Houston trip: Les Givrals and Giacomo's cibo e vino

I'm visiting my daughter, Helen, granddaughter, Grace, and Will, Helen's boyfriend and his son Atticus, in Houston for Memorial Day weekend.  This weekend I have not done any cooking and instead was fortunate enough to have some great meals here.  Helen lives in the Bellaire area, close to everything, so she didn't blink when I asked to try Les Givrals, a Vietnamese restaurant.  We went Saturday and enjoyed their Bahn Mi sandwiches and spring rolls.

All were freshly made with just the right crispy french rolls.  The spring rolls were tender, not rubbery as is often the case, and there were several sauces available to spice up the food.  The entire dinner for all 6 of us was $30.00.
Breakfast the next morning at the local "Egg and I" was just fine.  A cute family restaurant with fresh and imaginative food.  I had a vegetable frittata and freshly squeezed orange juice.  The highlight of this weekend's eating was tonight, however.


Helen had been to a local place called, Giacomo's cibo e vino, an Italian style wine and food bar.  She loved it and thought that I would "get it".  There are several ways to eat there and it is not typical in any way.  It reminded me of the little wine bars all over Italy where you could stop in, buy a glass of wine and then help yourself to antipasti set out on the bar.  At Giacomo's you are shown the day's special antipasti, or "chichetti freddi"  (little cold dishes) and you can have a sampling of any of them, for about $5-6 per plate.  You can also order anitpasti from the menu, or "chichetti caldi" (little hot dishes).  Then there are soups, salads, "secondi" (main course portions) of meats and seafood, house made pasta, panini, and "contorni" (vegetable sides).  We selected glasses of wine (which come in half and full glasses--a great way to sample several wines), however we chose just one glass each of Pavillion Cabernet Sauvignon.  The waiter escorted us to the bar area and showed us the 10 or so special cold antipasti.
 
Daily selection of cold antipasti

It was hard to choose but we decided on the marinated mushrooms, seafood salad with shrimp and squid, and spicy broccoli.  We ordered a basket of bread which included some nice foccacia.


Marinated mushrooms, spicy broccoli, squid and shrimp salad, foccacia

Instead of the heavier tortellini in brodo (pasta stuffed with meat) and served with cream sauces that the girls ordered, Helen and I decided on vegetable misto and salsiccia di pollo (chicken sausage) with frisee and arugula.


misto (vegetables) and salciccia di pollo (chicken sausage)

We weren't sorry with our choices.  We sampled the pasta and although it was al dente and flavorful I preferred the variety of vegetable dishes and the one meat dish.  Since we had room for dessert we all ordered it:  lemon tart, gelato for Grace (white chocolate and chocolate), and panna cotta for Helen and I.  The panna cotta with vanilla yogurt, cinnamon and lemon was silky and tart, reminding me of the melt in your mouth gelato I had at the Motti School in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Just give me gelato!



The silky vanilla lemon cinnamon panna cotta



Lemon Tart

If I lived in Houston I would go to Giacomo's on a regular basis and sample everything.  Helen, next time you come visit me in Azle, bring a cooler full of Giacomo's cold antipasti, bread, and a panna cotta.  Please!


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Kentucky Food: Paducah Deployment

From May 15-22 I was in Paducah, Kentucky for a United State Public Health field training and deployment.  In my "other life" I am on active duty with the USPHS and the deputy team leader of a Mental Health Team.  We train to deploy for disasters and other emergency or crisis situations.
We stayed in the Air Dome in Paducah.
We called it the giant marshmallow, the bubble, and many other things, but it was like staying in a hangar.
The ceiling seemed to be 3 stories high and there was always a whirring sound from the generators.  We slept in cots, out in the open, both men and women together.

My cot is first one on the left.  Blue curtain in the background was the men's "dressing room"



