Edible Austin Heirloom Issue

edible

No. 26 Winter 2012

Austin

Celebrating Central Texas food culture, season by season

The Heirloom Issue

Membe r of Ed ib le Commu n ities

速

ENUM OPORET W ARB NO THE

IN

What a difference three days make.

At Blue Baker, our artisan baking process takes three days. It’s a process that requires small batches, traditional techniques and simple, honest ingredients to craft remarkably flavorful bread. Stop by our artisan bakery caf´e for pastries. Sandwiches. Soup. Salads. Stone-oven pizza. And, of course, our made-from-scratch breads. Learn more about artisan baking at bluebaker.com. And while you’re there, download our daily specials calendar.

Open daily 7AM–10PM

10000 Research Blvd.

Free Wi-Fi

bluebaker.com

Delivery and catering for groups large and small: 512.346.BLUE

The responsibility of sustainability.

We believe in using locally sourced ingredients in our Culinary Arts and Pastry Arts Programs.

We provide individualized hands-on instruction with the classic Escoffier foundation, The Farm-to-Table速 Experience, and a focus on sustainability.

Visit our campus and learn more about our professional programs today.

6020-B Dillard Circle Austin, Texas 78752 Ph: 512-451-5743 farm2tableaustin.com / facebook.com/escoffierschool For more information about our graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program, and other important information, please visit www.escoffier.edu/disclosures.

Learn to Cook Online Anytime, Anywhere Join food enthusiasts from around the world.

The Escoffier Online International Culinary Academy makes it possible.

Our 100% online, chef-led culinary training program is self-paced and can be done in the comfort and convenience of your home.

Learn more today by visiting us online at escoffieronline.com or call 224.698.2100.

CONTents heirloom issue 6

Publisher’s Note

10

Notable Mentions

13

Notable Edibles

ommunity Garden of Eatin’, Whip In’s C Namaste Brewing, East Side Garden Exchange, EIEIO’s Organic Farm.

21

Edible Endeavors

Bakery Lorraine.

28

People

Jackie Letelier.

30

Farmers Diary

A barnyard dance at HausBar Farms.

55

Edible Field Cooking

Afield.

60

Edible Filmmaking

Now, Forager.

62

Department of Organic Youth

Mushroom hunter.

64

Embracing Local

The Family Dinner.

76

Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking

Making sauerkraut and sauerruben.

78

Behind the Vines

Don Pullum.

82

La Casita de Buen Sabor

Ponche.

84

Root Causes

This just isn’t your day.

85

Eat Wild

Foraged pemmican.

87

Back of the House

Royers Round Top Cafe.

91

The Directory

98

Art De Terroir

Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight.

Preserving traditions 24 Texas Wendish Heritage Society Handcrafting the perfect noodle.

32 Yes, We Can A short history of preserving food in Texas.

34 S tephanie McClenny Maker of New World confitures.

38 Sweet Memories A confectionery of sought-after family recipes.

45 Get Your Goat The ascension of goat meat on Austin tables.

66 Love in a Corn Husk Filling a void with from-scratch tamales.

70 Tamales y Tradición Welcome to the tamalada.

Cover: Jessica Maher’s Florettas and Spicy Chocolate (page 40),

by Jenna Noel.

Publisher’s Note: Back to the future

W

elcome to The Heirloom Issue. Focusing our winter issue on food culture, tradition and heritage foodways is not new to us. Last winter, for example, we featured a short history of sugar in Texas, a recipe for Southern Hospitality Punch and a story on the origins of the Texas pecan-growing industry in San Saba. The winter months are a good time for preserving the bounty of the late fall and winter harvests, preparing holiday meals in a warm kitchen and remembering things past. There may not be snowflakes on our windowpanes, but we can relax a bit from the grip of drought and summer heat.

Since we have begun giving our seasonal issues a special theme as an extra layer of focus, it just seemed natural to call the winter book The Heirloom Issue.

What is it about pondering our past that gives such comfort? History informs and gives context and meaning to our lives. We learn from past mistakes, creating collective workbooks with outcomes and dividends. We might perfect a family recipe by repetition over one year or across generations, but we don’t let them slip away.

When asking for traditional family recipes for this issue, we found that some recipes are secret and some are shared. Some are passed down across cultures. Jessica Maher’s “Florettas and Spicy Chocolate” recipe, for example, was inspired by rosette irons that were given to her by her Spanish grandmother (who called them florettas) but are used by Jess to make rosette cookies that are Scandinavian in origin. Find them on our cover and in our Confectionery of Sweet Memories cooking section (page 38).

Recipes for the masa used in making traditional holiday tamales are from a family friend and passed down from her bisabuela (great-grandmother) giving us “Masa 1” and “Masa 2” (page 74).

