guys running this whole show, answering the phone, cheerfully and graciously welcoming every guest - a charming bookend to the creperie of horrors the night before.  I told of my mistake: that I ate the night before at a creperie up at the Place Sainte Anne.  He smiled and kind of rolled his eyes knowingly, but he said nothing.

And because it is "Festival Gourmand" in Rennes for about a month -- though I am missing the big finale weekend in a couple of weeks --  they stamped my card for me that I picked up at the tourism office.  If you go to 3 restaurants participating in the "Festival Gourmand" and have them stamp this card, you rank which of the visited restaurants you liked best and turn in the card at the tourism office for a drawing.

I did not turn mine in. 

But if I had, the Saint Georges would have been my No. 1 pick.

 

A couple of food things better left unseen...Honey Boo Boo's "Sketti" Night and the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Secret Syrup

It is with some hesitation that I mention anything related to "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" because that would confirm that yes, I watch the show, briefly, when I happen upon it.  I am actually quite enthralled by it.  Apparently a lot of other people are too.  Ratings are way up and they are asking for raises.  Loving but vulgar is about right to describe the family.  Alana, a/k/a Honey Boo Boo, is freakishly articulate and bursting with spunky personality for what, age 7?  But I guess if you've been trained for years in the toddler pageantry scene, that's par for the course. 

I love best about the show the interesting turns of phrases in the family vernacular.  The mom's "what the hellever" is my current favorite.  She uttered it at the unsuccessful conclusion of an etiquette class for the girls, and the teacher's gentle remark that more work was needed.  Really.  Now, I've heard "what the hell ever for," but to use the phrase just to state one's disdain, as if to say "whatever" and say instead, eyes rolling, "what the hellever," I kind of love it.

But I did not love a recent food episode.   Mom was making "sketti."   The family's favorite sauce for "sketti"  on family sketti night is butter and ketchup.  I felt a little sick to my stomach.  But as grossed out as I was, I also was fascinated.  I could not avert my eyes.  But then they got out the big plastic brown tub of faux spreadable butter/margarine and were scooping that out, and then squeezing the ketchup out, and about then I was done.  I had to look away.  But for a minute, I did wonder how it tasted.  Would the faux spreadable butter substance take away enough of the sweetness of the ketchup?  Would this combination even stay together or separate when heated?  I should have watched to see if they did heat it. 

Not 12 hours later, I was in a long line at Starbucks, where I happened upon another food (beverage) item that I really wish I had not seen. 

I realize a lot of people are gaga over the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.  Even really good friends of mine.  I always get just nice strong coffee ("grande bold no room"), so I don't entirely get this.  But I do get the thrill of it being that time of year, like now, when Starbucks rolls out the Pumpkin Spice Latte.   I get that it means fall is here - and for Austin that means just a tad bit of thrilling coolness in the mornings and at night.  Autumnal coziness I totally get because I become almost weepy with serious warm fuzzies when Starbucks changes the cups over from the signature white with green logo to those holiday red paper cups with snowflakes.  It means Christmas time:   ultimate cozy times, in front of the fire (if it dips below 60 degrees), curled on up on the couch surrounded by cookbooks and planning the holiday food spreads, listing to a little something Baroque on KMFA, a glass of red wine....

But the magic of the Pumpkin Spice Latte is better left unseen.  Because it is really nothing more than this icky sweet viscousy stuff that comes in a plastic jug, which someone had left out in plain view on the counter for all to see. 

It is a good thing the Festival Gourmand  will be in full swing in lovely Rennes, France when I am there next week.  I aim to have enough gourmet gourmandise outings to erase residual queasiness over the thought of spreadable-from-a-tub-butter-and-ketchup sauce over sketti.

 

 

 

Technology Trip to France --- and a "gourmand" festival

I've been planning this business trip to France for like 3 months now.  The talk in Paris for Friday 5 October is set.  What I am going to say is not.  

However, as I am also visiting Rennes, Nantes, Angers - for insights on their technology/incubators and to get Austin on the map more so than that annoying competition known as Silicon Valley...I figured it was about time I actually organized those meetings.  It's a mere 2.5 weeks away now.  

