Houston Food Blog

Here's something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: you only have to fist a turkey once a year.

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Welcome back to the weekly round-up here at Eating Our Words, where we're now voting Republican, because they're the only ones fascist enough to pass this "Everyone Must Now Put Grape-Nuts in Their Yogurt" legislation we've drafted. It's something we feel very strongly about.

Greenway Barista started the week off with a study in farmers' markets, and Lauren McKechnie graciously informed us of some excellent chicken pot pies. Ah, chicken pot pie: one of our favorite things to eat, and one of our least favorite Weird Al songs. Jane Catherine Collins tried pretty much every single wine they had at the Rancho Ponte vineyard, and, we hope, had someone else drive her back to Houston.

​November has been a good month for Houston restaurants so far, with notably few closings. Among them in the past week were two casualties of Spanish cuisine: Tio Pepe (5213 Cedar) in Bellaire and the adjoining Garnaxas Tapas Bar.

In better news, a spate of openings around the city -- and especially at the increasingly busy CityCentre -- is offering more places for Houstonians to spend their dining dollars. Branch Water Tavern has finally opened its doors at 510 Shepherd. Although it's only open for dinner at the moment, initial reports indicate that the classic menu, with items like venison medallions with sweet potato and Brussels sprouts and chicken-fried oysters in a Buffalo sauce, is very good. Even better: It serves a late-night menu until 2 a.m on Friday and Saturday nights.

Stella Sola (1001 Studewood) is finally out of its soft-opening phase and in full swing. The website is also up and running, but doesn't yet have the revamped menu posted. You can view the menu here, however, which has new items like a bone marrow service and brown butter gnocchi.

Photo by Experience LA

Free range turkeys, making their way to a roasting pan near you...

​For the down-to-earth and/or most ambitious of us, Olde World Farms is offering a limited supply of free range turkeys at the Highland Village Farmers Market this Saturday.

It's part of a huge push on the market's part to capture your T-Day dollars. Stone Cloud Farms has fresh herbs and Meyer lemons to help you make homemade lemon meringue pie (if you don't want to go the House of Pies, Luby's or Denny's route).

And despite the dreaded worldwide pumpkin shortage (although several cans of pumpkin were still available at the downtown Randall's as of 1 p.m. today), Words and Food will have pumpkin walnut cheesecake tarts and well as quarts of fresh roasted pumpkin soup to take home.

Sweet potatoes will be available from Gundermann Farms, and throughout the market there will be "greens, squash, green beans, citrus fruit, fresh baked rolls and.... (drum roll here) even organic marshmallows."

Chef Dylan Murrary will be on hand at Saturday starting at 10 a.m. to help you brush up on how to put a Thanksgiving dinner together. His specialty: wild mushroom bisque topped with gulf shrimp, baby squash and truffle oil." The market is open from 8 a.m. to noon.   

​Although the Saturday tours at the brewery are still on hold for now, you can still get your fix of walking and beer with the Saint Arnold Pub Crawl tonight starting at 6 p.m. As a special bonus, there will be limited-edition Christmas Ale on tap. The crawl will take place in the north part of Rice Village, and because the crawls have gotten so huge, the first stop will actually be in three locations (mystery locations, as per tradition). Pick up your ticket at one of the three locations, then proceed to the other two to get it stamped. At the fourth and final stop, you'll get your very own Saint Arnold pint glass if your ticket has all the stamps. Need directions? Check the website for clues about the stops.

Mostly sunny skies and a high of 62 degrees means that you should be out and about this weekend. Head over to Discovery Green for the Flavors Festival 2009, benefiting the Houston Food Bank. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children ages 6 through 12. The festival will feature five of Houston's top chefs demonstrating their recipes as well as flavor zones like Beverage World, Sweet Fiesta, Quick & Easy Meals and Ethnic Restaurants. Stick around until 5 p.m. and you'll be able to bear witness to some of the finest gluttony in Houston as a series of eating contests are held. Who can hork down jalapenos, tomatos, watermelon and ice cream the fastest? Find out for yourself on Saturday.

