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| This isn't cranberry yogurt ice cream. But this is how we imagine it should be served. |
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.
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Calvin Trillin has lobbied to replace the Thanksgiving turkey with spaghetti carbonara --something to do with Columbus being Italian, I think. In the Tex-Mex Cookbook, I pointed out that Juan de Onate and his Mexican pioneers held a Tex-Mex thanksgiving in El Paso decades before the Pilgrims ran into Plymouth rock. So there's plenty of precedent to skip cooking turkey.
Photo by Jasmine&Roses
Here's a lovely pork chop recipe for Thanksgiving. The sauce was inspired by my father, who was an apple butter fanatic. We always had some in the refrigerator. Apple butter goes great with dried chiles and it looks like mole -- which is why I call this sauce apple butter mole.
The recipe, after the jump.
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| Photo by smashz |
| Soaking the ancho chiles in warm water. |
The editorial staff of the Houston Press has a holiday pot luck lunch every year in December. I brought sweet potato-stuffed peppers because there were so many vegetarians working here. People liked them so much, I bring them nearly every year now, even though we don't have any vegetarians in the newsroom anymore.
The recipe, after the jump.
I'm on vacation in Southern California now -- I'll be back in Houston resuming the donut patrol soon. But since everybody is getting ready for Thanksgiving, I thought I'd dig up a few recipes from one of my first cookbooks, Nuevo Tex-Mex, which I wrote with David Garrido, and share them for the holidays. 
Photo by Tambako
The book offered some ambitious variations on old classics, like this twist on roasted potatoes. The sweet and hot potatoes in this recipe taste incredible with roast turkey. It's a challenging recipe because you have to be really careful not to burn the potatoes as the syrup thickens. Keep the heat low and don't stop stirring toward the end of the cooking time. I hope you agree it's worth the effort.
The recipe, after the jump.
A bunch of people were ordering the cinnamon-coated glazed donuts at Christy's on Montrose so I followed suit. But the donut was disappointing -- it tasted very dry. The glazed donut wasn't worth eating either. It didn't make sense. This place has lots of customers all the time, so where are the hot donuts? Is there something I'm missing? What do Christy's fans order?
Texas oyster season opened November 1, and the oysters have started to flood the local market. Lots of restaurants around town are running specials. The cheapest price I've seen is at the Ragin Cajun on Richmond, where they offer 25¢ oysters during happy hour (Mondays through Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m.). That's an incredible $3 a dozen. You'd be lucky to find one oyster that cheap at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York. 
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I used two packages of Pioneer Cornbread Mix and a cup and a half of chili.
You make the cornbread mix according to the directions on the package, only you use some extra milk to make it like pancake batter. Then you grease a pan and pour in half the batter. You can substitute a can of Wolf brand chili. Pour on the rest of the cornbread batter and bake at 350 for 20 or 30 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
Here's the original recipe in case you're feeling ambitious:
On the left, Hruska's pan sausage and cheese kolache, on the right, Weikel's link sausage kolache. I loved them both. But the slightly dried, peppery link sausage inside of Weikel's version put it over the top. However, I am told that these sausage kolaches aren't really kolaches at all. Sausage kolaches are actually called klobasneks. 
Food word etymologist Barry Popick's website defines a klobasnek this way:
Klobasnek or Klobasnik ("sausage kolache") A "klobasnek" (or "klobasnik") is a Czech food that has been also called a "sausage kolache" (pastry). Both the kolache and the klobasnek are popular with the Czech population in central Texas.
Skip the glazed, but don't miss the terrific blueberry cake doughnuts at Queen Donuts on 18th St. This place was recommended by a Donut Patrol regular named Laura who wrote: "If you're trolling this area (the Heights), I suggest Queen Donut on 18th street. Their ham & cheese croissants are worth the trip. Their holes are quite good." 
Two cheese enchiladas topped with a fried egg (or two) is one of my favorite Tex-Mex breakfasts. It used to be known as huevos montados (eggs mounted) back in the day. Dos Amigos on Washington has this dish on the menu. So do lots of other Houston Tex-Mex joints. But if I don't see it, I often ask for it anyway. After all, how hard is it to throw a fried egg on top of a cheese enchilada plate? I have never been disappointed with this dish -- until now.
There are many factors to take into consideration when choosing between Hruska's and Weikel's. I almost always stop at one place or the other when driving between Houston and Austin. Both are gas stations and outstanding kolache bakeries. There are more gas pumps at Hruska's, and my traveling companions say the restrooms rival the state-of-the-art sanitary facilities at Buckee's. 
If it's lunch or dinner time and I'm thinking of a burger, the choice is clear. Despite occasional flubs, Hruska's has one of the best gas station burgers in the state (and possibly the nation). I think the employees are friendlier at Hruska's too. Say "hi" to Melissa for me.