So I calmed down from trying to map out and schedule where to eat in Paris...there's just not enough time in the days...and started checking out what on earth I'm going to do and stay and eat in Rennes, Angers and Nantes.   The email introductions in French are now done; I now have a headache from getting all the accent marks just right in the emails; and I am wishing I had more time for this trip.  But there is this thing known as a day job...

The timing for the business trip is being planned around making sure I get to see my friends in Angers (Austin's sister city), and see a performance at the Angers-Nantes opera on Saturday 30 septembre, something good and relatively obscure (Les Deux Veuves) -- as I tend to like my opera. Oh, and maybe the Paris all-night art, performance art party that is Nuit Blanche is the day after the October 5 talk.  That may have had something to do with it as well. 

It is really too bad I cannot fit in Brest, up on the coast. 

In all this prep work, including the idea now that I should just rent a car at CDG airport in Paris and drive to Rennes, then to Angers, then to Nantes, come to find out that Rennes is having "UN FESTIVAL GOURMAND" (food festival type thing) while I am there.   It's like the universe telling me it is so very good and right to do this.  And I for the first time thought about shaving some time off the Paris part of the trip.  And, yea, I may have mentioned in my (French) email to the Chamber of Commerce in Rennes the serendipity of their festival and my food blog called "gourmandemom."   I should not write business emails when fatigued perhaps.

If Rennes is all booked up for the food fair, there is this lodging (a/k/a un chateau) outside the city proper...even if they don't have WiFi, it may be a nice option.  All for the sake of bringing you enlightening information about la jolie France. 

 

 

Bobby Flay / Normandy Beaches - my summer of 1983

Today (Sunday) on Food Network Bobby is not grilling on the gorgeous rooftop terrace of his NYC apartment. This new concept of a show has him in a verdant arbor, not much different than some ordinary backyard - but one well-equipped with shade, grill, smoker, the works.

The burgers that Bobby is making are topped with homemade pimento cheese and grilled bacon (get a really thick cut of bacon and cook on low heat part of the grill), and they look pretty extraordinary.

(For the pimento cheese: grate white cheddar and yellow/orange cheddar; mix in chopped grilled red peppers, seeds removed; season with salt, pepper, cayenne and spread on burgers when they are hot off the grill ......).

But then Bobby moved on to his smoked trout.  At that moment, I was reading my new copy from Melissa of A.J. Liebling's Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris (my copy is 30 years old if not more), which was first published in the 1950s.  My usually easily-distracted mind had been focusing on Liebling's prose on pages 1-2 of Chapter 1, entitled "A Good Appetite":

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.  Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating go have anything worth setting down.  Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted, minimizing the intake of cholesterol.  They are indispensable, like a prizefighter's hours on the road.

Here here.  More on that later.

But this reverie for France, combined with the training of one's food senses--such as Liebling was doing in his Sorbonne student days in Paris--and Bobby Flay's smoked fish triggered a distant memory. 

Back in my senior year of high school when I won second place in the Texas French Symposium, my prize was one month in Paris with a family--rather than the first place of staying in Paris, for a summer class.   My French family was impressive.  The dad was a journalist.  There were many spirited conversations in French around the dinner table, me in love with French, politics, the wine and the crescendo of impassioned rhetoric in a lengthy after-dinner conversation.  The mom owned a children's clothing store that was having its grand opening while I was there.  And to their credit, and as it was my third time in Paris after all, and I hated waiting around for other people as I had plenty to do so and see on my own - and Paris awaited and was just there waiting to be explored - they, reluctantly I think, let me wander Paris around as much as I wanted to.

But they also took me all around France.  They took me to the south, to storybook picturesque St. Jean du Gare, where I would walk in my heels that their daughter who was my age insisted that I wear (elongates the leg she said), over rough river rock and rushing streams amidst the wild terrain, and where I would be sent to pick fresh haricots verts from the grandmother's hilly garden, and where I would have at my disposal, as everyone else did, a cask from which to secure a simple red table wine, poured into simple glasses.  This was the summer of 1983.  And of course I was too young to completely appreciate it.  I was more annoyed by having to wear those heels.  