​A spotless Tex-Mex restaurant is an eerie sight. Arguably, things like carnitas and cold drinks are served best with a little grit, but this week the Health Department report - more frequently than usual - seems to argue otherwise.

(In a completely unrelated note, don't Google "Dirty Margarita" if you are only looking for recipes to make a cocktail metaphor work. A Dirty Margarita is a marg with beer, although clearly there is much debate on... um... alternative recipes.)

The heavenly tortillas at Tortilleria & Taqueria La Reyna (6711 Rampart St) can't save them from this sinful inspection. Food was noted as not protected from potential contamination, and the manager also failed to produce a Food Manager's Certificate on site at the time.

photos by Liana Lopez

​If you don't have to entertain an entire family for Thanksgiving dinner this year but still want to have a feast, here's the recipe for you. This is all you need to make a mini-Thanksgiving dinner for up to four folks.

Okay, our recipe is not exactly turkey but it is poultry, it's stuffed and it's tasty. Not to mention, it won't take all day to make, and you can avoid that tryptophan trip to la la land afterwards.

Instead of the typical 10 - 15 pound turkey, here's our quick and easy 2 - 3 pound version -- stuffing and all.

Last week, we trekked out to the old Saint Arnold brewery to watch as Phil Dagger and the rest of the line crew bottled the limited-run Divine Reserve #9, which will hit store shelves on December 1. (Oh, and we sampled a little. Just a little. Don't worry; we left some for you.)

Halfway through gathering footage for the video you'll see below, a terrible tragedy befell the bottling line. Between the inch of beer that covers the floor of the production area and the fact that Eating Our Words is notoriously uncoordinated, we accidentally hit the emergency shutoff switch for the facility, ruining some of the bottles of Divine Reserve in the process. Oops. Our bad.

The reaction we got when we posted news of the incident on Twitter speaks to the zeal with which beer lovers regard the Divine Reserve brews: @BiteMeHouston put it best with his simple command, "Please remove yourself from the brewery." Luckily, crisis was averted as Dagger swooped into the filling room and restarted the bottling line with only a few bottles sacrificed to our clumsiness.

You can see a video of the entire bottling process below, which is much safer for the beer world, really, than viewing it in person. Trust us.

​Hockey fans, look no further. You've found him. The man who will bring you cold beer and snacks during the Stanley Cup playoffs. No, he's not God. He is Scott Fix, the bartender at the Maple Leaf Pub (514 Elgin Street).

Fix has been bartending for 15 years, two-and-a-half of those at the Maple Leaf. The regulars call him by name. It's like Cheers for hockey fans. And, yes, there are hockey fans in Houston, even though ice is something we usually see in the movies.

Last night, Fix sat down with us at the bar. It's his only break from people calling his name for drink refills. But, he loves it -- even the Stanley Cup playoffs with rowdy hockey fans and free-flowing beer. "It's crazy, but it's fun. We look forward to it all year."

​Chef Johann Schuster, of Charivari Restaurant in Midtown, tossed together three bowls of a fine ceviche at last weekend's Houston Peruvian Festival. The keys to a good ceviche, Schuster says, are fresh fish and sharp knives. But chewing raw fish is a bit more pleasant if there's, you know, other stuff with it.

So we rang Schuster up before the dinner rush this week and asked him to share his classic ceviche recipe with us. Patrons can find Charivari's version at the bar.

The recipe, after the jump.

This isn't cranberry yogurt ice cream. But this is how we imagine it should be served.

​Whenever I buy fresh cranberries to make cranberry sauce, I end up with too many of them. They aren't cheap, and they usually go to waste in my refrigerator. If you have ever popped a fresh cranberry in your mouth, you know why nobody eats them raw.

If you have an ice cream freezer, you can use this dessert recipe to make ice cream with some of the extra cranberries. You can also vary the recipe to use leftover cranberry sauce if you end up with a bunch of it after the holiday.

The recipe, after the jump.