I arrived on Monday morning at 2:45 in the morning.  I couldn't leave Azle until the garden tour was over (see previous post) so I took the latest flight to Nashville, 9:30 PM, arrived in Nashville at 11:30 PM and was greeted by the Office of Force Readiness and Deployment staff who drove me and some other late arrivals to Paducah, Kentucky.  We stopped along the way at Jack in the Box where the menu posted the calorie count of all their foods.  Yikes, the ultimate cheeseburger I ate back in 1990 the day after my youngest daughter was born had over a 1,000 calories!  What was I thinking?  I ordered the lowest calorie thing I could find, a chicken fajita pita, but it came with curly fries (and I ate every single one of them).  I had been so busy on Sunday I barely ate anything except a couple of my crostini after the garden tour was over.
I was not expecting great food this week so I had some snacks with me just in case.  We did have food, though, provided by Neil, a local restuarant owner and caterer.  He specialized in chicken apparently, because it made an appearance every day.  Fried, baked, in a casserole, along with lots of cheesy, rich, potatoes and canned green beans.  He only knew one kind of salad, iceberg lettuce with bottled dressing.
Plenty of storebought pies and cookies were on hand.  Breakfast was biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, some fruit and pastries.  We did not go hungry, but the food was just "OK".  It was better than MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), though.

On Monday afternoon, during a meeting with Mr. Hank Cecil, the Regional Kentucky Crisis Response Team coordinator, in which we were planning our community missions for the week, he received word of a school bus accident in Carlisle County.  He asked our team for assistance and we were happy to help in any way.  We planned to go with him on Tuesday morning to speak to the superintendent and assess the situation.  It was such a sad and unfortunate tragedy for the families and school in a very close knit community of 4,000, and being a part of the response team was an honor.



with my good friend and fellow team member, CDR Dale Thompson, and on the right, Mr. Hank Cecil



Hot Brown--ham, turkey, cheese sauce and bacon on slice of bread

Heading back to Paducah I asked Hank Cecil about local cuisine.  I told him I had heard of Kentucky Hot Browns and asked if he ever ate them.  He seemed pleased to recommend a local restuarant called Happy House so we stopped there.  I ordered the Hot Brown and a piece of Derby Pie.  Both were delicious.


Derby Pie, nuts, chocolate, gooey goodness

It was great to eat at a local place, a historic building with a family run restaurant.  I asked Hank about the BBQ place my husband's friend recommended and he also told us about Patti's 1880's Settlement in Grand River.  He suggested our team join him there on Wednesday night.  It sounded like a great idea, and a way to escape the giant marshmallow for an evening.




Bread in a flower pot, pie, and their famous pork chop!

Patti's is famous for many things, but particularly the 2 inch (and 1 inch) pork chop.  They also have the craziest pies I've ever seen.  The team had a great time and our table ordered 7 different pies.


Sawdust pie--I ordered this and shared it with Dale



Chocolate meringue pie



Bill's Boatsinker Pie, dark double fudge pie topped with coffee ice cream, piled high with whipped cream, "drizzled" with chocolate syrup and topped with a cherry.

After tasting all the 7 pies I think I liked the boatsinker pie best.  Wish I had ordered it!  We had a great time at Patti's, visiting with Hank and his lovely wife, Sandra.  I think she probably thought we were strange, but she was a good sport.  Hank paid for our dinners, all 13 of us, a big surprise.  He is such a great guy and we were all so blessed to meet him and work with him.

Other food highlights in Paducah:

Kirchoff's Bakery, a family owned business since 1873 in a historic building in downtown Paducah.  What a gem!  Team members brought back cookies and bread to share and we were served cookies from Kirchoff's at the Kentucky Community Crisis Response Board meeting on Thursday night. 

On Saturday a few of us went there for breakfast and I had a fantastic quiche and a cheese bagel.  The atmosphere was relaxing, quirky, and unique.  I love this type of place.  They had a collage of items dating back over 100 years.

I did not have a chance to eat any other meals there but after reading the menu I wished I had tried their "Korean Beef Sandwich" with bulgogi (Korean bbq), kimchi coleslaw, carrots, and cucumber in a housemade sesame bun.  Yum

Another good meal was at Max's Brick Oven on Saturday night.  I ordered the crostini appetizer which was crostini topped with pancetta, fontina, gorgonzola and pesto salsa.  It was hot and bubbly and very tasty.

My grilled ahi tuna with ginger lime and cilantro sauce was also excellent.  The restaurant, however, was extremely noisy and busy so it was hard to talk and relax.

I was very glad to wake up Sunday morning and get ready to leave for home.  A week in the air dome was more than enough and I hope I never ever see another one of these:

At the Nashville Airport we stopped for a quick lunch and I had some really good barbeque pork at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.  I decided that Nashville may be a good food destination in the future.

Back to work tomorrow and time to start thinking about upcoming food events--Japanese Society cooking class on June 4, Farmers Market demo, June 11, private cooking lesson, June 11, and private dinner party on Italian dishes, June 18, trip to New Orleans, June 20-25.  