This picture is the best match to date for what my easily distracted middle-aged mind remembers of that gorgeous area.  Yea, imagine walking around in heels...

(picture found at http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p405082)

They also took me up north.  Someone had a cousin, uncle, something, who lived very very close to the beaches of Normandy.  We drove up there to visit him one weekend.  I wandered along misty grey beaches with cliffs all around.  I wandered back for dinner, or whatever extensive meal time was upon us.  His specialty was smoked fish.  The house I remember because the smell of smoked fish, France, the coast, was all there.   It had a 1970s feel to it all and was very casual and comfortable. 

The uncle/cousin, whatever, was generous and boisterous.  As usual, everyone was delighted at my robust delight in the food.  But being a small-town girl from west Texas, I had just never had fish fresh from the sea smoked and eaten hot off the smoker and enjoyed with copious yet reasonable amounts of wine, and who knows what else.  I don't remember much, but I remember wearing a blue v-necked t-shirt, digging my toes into the wet sand of the Normandy beach, and then digging in, just minutes later back at the house, into the small fish, the peeling off of the skin, and getting at that tender white smoky-flavored fish. 

The lesson here is not just that youth is wasted on the young, but that sometimes, many times perhaps, first place is not the best place to be.  Very grateful I came in second place, not first, for that Texas French Symposium.

 

 

 

 

Elgin Day Food Finds

There is really no disconnect or irony at all.  There is my abiding and profound attachment to Paris, but small Texas towns are far up there on the attachment scale too.  And for similar reasons: the architecture, the thrill of checking out new food places--good and bad--and meeting the local folks.  The last baseball game of the summer season was this past Saturday in Elgin, some 35 minutes away.  With an hour to kill between drop-off time at 9 a.m. at Elgin Memorial Park and game time at 10 a.m., I knew exactly where I'd be spending the time. 

 As soon as I dropped off the son, off I went, down the street where I had seen the sign pointing to "Historical District."  

Lots of small Texas towns have a smattering of these gorgeous old brick buildings preserved/restored for their "historic" district.  But here, in Elgin, there are very highly redone and architecturally stunning in effect long rows of such buildings - each of gorgeous colors and shapes and sizes of brick, wood, metal.    Elgin has been doing some good work in the preservation realm I now learn -- from here. 

The Elgin Commercial Historic District includes 14 city blocks of commercial and
industrial buildings. Most of these buildings are constructed of locally
produced brick and were erected from 1872 to 1947. During the past 14 years
private property owners, business owners, and the public sector have invested
approximately $9 million in the downtown area

Building after building, each one is very different from the one right next to it, all of which are side-by-side, connected: made of brick of all colors: pale yellow, bright red, brown.  Some roof lines are straight across, others arched, some with incredibly ornate designs, with contrasting brick detail in relief.

I was parking and walking for sure, and the first stop would be figuring out how on earth it is that the place known as the home of famous Elgin Hot Sausage, has just a few feet outside the historical district proper a place called "El Maguey."  

I hear "maguey" and I think interior Mexico.  Oaxaca.  Tequila.  But here it is advertised as "tex mex," with music playing, here in Elgin, Texas.  Must see if they do a breakfast taco with Elgin Hot Sausage.  But with breakfast of whole grain organic wheat flakes not too long ago, I just marvel and walk on. 

 

A sign that looks like a Knights of Columbus hall emblem down a side street distracts.   Not the KC Hall.  It's a place called "Newt's Bistro." 

Decide must check out.  It says "bistro" after all.   Have iPad.  Will just have coffee.  And maybe a piece of Elgin Hot Sausage and, perhaps, I hope, some idyllic amazing food find of a biscuit.  I'll let Guy Fieri know about it even, perhaps...

The exposed brick wall inside looked like a good sign.

The long narrow steel table up front looked promising - contemporary chairs. 

