Posts from — April 2008

Ask your Jewish friends about Passover and you’ll see a grimace of pain wash over their face. Seven solid days of mandated Atkins regiment (yes, ancient Hebrews were doing crash diets some 3,000 years before they were cool) means almost all sweets are off limits.

There just isn’t much you can do without flour, so the dessert selection at grocery stores that stock Passover supplies is abysmal. Even at Three Brothers Bakery, where I worked for years in high school, we had few things that qualified as an actual dessert for Passover.

A few days ago I noticed this sign at the Dessert Gallery that should solve the problem in a spectacular way, at least for people willing to bend the rules a little bit:

Brilliant!

While not quite Kosher (hence the Passover style disclaimer), this stuff should clear the bar for people content with staying away from leavened breads and flours. The full list includes something like 7-9 desserts, which look far better than anything I have come across in the past.

Now you just need to figure out how to make flourless pizza dough and swineless pepperoni, but you’re on your own there.

Yesterday Alison Cook mentioned that Bryan Caswell was in New Orleans trying out for the next season of Top Chef. Turns out he was not the only Houston chef at the tryouts.

Brett Anderson provides a few more details and it appears that at least one more Houston chef – presumably Randy Evans from Brennans of Houston – was at Bayona to throw his hat in the ring yesterday.

I think both Caswell and Evans have more than enough talent to be in the top of the echelon of competitors, should they make it onto the next season. Randy Evens already has an impressive record of winning in a tough competitive field, taking the top prize in the Great American Seafood Cook-Off held annually in New Orleans and judged by prominent New Orleans chefs with his Wild Caught Texas Shrimp and Biscuits and Gravy recipe.

The Shrimp and Biscuits dish is still the menu at Brennans and is a wild combination of Southern and Creole flavors. If that’s a sign of what Evans can do in a competition, Houston might just take Top Chef by storm next season.

Here’s to hoping both chefs have enough "personality" to satisfy the producers.

I couldn’t make it to Feast for almost week after opening day. Every day another dish that normally requires a trip to London would appear on the menu. The next day it was gone. Knowing that some of the most interesting cooking is entirely inaccessible across the ocean is one thing. Knowing that it’s across town is quite another. So after a string of unfortunate events that kept me away from duck hearts, livers, tongues and other unmentionables I dragged three of my friends to Feast for lunch.

It was a little odd to see the space recently occupied by Chez George transformed so much. A few months ago it was a charming old house with creaky floors and ancient diners in suits eating continental food. Walk into Feast today you might think you’re in a neighborhood diner on Notting Hill. The space looks more open and full of light. Where a place like Ristorante Cavour feels like a facsimile created by an interior designer, Feast with it’s dark woods, family photos and subtle touches throughout the restaurant make it feel as if someone actually lives there. It’s a great place to eat.

I was a little apprehensive about my fist visit to Feast. Would it live up to my expectations? More important, would it meet the expectations of the other three people I took with me or would this be yet another place everyone except for me hates? I need not have worried. Feast is spectacular. And it pulls off broad appeal far better than I expected.

I had an rather uneven experience at St John, where one of the chefs behind Feast spent some time and perhaps the closest proxy to what Feast is bringing to Houston. My food was better than good. It was special. Fergus Henderson may not have invented whole beast eating – people have been doing that for centuries – but he did take "nose to tail" cooking to the level previosly found only in fine dining. What Henderson is doing is very bit as important to evolution of what and how we eat as Ferran Adrià. While St John is far from a high end restaurant, it is ground zero for people interested more in eating than dining. Problem was that while I was digging into brain terrine and deviled kidneys at St John, my dining companions were rather miserable.

Deviled Kidneys at St John

St John caters to the faithful and it’s small menu lacks reasonably safe options for a diner that stops by for a casual meal. It’s a destination restaurant and the menu choices reflect that. Feast succeeds in being a neighborhood joint on the cutting edge, delivering interesting options with rare cuts and unusual ingredients alongside non-threatening dishes most people would can easily identify as "normal food". A vegetarian at St John feels like an unwilling participant in a cannibal dinner party. At Feast you find not one, but two vegetarian dishes that look like they took far more thought than the "veggie surprise" platter that most restaurants serve.