Hip Girl’s columnist Kate Payne assumed that her German heritage would yield a sauerkraut recipe but discovered that even her grandmother had never made it. She resorted to finding the recipe elsewhere (page 76).

A discussion among Wendish noodle makers about adding nutmeg to a traditional Wendish noodle recipe resulted in the conclusion that it must have been a “non-Wendish” relative who stirred that pot (page 24).

Jam-maker extraordinaire Stephanie McClenny perhaps best captures this journey to the past to define our future when she describes herself as “a maker of New World confitures.”

Over the past six years we have refined our signature community fundraiser, Eat Drink Local Week, too. This year we have more restaurants participating, pop-up happy hours, an exciting online Chef Dinner Auction culminating in a special live auction event and a memorable keynote speaker in Raj Patel. Check it out at edibleaustin.com/eatdrinklocalweek and help us raise the most money yet for Sustainable Food Center and Urban Roots while enjoying the best of what local foods have to offer this winter season.

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Publisher Marla Camp

Associate PUBLISHER Jenna Noel

EDITOR Kim Lane

Copy Editor Christine Whalen

Production Assistant Whitney Arostegui

Editorial Assistants Melinda Barsales, Claire Cella, Dena Garcia, Cari Marshall Michelle Moore, Lauren Walz

Advertising Sales Curah Beard, Laurie Cochran, Lis Riley, Janey Rives

Distribution Manager Greg Rose

Contributors Full listing online at edibleaustin.com

Advisory Group Terry Thompson-Anderson, Dorsey Barger, Cathryn Dorsey, Jim Hightower, Toni Tipton-Martin, Mary Sanger, Suzanne Santos, Carol Ann Sayle

CONTACT US Edible Austin 1415 Newning Avenue, Austin, TX 78704 512-441-3971 info@edibleaustin.com edibleaustin.com Edible Austin is published quarterly by Edible Austin L.L.C. All rights reserved. Subscription rate is $35 annually. No part of this publication may be used without written permission of the publisher. ©2012. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us.

photo by Jody Horton

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Pantry Purge | Cooking Lessons | Meal Planning Grocery Store & Farmers Market Tours

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You are what you Eat!

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Start planning your week at EdibleAustin.com December 1–8

Benefitting Urban Roots & Sustainable Food Center Participating Restaurants and Markets ASTI Trattoria Black Star Co-op Buenos Aires Café * Café Josie The Carillon Restaurant Chez Nous Congress Contigo Austin * East Side Pies East Side Showroom * Eastside Cafe El Naranjo FABI+ROSI * FINO Restaurant Patio & Bar * Hillside Farmacy * Home Slice Pizza Hoover’s Cooking Jack Allen’s Kitchen (All Locations) Judges’ Hill Restaurant & Bar Kerbey Lane Cafe (All Locations) La Condesa The Leaning Pear LENOIR MAX’s Wine Dive *

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WINTER 2012

Maxine’s Cafe Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill Noble Pig Olive & June * Olivia Peoples Rx (S. Lamar) Second Bar + Kitchen Snack Bar * Southwest Bistro Swift’s Attic Tacodeli Texas French Bread Thai Fresh Trace Urban, An American Grill * Markets Farmhouse Delivery Greenling in.gredients grocers * Hosting Pop-up Happy Hours Follow @edibleaustin or on Facebook for happy hour info!

EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

Mark your Calendar!

Dec. 1 Urban Farm Bicycle Tour A self-guided tour of Austin’s urban farms and community gardens with farm tours, chef demos and tastings. 9 a.m. $35 for pre-registration, $40 for day-of tickets (children under 12 free)

Dec. 2 An Evening with Raj Patel Best-selling author Raj Patel presents his latest project, Generation Food, at Stateside at the Paramount. With support from Wheatsville Food Co-op. 7 p.m. $28, VIP tickets with pre-event reception $103

Dec. 3 Alamo Benefeast: Sideways Enjoy Sideways with an exquisite 5-course pairing dinner inspired by the film and prepared

by Alamo chefs with pairings by Bill Norris.

South Lamar Location. 7 p.m. $70

Chef Dinner Auction

Bid on a private dinner for eight with one of these amazing chefs!

Shawn Cirkiel

Paul Qui Qui

Second Bar + Kitchen & Congress

Onion Creek Kitchens

Will Packwood

Jesse Griffiths

Mat Clouser

Tim Dornon and Philip Speer

Parkside, Olive & June

La Tavola

Dai Due

David Bull

Swift’s Attic

Sibby Barrett

Uchiko

Online bidding ends December 8 • Last chance to bid at live auction event, Sunday, December 9!