Well, Newt's has a ways to go.  With good bone structure of nice architectural facade, exposed brick, nice choice of mod furnishings up at the front of the restaurant - like I could hang out with the lap top and a latte all day - you just can't be having that acoustical tile ceiling.  Architectural crime.  The coffee needs a big upgrade.  But they're on the right track with the tall, narrow at the bottom to wider at the top coffee "mug" - huge design plus over the nasty coffee mug usually seen at such places - and by such places I mean everywhere. 

And I'm talking to you, Kerbey Lane Cafe and Magnolia Cafe.  This mug should be outlawed.  Coffee hangs on the edge of it.  The temperature drops from the time it leaves the mug to getting into the consumer's mouth because of that large lip on top of the mug that the coffee has to move over.  Then the coffee backwash from drinking it lingers and stains as it builds up on that lip of the mug.  It's just gross.  I never drink coffee out of these things.   Newt's gets A+ on the mug design upgrade.

Newt's gets a D- for not having a single item with Elgin Hot Sausage.   

I regretted not trying City Cafe. 

It looked like it had it going on.

I walked on. 

I eventually head back for the baseball game.  It is the last game of the season. 

To avoid heat stroke as the game went into hours 3 and 4, I headed back to town, for AC.  And to City Cafe. 

Now, this is what I'm talking about for historic charm for a food find in a small town well-restored historic district.  Exposed brick.   Painted brick wall in the other, adjoining dining room. (The other dining room is not charming - there is an icky gingham, floral feel in there.) Stay in the main dining room, pictured here.

All I needed and wanted was ice cold iceberg lettuce - and so I got the Chef Salad.  Not amazing, but I did not need it to be.  And the people could not have been nicer.

But what would I absolutely get next time?   Their MANY Elgin Hot Sausage items: omelettes, grilled sausage and onion and peppers sandwich. (Take notes, Newt's).

I also would get the 7-inch high lemon merinque pie I saw getting carved up.  I seriously do not think I have ever seen such a mountain of merinque.  The cake items look not too bad either.

City Cafe has a gorgeous wood beadboard ceiling.

That's what Newt's needs (in addition to better coffee and Elgin Hot Sausage items). And if Newt's does not have such wood beneath the acoustical tiles, they need to buy some of that historic charm.

And I, though back in Austin and back in the AC and thoroughly sunburned from the baseball game outing, will be getting some Elgin Hot Sausage - be it at Central Market or on the next day trip to Elgin.

 

 

 

Bay Fishing, Taco Night, and Fried Fresh Snapper

To my family's surprise, I was game for the 4-hour bay fishing excursion on our
family vacation on the Texas coast. This is a big change from the last outdoorsy thing I had to do/did on a family vacation: when I was in fifth grade my parents had to pay me ($5) to ride a horse just so all of us could go on the sunrise chuck wagon trail ride and breakfast at a dude ranch somewhere in Texas.  

I did not have to be bribed to do this fishing excursion, but nevertheless I am not
sure what I was thinking in being all gung-ho for as I had come completely unprepared when we arrived at Woody’s Sports Center with 40 minutes to spare (dad’s budgeting 20 minutes for an 8-minute drive into town put us ahead of schedule).  So I bought some sunglasses.  Bought a hat.  The kids are indulged in the iconic beach vacation food: bags of nacho cheese Doritos.

Finally, it was time to make our way down the docks in the marina with all the other
early birds to board the Island Queen. 

After a safety talk, and instructions from the crew on where one should relieve oneself in the event of sea sickness (overboard, not in the restrooms), the boat, at the helm of which was Captain Tom, edges out of the marina, building speed, slowly but surely.  The gulls are squawking, and the sun is streaming out from behind the clouds. 

I say to myself: well, hey this is all right.  I am glad for the 6 a.m. wake-up call for being out on the water in the morning sun at 8 a.m.  This is not so bad at all.

We go further, and further, and further.  Into bumpy waters.  Huge waves come splashing up in to the boat.  I love it, but I am soaked.  The son goes back up for more of a soaking as the boat rocks up and then down into the waves.  We drop anchor way, way out there where, though we are only still in the bay, it feels like land is very far away.