I will always remember the community of Paducah, Kentucky and Carlisle County fondly.  Thanks, Hank, for being such a great leader.

Hank with MHT 3








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Azle Garden Tour, May 15, 2011

Time to eat!



Front walkway



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We are ready!

 Several months ago, our friend, Peggy Davis, an Azle resident and chair of the Green Scene committee, asked us if we would agree to have our home on the garden tour this year.  Benefits from the tour will go toward a new "welcome to the city of Azle" sign.  I not only agreed, but offered to do a cooking demonstration during the tour of our house.  Was I crazy or what?  I have a full time job, after all, and then the part time chef business.  My husband let me know right away that we would both be working in the garden overtime to make things look good.  We also were out of town for more than a week in March during prime "getting the garden ready" time, so our vegetable garden was a little late.  Somehow we got everything done and the garden(s) looked fine.  Then I had to figure out what to cook.  I decided on a crostini with Italian sausage, herb goat cheese, and heirloom cherry tomato jam.  I also made lemon cormeal cake with blueberry sauce and gave out samples of strawberry jam I had made with strawberries from our garden.  The recipe for the lemon cornmeal cake is in a previous post in this blog.


Lemon cornmeal cake with fresh strawberry jam



Lemon cornmeal cake with fresh blueberry sauce


Crostini
1 baguette, 2 inch diameter, cuit into thin slices
1lb. Italian sausage, grilled and cut into slices
cherry tomato jam
herb goat cheese

Heirloom Cherry Tomato Jam
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 cup minced red onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 pints heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 4 inch sprig rosemary
1 sprig thyme
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add onions and cook until translucent but not browned.  Add garlic and saute for 1 minute.  Increase heat to medium high and add the tomatoes, rosemary, and thyme.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes burst.  Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.  Cover and refrigerate for up to 1 week.  Serve at room temperature.

Herb Goat Cheese

8 ounces goat cheese
1 tsp basil, minced
1 tsp thyme, minced
1/2 T dill, minced
1/2 T cilantro, minced
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp milk
1 pinch ground black pepper
Combine all ingredients and roll into a log. Wrap in plastic wrap until ready to use.

Prepare the baguette by brushing with olive oil, then baking in 400 degree oven for 3 minutes, turn bake 3 more minutes.  Place on large tray, spread herb goat cheese, a spoonful of tomato jam, topped with a slice of sausage.


Crostini with herb goat cheese, heirloom tomato jam, and Italian sausage



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Ft.Worth Japanese Society Japanese Cooking Series: Donburi

I have been teaching cooking classes at the Ft. Worth Japanese Society and May 7 was the second in a series of three classes.  The first one was in April and I covered sukiyaki and mizutaki.  The class on May 7 was on donburi.



Donburi is Japanese comfort food. A simple bowl of rice, topped with meat, vegetables, or fish.  The deep serving bowl is called the "donburi".  You can find donburi everywhere in Japan from small family cafes to large department store restaurants.  The donburi is usually served on a tray with a bowl of miso soup and a small dish of pickled vegetables.  Often the donburi has a lid on it to keep it hot until you eat it.  When I lived in Japan many years ago I always enjoyed various types of donburi including ten-don (shrimp tempura over rice), oyako-don (chicken and eggs over rice), and unagi-don (eel over rice).  In 2007 when I went on a trip to Tokyo with my daughter, Helen, we stayed at the Dai ichi Hotel.  To give you an idea of the cost of food in the hotel, continental breakfast in one of the many nice hotel restaurants cost $42.00.  The first night we were there we ventured outside the hotel and across the street I recognized the sign for Katsu-don, written in Hiragana.  (I studied Japanese language during my stay and remember restaurant signs quite well.)
The restuarant was filled with businessmen and families and our katsu-don arrived, steaming hot, everything perfectly cooked, for only $12.00.  We found many other small restaurants during our stay and never ate at the hotel (except for the one continental breakfast!)

Let's eat!



The class was enthusiastic about all the dishes.



  I taught three types of donburi:  Maguro Donburi, Gyu-don, and Katsudon

Maguro Donburi



4, 3 ounce pieces sashimi-grade tuna
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 T sake
2 t mirin
4 cups cooked sushi rice
Garnishes:
thinly sliced pickled ginger
finely chopped nori
thinly sliced shiso leaves
thinly sliced cooked omelette
wasabi paste

Place tuna in plastic bag with marinade for 30 minutes.  Remove from bag and cut each piece into 6 slices.
Place 1 cup of rice in serving bowl and top with tuna slices and garnishes.  Drizzle with reserved marinade and serve with wasabi.