EdibleAustin.com/auction

Sponsors

ThirdCoastActivist.org Third Coast Activist Resource Center

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notable Mentions Sign up your chicken coop for the funky chicken coop tour 2013

sip local Your neighborhood one-stop-shop & coffee bar Wholesale * Retail * Catering * Consulting * Tech Service

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FAIR TRADE * SUSTAINABLE * ORGANIC

2013 Coop Host Applications are ready to go! The deadline to apply to be a Coop Tour Host is January 18.

Each year the Funky Chicken Coop Tour (FCCT) strives to showcase an array of coops that display a variety of construction designs and materials, from recycled to custom-designed coops, and includes everything from production hens to exotic chickens and roosters. FFCT, founded in 2009, is an annual self-guided tour held each spring in Austin by the nonprofit organization the Urban Poultry Association of Texas, Inc., a newly formed 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The purpose of this tour is to encourage city residents to raise chickens at home by demonstrating the many ways that chicken (and other poultry) housing can be incorporated into urban residences without violating city ordinances or creating a nuisance. Many tour hosts demonstrate how to integrate chickens and their manure into household gardening and composting regimens that result in inexpensive, healthy and sustainable food, even in relatively small spaces.

As part of its commitment to local food and community, FCCT will donate a portion of its 2013 proceeds after expenses to Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms and Partners for Education, Agriculture, and Sustainability (PEAS). The 2013 tour date is Saturday, March 30. Find more information about the 2013 tour, application form and general resources for chicken keeping at austincooptour.org

Third ANNUAL ยกTAMALES! FESTIVAL At Pearl ยกTamales! is an all-day celebration of family, food and fun on Saturday, December 1 from noon to 6 p.m.

Guests are invited to explore a full range of tamale styles from traditional San Antonio classics to South American to sweet, vegetarian and more, along with a festival full of the sounds, sights and tastes of the holiday season. Visit atpearl.com/tamales for details, and read about tamale-making traditions in Texas on page 70.

Luminations at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Enjoy the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gardens lit with more than 3,000 luminarias and 5,000 twinkle lights on Saturday and Sunday, December 8 and 9 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The event also features musical acts during both evenings from local performers and area schools. Admission is free with a donation of two canned goods for the Capitol Area Food Bank.

For more information visit wildflower.org/luminations 10

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Bookpeople and Edible Austin Present Afield with Jesse Griffiths and Jody Horton Join us on Friday, December 14 at 7 p.m. for an evening with Austin chef and author Jesse Griffiths and photographer Jody Horton discussing their book Afield: A Chef ’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish.

Enjoy special tastings inspired by the book along with Saint Arnold Brewing Company beverages to accompany a slide show with narrated tales from the fields and streams. Read an interview with Griffiths and an excerpt from Afield with a recipe for Duck Yakitori on page 55.

Luminations at the Wildflower Center Saturday & Sunday December 8 & 9 6 to 9 p.m.

Admission is free with donation to the Capital Area Food Bank

www.wildflower.org

4801 La Crosse Avenue • 512.232.0100

Register now for 2013 TOFGA Conference Registration is open for the annual Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Conference from Thursday, February 7 through Sunday, February 10. This year’s conference will be held at the Hilton Austin Airport. This annual conference is a valuable educational and networking opportunity for new farmers, experienced farmers and people who like to grow their own food, with an exciting lineup of workshops, vendors, a bookshop and more. Visit tofga.org for details and to register.

Now, Forager Film and Feast Experience the debut Austin screening of Now, Forager (2012), a food-lovers film about love and fungi, with a foraged feast prepared by Alamo chefs and a talk-back after the film with co-directors and producers Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin on Wednesday, January 16 at the Alamo Drafthouse / Slaughter. This event is co-presented by Edible Austin and AMOAArthouse to celebrate the exhibition: Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight at The Jones Center (on view through February 24). Special ticket pricing for AMOA-Arthouse members. Read a story about the making of the film by Jason Cortlund on page 60. Ticket information at amoaarthouse.org/programs

SAVE THE DATE: East Austin Urban Farm Tour Four farm tours and a cornucopia of local food and drinks, on Sunday, April 14, 2013. Details and updates at eastaustinurbanfarmtour.com

Boggy Creek Farm

ALL KIDS’ BIKES AREN’T CREATED EQUAL

Market Days: Wednesday and Saturday 9 AM to 1 PM www.boggycreekfarm.com

LEARN MORE

The kids’ bikes at Bicycle Sport Shop are assembled by professionals and inspected for safety three times before leaving the shop.