“Rods in!” the crew yells.  Huh?  

The rod and reel thing were beyond me.  And of course no way I’m touching that shrimp much less impaling them on the hook for bait.  But a nice man helped me with all that.  We all stand around with our rods in the water.  This is it?  But it’s a beautiful day. 

Uh oh:  20 minutes into the fishing out here there is the beginning of an almost-epidemic of motion sickness among the under-10 group.  A couple of them forget those crew instructions.... Just in the nick of time, the crew calls out “rods up.”  The anchor is pulled up.

Wow, really?   We’re done?  Whew!  Awesome!  That was not so bad.  I can say I did this and check it off the list. 

But no.  Not finished.  We had only been out for like 39 minutes of the 4-hour tour.

Apparently the drill is that Captain Tom moves the boat moved around to try for different fish.  From the mildly rough waters we moved around to calmer waters, near the jetty.   The son was one of the first ones to claim what was then the biggest fish of the day: a gorgeous 15-inch red snapper.

Others would catch their own red snapper.  But I did not care about them.  I cared only that Mom caught her first fish - ever -  the son caught a really awesome red snapper, and that for about 30 blissful minutes I had the entire top deck of the boat to myself to lie down in the sun, see nothing but water all around, and note with relief we only had 40 minutes left of the 4-hour tour….

Back into the marina and at the dock, the son’s fish is retrieved from where it had
been strung up.  We stop by the lean-to next to Woody’s and get the catch of the day filleted.  For $5.  We consider how to cook it....over lunch back at the condo and then later over dinner that night at the worst restaurant choice of the trip (I'll say for the time being that there was no artisanal pizza at the pizza place, but a pizza buffet and an 80s salad bar).

We finally had the family catch – last night. 

To get everyone at the table at the same time – and not have the day’s dining be just a series of snack times – and get all the kids interested in dinner at the same time, we opted for the family favorite sure-fire kid-pleaser: Taco Night.  We even set the table for it.  We even used real plates.

As everything else was just about done (the taco shells, the refried beans, the
taco meat (my sister Cathy’s special recipe: spicy Ranch dressing and regular Ranch dressing mix mixed into the taco seasoning mix), the queso, the chopped onions, tomatoes, avocados), it was time to fry up the red snapper catch. 

There was only one prize fish - did I mention my son caught that fish? -  but there were two gorgeous fillets out of it.

Recipe for Fried Fish

1. Make do with whatever random items your vacation condo has on hand to get the Fish Fry poured out onto a flat surface in which the beautiful fresh fish fillets may be dredged. 

2. For us, this step required using a grill pan/skillet for the (every other bowl, plate, etc. had been used to set the table and hold the Taco Night Fixins).

[Note leftover bacon grease in the bowl. 

We cook a LOT of bacon on family vacations.]

 

3.    While you were having some leftover Edna Valley Chardonnay (I can only handle Chardonnay at the beach for some reason), you should have been heating up the pan (the one in which the bacon was fried that morning) with a hefty quantity of vegetable oil.  

Fill the pan up high enough to get the fish all covered up once the oil is really, really hot.  Do not put the fish in too soon, i.e., before the oil is really hot. 

4.  Lay the beautiful fish fillets (caught by the son) in the really hot oil.

Do not turn too soon.

Do not turn too much.

Do not burn. 

Do not get impatient and take out because the gorgeous fillets look about done.

5.  Wait until the fillets of fresh fish are crispy golden brown, then take out the fillets with whatever implement you can find at the vacation condo and drain them on a paper towel. 

6.  Serve on paper plate (because all the other plates were taken...we set the table that night).   [Thanks to Mom for the lemon garnish here.  It really does make a huge difference.]

Good thing we had Fish Fry on hand from the trip to Port "A" Seafood Co. where we got the 1.5 pounds of shrimp the other day, thinking I would fry those up and try for my own best version (a la Tyler Florence) of a fried shrimp po-boy, which remains elusive for me.  