Sushi rice:


3 cups Japanese rice
3 1/4 cups water
1/3 cup rice vinegar
3 T sugar
1 tsp salt
After washing and soaking rice, cook according to rice cooker directions or on stove.  Prepare sushi vinegar by mixing rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a sauce pan.  Put the pan on low heat and heat until sugar dissolves.
Cool the vinegar mixture.  Spread the hot steamed rice into a large bowl, non-metallic to prevent interaction with the vinegar.  A wooden sushi-oke is best if you can find one.  Sprinkle the vinegar mixture over the rice and gently fold the rice using a rice spatula (shamoji).  Don't smash the rice.  To cool and remove the moisture of the rice use a fan as you mix the rice. 


Gyu-don  (beef bowl)
Serves 2


2 bowls fresh steamed Japanese rice
12 ounces thinly sliced beef (sirloin or rib eye)
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 package shirataki noodles (optional)
1 1/2 cups dashi
4 T soy sauce
4 T mirin
1 T sake
Beni shoga (red pickled ginger) to taste
sliced scallions for garnish

optional:  3 eggs, lightly beaten

Freeze the beef and slice it when it is partially frozen for thin slices.  If using shirataki, rinse and cook in boiling water for 30 seconds.  Cut into 6 inch lengths. 
Place dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sake in  a large skillet.  Bring to boil.  Add meat and onions.  Cook until onion is soft and translucent.  If using eggs, add after beef is cooked.  Eggs will only take a couple minutes.
Place beef, onions, and sauce over steamed rice.  Serve with beni shoga.  Another option is to cook an over
easy egg for each bowl and place it on top.  In Japan diners mix in a raw egg.
This dish tastes better if you cook it ahead of time, cool it and re-heat it before you eat it.

Katsu-don



Serves 2

Tonkatsu
8 ounces pork loin, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/4 cup flour
salt and pepper
1 beaten egg
2 cups panko bread crumbs
heavy pan with 1-2 inches of 350 degree vegetable oil

Pound pork to a thickness of 1/3 inch.  Coat with flour, salt and pepper.  Dip in egg, then panko.  Fry in hot oil for approximately 5 minutes total time.  Place on rack to drain.  Slice after it cools.

Katsu-don
2-4 T soy sauce
1-2 T mirin
1/2 cup dashi
1-2 T sugar
1/2 onion sliced
2 eggs, beaten
1 scallion, thinly sliced
1 sheet seaweed, cut into thin strips

Place soy sauce, mirin, dashi, and sugar in pan.  When mixture comes to a simmer add onions and cook for a couple minutes.  Add slices of pork and cook until pork is heated through.  Add eggs and scallion.  Cook covered for a minute or tow, being careful to keep egg soft.  Place portion of pork/egg mixture over rice.
Serve with strips of seaweed, beni shoga, scallions and togarashi.

Dashi

2 quarts water
5, 6 inch pieces of kombu (kelp)
1 cup tightly packed katsuobushi
Wipe the kombu with a paper towel.  In a large pot, bring water and kombu to almost a boil over medium heat.  Right before the water comes to a boil, remove the kombu and set aside.  Add the katsuobushi all at once.  Wait 10 seconds or until the liquid comes to boil.  Turn off heat, skim off any faom and let mixture stand for 2 minutes.  Strain through a sieve lined with cheese cloth.

All the dishes were delicious, according the the attendees.  I tried them all as well and loved the fresh tuna with the various garnishes, and of course, my all time favorite, katsu-don!

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Italy Trip, Part 3: Visit to the Fish Market, Traditional Balsamic Vinegar, and La Congrega dei Liffi



Pietro Scapinelli



 We set out Friday morning to meet Pietro Scapinelli, director of La Congrega dei Liffi, the cooking school we would be visiting later in the evening.  He wanted to show us the fresh Mediterranean seafood he would be selecting for our dinner. 

Chef Scapinelli has written an important book about how to prepare seafood and is very well known in the area.

 We met at a local food market, Le Querce, early in the morning. We were greeted and shown to a little eating area within the store where a breakfast buffet was awaiting us.  You'll never guess what we were served for breakfast!  I told you we were served cheese and some type of proscuitto or ham every day, even for breakfast and so it was no surprise to see the block of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, platters of proscuitto, Parma ham, and erbazonne.



