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 Pho Ga or Vietnamese chicken noodle soup After eating eating Vietnamese chicken noodle soup at Pho Ga Dakao on Bellaire for lunch, I decided to make regular beef pho for dinner. (I become a pho fanatic when the weather gets cold.)
All the ingredients I needed for pho were available at a little market called Cho Thanh Binh (11810 Bellaire) a few doors down from the restaurant. When I told the butcher I was making pho, he handed me some flank steak and a 3 kilo bag of beef bones. Then he pointed to the fresh rice noodles on a nearby shelf. They also had the ginger, shallots, herbs and spices you need to make the Vietnamese soup. I dutifully took my packages to the checkout counter. Does Cho Thanh Binh mean “Wag a Bag of Pho Fixin’s” in Vietnamese?
When I got home, I realized that this was twice as much bone as I normally use. I usually start with 3 pounds of bone and add a pound of rump for the stock. I don’t mind doubling the recipe, but the 6 and a half pounds of bones and 2 pounds of flank the Vietnamese butcher sold me were way more than I could fit in my soup pot. So I went out the garage and got out the crawfish boiling pot.
Check out my Homemade Texas Pho recipe after the jump.
read more Pho Frenzy »
 The Greenberg Smoked Turkey My family consumed two Greenberg Smoked Turkeys and a turducken over the Thanksgiving holiday. (There were 26 of us.) I didn’t know the fascinating story of the Greenberg Smoked Turkey until I read about it in my friend John T. Edge’s column in his New York Times. The Tyler, Texas turkey smoking operation turns out some 200,000 birds every holiday season and they’ve been at it for decades. As soon as I heard about it, I had to try one.
read more Tyler Turkey »
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If you drop a frozen turkey into 350° cooking oil, it will explode. And if you don’t measure the oil carefully, even a properly thawed turkey will set your garage on fire. Ten years ago, some amazing videos of Cajun fried turkey infernos showed up online. Their popularity spawned a subgenre: simulations of [...]
 Cajun Fried Turkey Getting the Injection Why do I get such a kick out of shooting up the bird? Is the injection of garlic butter and spices really necessary? Or is it just a lot of voodoo?
read more Fried Turkey Junkies »
 Head Chef Casey Gaido I had a stunning crab salad and an elegant red snapper in lemon butter at Gaido’s last week. I also met the new head chef, Casey Gaido. Casey is a recent CIA grad and a fourth-generation member of the founding family. Now that Casey is in charge of the kitchen at the hundred year old seafood restaurant on Galveston’s seawall, he promises that the once-legendary cooking will return to its roots.
“In 2006, you wrote a review in the Houston Press titled “Fish on Its Laurels” that I read every week,” Casey told me when I met him. I was embarrassed. It was obviously a bad review, but I didn’t remember what I wrote. So I reread it when I got home. I faulted Gaido’s for being so inconsistent. On one visit I thought I had died and gone to Galatoire’s–and on the next my dinner guest remarked that the place felt like a “gone-to-seed country club.”
read more Gaido's Regaining Its Glory »
Ravigote means “reinvigorated” in French. It is usually a spicy sauce served with a bland protein. It can mean a warm seafood sauce, a spicy vinaigrette, or, in this case, a sort of a Creole tartar sauce. I came up with this version of a ravigote sauce while I was trying to write a recipe for shrimp salad.
(Recipe after the jump)
read more Spicy Shrimp Ravigote Salad »
Those dewberries I bought on 90A the other day got made into jam. I had about four cups of dewberries, but I also had four cups of strawberries that my three year-old daughter Ava brought home from a pick-your-own strawberry excursion she went on over the weekend. So we combined the two and made “Twoberry Jam.” It was a great combination–lots of tartness from the blackberries plus the chunkiness from the strawberries.
read more Twoberry Jam »
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Cut open a bag of Fritos corn chips, ladle some hot Velveeta over top, add a scoop of chili con carne, some raw onions and chopped jalapeños. Voila!
From the Houston Press Eating Our Words blog:
This recipe originally appeared during the rodeo barbecue cook-off. It’s complicated, but the results are spectacular.
Borrego actually means mutton in Spanish, but for some reason, Anglos are more comfortable translating it to “lamb.” Which is odd when you think about it, since Anglos are usually squeamish about eating veal, suckling pig, tiny cabritos and other baby animals.
Mutton used to be a traditional meat in Texas barbecue and is still found at a few African-American barbecue joints such as Ruthie’s in Navasota and Sam’s in Austin. So call this “Mexican mutton barbecue” if you like.The smoky-flavored, falling-off-the-bone tender meat this recipe yields is even tastier than the the stewed goat dish called birria.
Mexican barbacoa is still made in a smoker by a few Tejano barbecue enthusiasts, but commercial pit barbacoa is all but extinct in Texas. Vera’s in Brownsville is one of the last restaurants in the state to use a real pit to make barbacoa. In the old days, Mexican ranch hands used to wrap cow heads up in canvas or maguey leaves and bury them in the coals. (In the movie Giant, Elizabeth Taylor faints when they unwrap the package and show her the head.) But health departments frown on such traditional barbacoa these days.
read more The Tex-Mex Grill: Barbacoa de Borrego »
Writing about food as a freelancer was a tough way to make a living and I was about ready to give up after several years of poverty. My fortunes changed when this article about bumming around the Caribbean looking for new hot sauces was published in American Way magazine and won the 1996 James Beard Journalism Award in the Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes category.
The little house looks like it’s about to slip off the cliffside into the thicket of banana plants and herb gardens below. Knocking on the door, I am greeted by reggae on the radio and several loud, simultaneous conversations. “Come in, it’s open!” somebody finally hollers over the din.
Inside, seven women are sitting around a kitchen table cleaning herbs and laughing. Out the window behind them, I can see the green squares of hundreds of garden plots covering the steep slopes of Trinidad’s Paramin Hills. Stacked along the wall is the treasure I’ve travelled thousands of miles to find, cases upon cases of “Genuine Paramin Pepper Sauce.”
Hillary Boisson is the Parmin Women’s Group’s unofficial leader. She is scrutinizing my T-shirt trying to find some clue as to what this large sunburnt American wants in her clubhouse kitchen. The T-shirt reads: “Austin Hot Sauce Contest, Fourth Annual.” read more Article Archives: "Hot Sauce Safari," 1995 »
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