What is no longer elusive, however, is the best fried fish ever. 

We had it on Taco Night. 

Did I mention the son caught that fish?

 

 

 

Hruska’s: Ranger Cookies, Lamps, Kitsch, and Kolaches

After a week of baseball games, practices, scrimmages—not to mention driver’s ed classes every day for the son and a really lousy week of subpar food items at GM’s house because of all this (“Mom, do you realize I had donuts for breakfast [“hey, they were Krispy Kreme”], nachos for lunch [“hey, I browned the meat myself for that taco meat topping”], and now pizza for dinner” [“now wait a minute…that was a superb thin crust on the Napoletana-style pizza at Salvation Pizza”]--it is now the weekend again.  And that means a baseball tournament—in Houston. 

I love a road trip to Houston.  Far better than road trips to Dallas, which are a living hell because of just the way I-35 is all the way from Dallas to San Antonio. 

People are divided on the best route from Austin to Houston.  Some people swear by taking 290 through Giddings and Brenham.  Others would go no way but by Highway 71 through Bastrop and catching I-10 at Columbus.  I’m a 71/I-10 person.  I would rather stick a needle in my eye than wade through all those stoplights in Giddings, Brenham, etc. taking 290.

But the best part of the 71/I-10 route is a small stretch of road on Highway 71 between Columbus and La Grange where the speed limit drops suddenly to 55 mph.  It has to drop down precipitously because you need to slow down to take the left turn (coming from Austin) into Hruska’s.    And you need to slow down also to deal with all the traffic of folks just finishing their own stop at Hruska’s and getting back on the road to Austin or Houston.

I’ve been stopping at Hruska’s as my Austin/Houston rest stop for close to a decade now.  It is a Chevron station, yes, and therefore a very good strategic stopping point to get gas before hitting the racetrack that is I-10.  And it has always been a good potty break.  But there are a couple of other gas stations nearby – such as a Shell, which I don’t know how it stays in business with Hruska’s next door.  I think it only gets business when Hruska’s is jam packed and not a single parking place is left.

Which does happen. 

HRUSKAS’S THEN

Hruska’s was a super quirky place back then, and by back then I mean just a few years ago, but it was founded in 1947 actually.  It was a little dark in there, as in low, low-end lighting.  Seating to stay and eat some sandwiches you could pick up there was maybe nothing more than picnic tables.  It was a great bathroom stop, even then.  But it also had this crazy good bakery inside with insanely good kolaches – far better than tough doughy outsides and icky sweet insides I typically think of when I think kolache (leaving aside for the moment the bacon kolache). 

But the really crazy part is that it also had a home furnishings and scrapbooking section back in the back.  Even more crazy is that they had some really great stuff.  I should know.  I bought a lot of it.  

There was a time when I could not escape Hruska’s without getting a new set of lamps.  You could get a really darling little lamp for like $40 or far less. I have in my bedroom some cute black lamps with black and white polka-dot shades. I have this verdigris one that should be in the living room.  And the two little lamps on the buffet in my dining room are from Hruska’s. 

In addition to the kolaches, homemade bread, homemade egg noodles, and of course University of Texas Longhorn and Texas A&M  paraphernalia and ample kitsch and camo and “gone-fishin’ themed koozies, there were a few other specialty food items – some interesting sauces to pour over cream cheese to which you could add a few crackers and voila –instant tasty appetizer—and maybe some candles.  And of course the array of off-brand country western CDs up near the register and some cookbooks from the local ladies guild of one sort or another.

Hruska’s back then also had what were then (and now) the highlight of my visit there:  their specialty cookies.  They were packaged in a tidy little stack of 5 in plastic, tied with a twist tie, and labeled and piled high in square baskets – all along the top of the counter for self-serve purposes:  Ranger Cookies, Coconut Pecan Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peanut Butter Cookies, etc. 