 We were all still full from our dinner the night before that ended at midnight, so very little breakfast was eaten.  Some of our group members looked a little queasy when we were viewing the vast quantities of fresh seafood, some of it, such as the big piles of octopus, fish that looked more like eels than fish, and squid, was not a sight we see in land locked Texas.  Chef  Scapinelli explained that it was very important to develop a relationship with someone you could trust at the fish market.  His choices for our dinner would be based on the recommendations of  his market contact, not a pre planned menu.  He told us the seafood from the Meditteranean sea has a different flavor from the open sea seafood, the level of saltiness if different, for example.  He also said he prefers to use farm raised fish for sushi or sashimi due to the lack of parasites in farm raised fish.

Chef Scapinelli selected the fish for our 7 course dinner later in the evening.  We would have sea bass, salmon, sardines, and octopus.  Later to come......

We had a break before the evening's events to go on a tour of a traditional balsamic vinegar "factory".  I hesitate to call it a factory because this artisan process is small and personal.  Only 1% of balsamic vinegar is the "Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale" and it is only produced in Reggio Emilia and Modena, Italy.  The process to produce true balsamic involves only 1 ingredient--grapes.  Lambrusco, Trebano, and other grapes are cooked into a grape must.  The must is cooked over a direct fire and it evaporates up to 70%.  The product is then aged in oak barrels for a period of time, up to 12 years.  There are a row of 7 barrels, varying in size, and the vinegar starts in a larger barrel.  Each year most of the vinegar is taken out of the larger barrel and placed into the next size barrel, until the final smallest barrel contains the oldest vinegar.  These barrels are kept in an old hay loft at the seasonal temperature, hot in summer, cold in winter.  The wood in the barrels is also a factor--oak, juniper, chestnut, cherry.  As you can imagine, the finished product is comlex from the grapes, the wood, the aging process, and the weather.  A small bottle of this Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale set me back about $90.00 but it is well worth it.

La Congrega dei Liffi

This school is not a formal educational institution but a personal development, hobby type school.  There is usually a waiting list of 500 or more people to take classes here and it is very expensive.  The opportunity for our group to cook alongside these talented chefs and then share a meal with them was truly a great event.

A preview of the extensive menu for the evening:
Tartare of Sea Bass with Celery Sauce and Gorgonzola
Steamed Salmon with Vegetables in White Sauce
Octopus Salad in Green Sauce with Potatoes Cream and Capers
Sardines with onion
Spaghettoni Risottati with oil, garlic, chili, and clams
Green broccoletti ravioli with grouper and green sauce
Gelato with Cointreau orange sauce
The chefs did not speak English but somehow we were all able to communicate, and we had a Sister Cities representative there to help with translations when needed.
I was assigned the task of helping to prepare sea bass for the first course.  After a demonstration on how to properly clean, scale, and fillet the large sea bass I was given a fish to prepare.  Pressure!  Filleting a fish, a very large fish at that, in front of a bunch of people is not the easiest thing in the world.  I did a fair job and then we had to cut the fish into very small cubes for the tartare.  Steve, who had to dress in chef whites just like everyone else did not expect to do any actual cooking.  At the Motti school he just stood around and observed and no one bothered him, but here he was asked to make a sauce!  Ha, ha, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted Steve at the stove stirring a pot of gorganzola cheese sauce.  He was concentrating very hard.  I told the chef he was not a "chef" and just there with me.  The translator said, "the chef said no one here is a chef, we are all just here for fun--no problem" and they gave him another job to do.  This time he had to cut the raw sea bass into tiny little cubes.  When I met Steve he never even ate raw fish so watching him cut it up for his dinner later was rather funny to me.


Clams for the spaghetti



Making the orange sauce for the gelato



Steve making the gorgonzola sauce



Heather making pasta



First course Steve and I worked on:  Tartare of Sea Base with Celery Sauce and Gorgonzola



Octopus Salad in Green Sauce



Pasta recommended by the chefs--slowly dried



Steamed Salmon with vegetables



Vanilla and chocolate gelato with orange sauce

By the time we sat down to have dinner we were tired!  As you can probably imagine, it was hard to eat all this food.  The wine was freely flowing, the laughter was frequent and we made some new friends.  Chef Kurima wants to start a Fort Worth chapter of the Congrega dei Liffi and I'll definitely be a member.

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