My first lunch at Feast visit drew rave reviews from everyone at the table, which didn’t happen at St John (which is not to say one is better than the other, they operate in different worlds). Juniper braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes and carrots was executed well enough that my friend declared that he could easily go for 3-4 more and not get tired of it. Shepherds pie wasn’t met with quite the same enthusiasm, but I was assured it was an excellent shepherds pie as far as shepherd pies go. I had a chance to try the cabbage stuffed with braised oxtail and it had a very nicely balanced flavor. Wine based braises tend to be strong, but the charred cabbage provided a slightly bitter contrast in both texture and flavor to the meat.  Very nice dish.

Not one for restraint I discarded the "have a small lunch" logic and ordered an appetizer and a main dish. Although not on the menu that day, I was lucky enough to score the last few servings of duck hearts and liver, which came out with on top of a few slices of grilled bread and served with an almost viscous reduction sauce. Livers and hearts have long been my favorite part of making roast chicken, which along with the oysters become the cook’s spoils. Toss the contents of the gizzard bag with some salt and pepper, throw it into the roasting pan once the chicken begins to release the juices and within 15-20 minutes you have yourself a perfectly cooked appetizer of tasty bits that require nothing more than some french bread to soak up the drippings. The duck heart at Feast was good and reasonably well cooked, but hearts typically require either aggressive seasoning or some other flavoring agent, like the chicken hearts at Nelore that come marinated in wine. By the time I figured out that the red wine reduction could have solved the flavor problem for me, the lonely duck heart I got was long gone.

The duck livers delivered a much bigger flavor hit. Duck liver is a bit more mild and much more smooth than chicken livers, giving it a great texture that works very well with bigger flavors in rustic cooking. Few places cook liver right (even Da Marco falters here sometimes), but the liver at Feast came out pink and perfectly tender. It’s overcooked liver that people most often have such a revolting reaction to, so if you want to try it again look no further than Feast. These people know their liver.

My entree of Ox Tongue delivered on every point. The tongue was braised just long enough to soften the meat fibers, but not turn them into mush. The tongue was pan fried, giving it a nice brown crust with not a hint of oil or grease. The combination of mashed potatoes and the sweet savoy cabbage was a spectacular side. The cabbage was too sweet to eat on its own, but combining the two in the right proportions gave you just the right flavor that didn’t overwhelm the subtle flavor of the tongue.

So, we finally have a place in Houston where you can get some testicles or pigeon to start, order a swordfish for dinner and finish with a perfectly unassuming chocolate cake. Whether you like offal or more "normal" food, go to Feast before it gets mobbed like all hot new restaurants tend to. You won’t be sorry for long.

By the way of Cook’s Tour a story about Bill Granger, a popular Australian chef who’s specialty are simply prepared breakfast and lunch dishes in a casual neighborhood diner setting. Granger’s bills restaurants are is a popular local hangout where you can get a newspaper, a cup of coffee and order the best eggs in the world next to Nicole Kidman or a lesser celebrity. A new spot in Tokyo is now open in addition to the three locations of bills in Sydney.

I visited the Woollahra location of bills when I was in Sydney earlier this year. It was a good way to see how the locals spend their weekend. Woollahra is a great neighborhood similar to the north end of the Houston Heights, with cafes, shops and antique stores within steps of each other. A half block away from bills is Bistro Moncur, a surprisingly casual French place (bistros are actually casual in Sydney, what a concept), which Sydney Morning Herald gives a rare two chefs hats rating and served me a rather awful meal on my last night in the city. A bit further away is Whole Foods, an organics store that seems to have stolen their identity and maybe the name itself from the US counterpart.

I skipped the world famous eggs at bills. My own recipe and technique, developed in near anonymity I must say, is almost exactly the same, although I don’t go nearly as heavy on the cream. I did order Ricotta Hotcakes with Fresh Banana and Honeycomb Butter, which is one of the most popular dishes among the locals. Sad to say the hotcakes were a disappointment. Like many dishes I had in Sydney they were entirely unseasoned and ricotta without even a smallest trace of salt (or sugar for that matter) is a fairly bland and uninteresting affair.

I think Sydneysiders would go bananas if they could taste some of the Breakfast Klub creations, although it would probably have to be called Brekkie Klub down under.

The hotcakes may be lame, but people in Sydney know how to enjoy life in a much more casual and laid back way than we do in America, where brunch can become an overdressed and fussy affair. In Sydney, you throw on some sandals and shorts, get a cup of joe at bills and walk a half mile down to Paddington Markets, which attracts a small, but vibrant crowd looking for used records, books, arts, crafts and jewelry. It’s a nice way to pass the time. I just wish the griddle cakes were better.