One day several years ago – during the weekly Houston-Austin treks with the son to check on house-building progress in Austin – the son, way young then, happened to pick out the Ranger Cookies.  I had never heard of them, but they quickly became addicting.  I noticed the ingredients: corn flakes, coconut, brown sugar, pecans – and that combo alone says something.  And they also must use my secret baking tip of extra vanilla.   Whatever it is, they became a staple and a ritual for me – for years –to stop at Hruska’s and get Ranger Cookies for the son.  I don’t know if he cares anymore, but the cookies still manage to disappear after I get them home.

Hruska’s Now

A few weeks ago I had to get to Houston - World Malbec Day at the Houston Polo Fields! - and it had been way too long since I had had a Hruska’s fix.  This time the traffic was insane coming up on Hruska’s– cars pulling in and out, into the middle lane to head east to Houston, pulling into traffic to head west to Austin.  Every gas pump had a car at it.  The parking lot was full and parking could be had only all along the curb and way down the street.  What on earth??

Well, Hruska’s was being renovated and expanded.  This I knew from the signage I’d been seeing during the past year.  But now, wow.  Hruska’s is on steroids.  It is all tricked out.  There are more and more specialty food items:  preserves and sauces and marmalades, candies, chocolate covered blueberries and coffee beans, gourmet coffees, and an express lane for cookies – for those wanting to just grab and go, those not waiting in the long line, to get a kolache or 5 or 10 and get them all warmed up to golden buttery goodness such that the tang of the cream cheese (for example) contrasts even more dramatically and deliciously with the warm tender buttery outside part… And there are rows upon rows of check-out lanes and lines of people – at all of them! 

I’m happy for the entrepreneurial spirit at work here, and love especially the mural they’ve done to warm up what is now a cavernous space, all light and bright now.

But I miss the old Hruska’s.  The people who work there are just as nice and efficient, but the quirky charm is gone.  As is the oddly good lamp selection from years past.  But, yea, I still stopped and got the Ranger Cookies today.   

In case you've been living under a rock as I had been, as I had never heard of these cookies until the son picked them out of the line up, there are recipes galore out there for Ranger Cookies -- but a recipe with corn flakes would be more true to the Hruska’s version and give it that funky texture of crunchy chewy.

I would never, ever try to make these myself. Just no point in ruining a good thing of picking up a warm stack of Ranger Cookies during a road trip to Houston.  And I'm pretty sure they are a better heart-healthy option than a stack of warm cream cheese kolaches.

(My) New New Orleans - Part I

I remember the phone call from my dad the day Katrina hit.  I was sitting in my office in downtown Austin. 

“It’s gone. It’s all over.”

By this I knew he meant that every feeling, taste, and vista that was our idea of our New Orleans would never be the same.  But I could not really grasp then that even if it, the city, was not literally wiped off the map, the fine network of individual lives that have to get all bound up together to create a culture, a history – a soul...all those layers were maybe all gone.   I couldn't bear to watch the news.

Growing up in West Texas I felt like I had a secret double life.  Ok, if not exactly a double life at least an alternate reality.  That alternate reality was New Orleans.  We lived our daily lives in a small town of about 70,000 in the dry heat of West Texas.  With no good coffee.  Lots of Tex-Mex restaurants.  But no other type of real restaurant to speak of.  We did not have gorgeous mossy towering oak trees or jazz in sultry courtyards or freakishly large crepe myrtles bowing down under the weight of a ton of bright hot pink blossoms.  In short, we had no sultry.  We had mesquite trees. 

But several times a year, and mostly the summer, we would be with the New Orleans people.  When we did this pilgrimage by car, as we were crossing the Sabine River I would lift my feet off the floor of the car and not put them down until they landed, figuratively, on Louisiana soil, which crossing the Sabine River means you have done.  We would cross the Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway.  That 18.2 mile stretch of I-10 built over and in a swamp.  And if you have to take an engineering marvel of a freeway, built in a swamp, to get somewhere, you get the feeling that you're headed into some serious foreign territory.