If it's early morning and I'm craving pastries, I might base my decision purely on the quality of the sweet kolaches. How do they compare? Take a look at the results of this taste test I conducted last week. I stopped at both Hruska's and Weikel's and purchased poppy seed, apricot and cottage cheese kolaches. The poppy seed was vastly superior at Weikel's, as I reported yesterday.
We begin our Texas kolache tour at Weikels's in LaGrange, home of the best commercial kolaches in Texas. The standard by which I measure sweet kolaches is the poppy seed variety, mainly because I grew up eating poppy seed kolaches in my grandma's Ruthenian kitchen in Pittsburgh. 
Here's some video clips I took while researching this week's feature, "City of Coffee." The automated lines are inside the Maximus Coffee Plant on Harrisburg -- the old Maxwell House plant.
Banh mi means "bread" in Vietnamese and thit means "ham"; banh mi thit is a ham sandwich. So when I saw banh mi bo kho on the menu at Banh Cuon Hoa #2 on Beechnut, the subject of this week's cafe review, I figured bread + beef stew = a Vietnamese roast beef sandwich. Ever since I first learned about Vietnamese sandwiches, I have been looking for the banh mi stuffed with curry and saucy meats that I have heard are popular in Vietnam.
There was a cloud of smoke rising from the parking lot of Buffalo Fred's Ice house on Shepherd last Sunday morning. I turned my car into the parking lot to see what was going on and found a retired truck driver named Jesse Gamino smoking chickens on an oversize barbecue trailer. His rig had an outline of Texas cut from steel sticking up from the top of the smoking chamber. Jesse was wearing an apron that looked like it was made out of a Texas flag. 
The new Sonoran hot dogs at James Coney Island may not rival the ones in Tucson, but they are pretty damn good. Two Sonoran dogs, fries and a drink go for $7.99, and a one-dog combo goes for $5.99. The JCI version of the famous Mexican perro caliente features an all-beef wiener wrapped with top quality bacon and served in a bun with whole pinto beans underneath and diced onions and tomatoes over top. Then there's mustard and squiggles of chipotle mayo and avocado sauce. The Tuscon version usually comes with a generous amount of avocado or guac and is squiggled with a spicy jalapeño sauce. 
You can't miss the food court at the new 99 Market Asian Supermarket at Blalock and I-10. It's right inside the front door. And the sushi chefs are out on display -- you gotta love the combination of white paper face masks and old-fashioned French toques. The buffet line looks alluring, with a plate lunch selling for $5.99. There are all kinds of good-looking buns and well-dimpled dumplings.
69¢ Gulf oysters and lobsters for under $9 a pound are among the grand-opening specials worth checking out at 99 Ranch Market, the new supermarket at I-10 and Blalock where the big Fiesta used to be. 99 Ranch Market is an Asian supermarket chain out of Los Angeles. The first store was called Tawa Supermarket; it opened in Westminster, the Little Saigon of L.A., in 1984. The chain now has 24 stores in California, two in Washington State and one in Las Vegas, along with the new Houston store. 
The barbacoa taco from the Arcelia taco bus is truly amazing. It consists of two lightly fried tortillas and lots of barbacoa meat, plus soft-cooked onions, salsa and a lime wedge. The barbacoa is moist and tasty too, not crusted over like the stuff at Pancho's carniceria down the street. Even more amazing is the fact that they can sell tacos like this for 99¢. I visited Arcelia after a comment from Ricardo Tubbs on my post about the machacado con huevo at La Plaza on Long Point and Bingle. 
Tubbs recommended I go back to La Plaza for the fajitas. He also wrote that there was another truck I hadn't written about, Tacos Arcelia at Blalock and Long Point, that makes El Ultimo "look like garbage."
The native pecans are nice and meaty this year. I knew it was pecan season when I saw two women walking around my neighborhood collecting nuts in a Shipley's Donut bag. Then I saw a very clever individual shaking the branches of a native pecan tree by means of a long pipe with a hook taped on the end of it. He was working a grove of pecan trees growing in a vacant lot on Longpoint near the Whataburger curve. 
Flounder season has just started, and I have had it twice already. It's a wonderfully flavorful fish that's almost always cooked whole because it is nearly impossible to get all the meat off the bones in a filet. I had some simple fried flounder last weekend at Captain Benny's served with a pile of dirty rice and some garlic bread. It was pretty tasty, though maybe a little overcooked. The oysters at the Captain's boat-shaped restaurant were a better bet.
Machacada con huevo, the Northern Mexican dish of dried beef with scrambled eggs, makes a lovely Saturday morning breakfast. I ate a wonderful version last Saturday at of La Plaza restaurant on Bingle at Long Point. The interior of this place looks like an all-American diner. 