After we would exit I-10 East onto Carrollton Avenue, there was the obligatory stop at Ye Olde College Inn for the iconic roast beef po-boy (fully “dressed” of course, with mayonnaise).  No way to describe just how good mayonnaise tastes mixed in with au jus and the feeling of it all running down your forearms as you lift the sandwich up to take that first bite, when the outside of the French bread is still flaky crusty and the inside is hot, savory roast beef in a hot mess of mayonnaise and gravy juice stuff.  It's pretty good.  Or it was.  This po-boy does not exist there, that way, anymore. 

With that fix, we could continue on down Carrollton Avenue, down to the end to make that left turn onto St. Charles Avenue and into Uptown and around Audubon Park, into Uptown's towering oak trees, sidewalks and front porches, crawfish boils, Sunday walks to mass at a grand cathedral at Loyola University, and Mardi Gras beads from the last parade hanging from the trees still.  No tumbleweeds.  No dust.

Here, being Catholic (as we were, are) meant you were not a curious minority as can be the case out in West Texas.  Here in New Orleans we were part of the vast majority where memories and rituals of rosaries, candles, adorations of Mary, altars, and feasts for St. Joseph were merged into a collective communal memory of a very rich food life.  

 
This life also had relatives who did not timidly hug upon greeting you upon your arrival but kissed you on the cheek (!)...a life full of tales of crewes and their exotic, regal names - Rex, Babylon, Hermes - Mardi Gras queens and kings, bacon grease, alligator hunting, duck hunting, tracts and horses and boudin and cattle drives. 

All this is bound up in the memory of thick New Orleans accents around command central that was my grandmother’s large oval Scandinavian design table.  Here it became very obvious that the far cooler cousins of my vintage (there are 32 (first) cousins) – the ones who lived in Lafayette - had a firm command over their food personas at a very early age. 

At no more than 11 or 12 (in the 1970s) they were drinking something they called "café au lait" with breakfast and had strong opinions about how much filé to add to their gumbo.  They might as well have been smoking Marlboros at the table as shocked as I was by this libertine activity. 

To make up for the deprivation in West Texas these trips to New Orleans were Dionysian food fests.  We cannot eat this way now.  But eat this way we did then. 

There was this extraordinary ice cream place:  "Haagen-Dazs."  Exotic for us in the 1970s.  There was a French pastry shop, on Carrollton close to where the original Camellia Grill is now.  There were meals at all the old standards, by today's standards:   The Gumbo Shop on rue St. Peter in the Quarter and that praline sundae (a caramel sauce with pecans floating in it poured over a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in an icy cold metal dish), beignets out at Morning Call in Metairie, brunch at Brennans and Commander’s Palace – where Ella Brennan back then would be holding court - and The Bon Ton, Christian's, Casamento's, Stephen & Martin.  And a long ago lost tradition and lost art: nectar sodas at the K&B. 

I just went back to New Orleans for only the third or fourth time since Katrina.  This visit, I note the city is looking pretty darn perky: Starbucks is packed on Maple Street, Carrollton Avenue has been repaved - no more bone-crushing potholes - and there is a construction boom for high-end real estate around the Metairie Country Club. 

I find I am more accepting of New Orleans with her frailties still laid bare - the canopy of lush foliage over St. Charles Avenue is still not quite as lush, the "neutral ground" - that patch of green that divides St. Charles Avenue and hosts the trolley car tracks - is still sad and unkempt to my eye, for example.  But there is so much renovation and reinvention too:  The Roosevelt Hotel is all spiffy and chic now, for example.  We were told they will soon have live jazz in the evenings in the ornate yet hip grand lobby.  The Sazerac Bar, which looked pretty dang comfy and mod enough already, will be getting a makeover soon to match the rest of the way more mod furnishings elsewhere in the public spaces of the hotel.  (I'm not entirely sold on this idea in terms of historic preservation, but it's a good educational reason to visit again.)

And so I am way ready to get way more acquainted with the new New Orleans - its urban renewal to be sure but especially the restaurant scene. 

This all started with one lunch.  At Cochon.  And one really spectacular cocktail. 

This part of my old New Orleans has definitely not changed.

To be continued ... with Part II, or "Mom, did you really have to ask the waiter if he liked the gumbo??"