I was confused when I first looked at the menu because, although La Plaza appears to be a Mexican restaurant, all the breakfasts were standard American fare like bacon and eggs and pancakes. When I asked the waitress about it, she looked at me like I was dolt, and turned the menu over. The Mexican breakfasts were on the other side.
Doh! I forgot to go to the Thursday spaghetti luncheon at Saint Basil the Great Greek Orthodox Church on Eldridge Parkway again. Every Thursday I wake up with the intention of going to the spaghetti luncheon, but then something happens or I just plain forget about it. I love the idea of a spaghetti fundraiser at a church named St. Basil. I never even knew there was a St. Basil. Turns out he was called St. Basil the Great to differentiate him from his father, Saint Basil the Elder. He was famous for a homily condemning usury, but there are no records of any food writing.
My brother Dave got me hooked on these hot and spicy saltines. He says they're the perfect oyster crackers. I haven't tried them with oysters yet, but I will soon. The home version of these has been around for a long time. You mix up a package of dry ranch dressing mix, some kind of dried chile peppers and salad oil and pour it over saltines in a container, then turn the container until the mixture is absorbed. Easy, but messy. 
We sampled the banh cuon nhan thit nuong, or steamed rice rolls with chargrilled pork, at Huynh on Emanuel for lunch the other day. The cute little rolls came crowded in a soup bowl with a vinegar and fish sauce dip on the side. I thought of them as Vietmanese pigs in a blanket. When the waitress saw us dipping each roll, she suggested we just dump the dipping sauce over top of the rolls. I guess that's why they come in a bowl.
I tried my first chocolate raised doughnut at the Shipley's on Bingle just north of Long Point. The chocolate flavor was very faint, and while the doughnut was fresh, it wasn't warm anymore. The raised and glazed doughnuts, on the other hand, were piping hot. There weren't any in the bin -- they had to walk over and get them from the cooling rack in the bakery, which is always a good sign. 
My first oysters on the half shell this season came from Captain Benny's in Austin. They were good-looking and reasonably tasty, considering we haven't had much cold weather yet. If I had to bet, I'd say these oysters were harvested in Louisiana a week or so ago. (The season opens in October over there.) I like to wait until November 1 to start eating oysters because that's the day the season opens in Texas. It was a little odd to be eating my first oysters of the year in Austin rather than say, San Leon, but there were extenuating circumstances. 
I hardly ever get a fajita taco anymore. I am always looking for something more interesting, like lengua or barbacoa. But at the El Charro across from the Maxwell House plant, all of the tacos come hot off the griddle, rather than out of a steam table. So the fajita meat is actually crispy. I sat down at the window-side counter in the funky dining room decorated with horses and cowboys and ate my taco. ("Charro" means "cowboy" in Mexican Spanish.) 
The Bavarian cream-filled Bismark is the thing to get at Daily Donut on Barker Cypress just north of 290. The cream-filled donut there was delicious, while the raised donut was stale and lame. Though Daily Donut calls this a Bismark, some would disagree with both the usage and the spelling. Exactly what is or isn't a Bismark is one of those pastry pilpuls that you could spend the rest of the week arguing about. 
So long, anonymity -- it's been swell. For nearly ten years now, I have done my job incognito. Now I am joining the ranks of no-longer-anonymous restaurant critics. Last Friday, I gave a lecture to the students and faculty of the Texas A&M Meat Science Center without the usual hat and sunglasses. I didn't wear a disguise on Sunday when I appeared at the Texas Book Festival either. Soon you will be able to Google grainy photos of me to your heart's content. I also have given my publishers an author's photo to use for publicity. 
Jason Sheehan, the critic for our sister paper, the Denver Westword, also appeared at the book festival in Austin on Sunday. Sheehan's photo appears on the back flap of his new book Cooking Dirty. For good measure, he also published his photo on Westword's food blog. "No one ever recognizes me anyway," Sheehan told me at the book fair. Since he shed his anonymity, Jonathan Gold, who reviews restaurants for our sister paper the LA Weekly, said he has "noticed absolutely no difference in being recognized in restaurants. None. Zero."
In an article by Regina Schrambling called "Restaurant Critics Are Blowing Their Own Covers," some media wags contended that the whole idea of anonymity is dated and faintly ridiculous in the Internet age. According to the article, any prominent reviewer who thinks he isn't already being recognized at high-end restaurants is fooling himself.
Hugo's
Houston, TX 
T'afia
Houston, TX 
Pappasito's
Houston, TX 
Super Happy Fun Land
Houston, TX 
Dessert Gallery
Houston, TX 
Hotel Zaza
Houston, TX 