They are made with quality, serviceable parts and are covered by the best warranties in the industry. Most of all, they are fun to ride because they are designed to be manageable by even the littlest cyclist on the block.

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Farm-direct shopping

edible Communities

2013 Local Heroes VOTE NE ONLI NOW!

LakewayCommonsFarmersMarket.com 12

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ocal Her edible

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Food Shop Farm / Farmer

Communities

Food / Beverage Artisan

FA

F RM / ARMER

Non-profit Organization

ocal Her edible

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VOTE ONLINE AT:

www.ediblecommunities.com/heroes CH

EF

/ R E S TA U R A

Voting Deadline is Friday, December 14, 2012 This year’s winners will be announced in March 2013 at the Edible Communities annual publishers meeting and also in each of our local communities in the spring 2013 issues.

NT

ocal Her edible

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Just click on the link for your community to cast your votes. It’s fast and easy!

Communities

Communities FOO

D SHOP

ocal Her edible

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@ The Corner of 620 and Lakeway Blvd.

Chef / Restaurant

O D A RT I S A N

o

DON'T BUY FOOD FROM STRANGERS! Get to know your local farmers and neighbors.

FO

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Salsa Seafood Tamales Specialty Foods Jewelry Plants Shirts and much more

Communities

o

Fruits Vegetables Eggs Bread Jams Cookies Fresh Meats Honey

ocal Her edible

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Come out and taste the experience!

Simply visit the link shown below to vote for your “Best Of” nominations in the following categories:

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Sunday 9am-1pm

Join us in celebrating the Heroes of your local food communities!

Communities NON

PROFIT

notable Edibles Never Too Old to Grow

S

enior citizens prefer card games indoors; gardening is best suited to the young and physically fit; and older people can’t tolerate the Texas sun. These are some of the unfair assumptions that the City of Austin’s Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Community Gardens Program (SUACG) coordinator, Jake Stewart, tossed aside while helping to launch the Community Garden of Eatin’ pilot program last spring. “I think that one of the lessons learned is: Don’t underestimate the senior population,” he says. “We were pleasantly surprised by how much interest there was and how quickly it caught on.”

Indeed, since the kickoff event, Stewart says that many older adults from the South Austin Senior Activity Center have taken ownership of the program by forming a steering committee, designing their own logo and T-shirts, hosting regular meetings, adding their own gardening beds and even working through the hottest days of the year. “I was most impressed with their toughness and their willingness to dive in,” says Stewart.

The SUACG program, under the umbrella of the Austin Parks and Recreation Department’s initiative Austin Grows, was funded with approximately $10,000 from Health’s Angels, a St. David’s Foundation program, which assists organizations that promote healthy aging and healthy living through physical activity and good nutrition. “It’s really a perfect fit for us,” says Earl Maxwell, CEO of the foundation. “By having older people growing food and working in a garden, not only are they getting that kind of activity, but they’re eating the vegetables. But the main thing is getting people outside and working with something that’s growing.”

Highlights of the program include accessible, raised beds (which require no bending to reach), composting bins and an inside “share basket” through which all members of the center have access to the surplus from the harvested bounty. “It has been neat to see how the sharing extends to people who may not be able to participate personally,” says Stewart.

Maxwell says the foundation is impressed with the success of the project, and he hopes to partner with the City to fund additional garden sites for next spring, as well as to provide volunteers. And Stewart’s office is considering several senior centers and recreation centers located in “food deserts” on Austin’s east side—with an eye toward including youth- and other community-based initiatives.

“The rec centers and senior centers make perfect platforms because many of them also have cooking facilities inside,” Stewart says. “So the next extension of this program is to also engage [participants] in learning culinary skills and fresh vegetable preparation.” He hopes to use the plethora of wisdom held by program participants—including knowledge of heirloom skills like canning and food preservation—to train future garden leaders.

“I think we younger people mistakenly make assumptions about the capacity of this population,” Stewart says. “Some of these folks can go circles around the younger gardeners.”—Nicole Lessin For more information visit austintexas.gov/austingrows

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Brews That Make You Say “Om”

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hen Amrit and Chandan Topiwala opened Whip In as a quaint corner store on the access road of I-35 in 1986, neither of them could have forecast it would evolve into the culinary hot spot and beer nerd’s paradise it is today. Early on, when the Topiwalas realized they weren’t selling much gas, they had their tanks and pumps removed. They knew they were, however, making most of their sales in beer. Following suit, they began to carry the craft beers, like Grolsch and Spaten, that had become so desirable to their customers.

Twenty-seven years later, Whip In has grown into a full-fledged gastropub. While they still retail bottles of hard-to-find imported beer, bartenders now pour 72 different brews on tap.

And just this summer, Whip In took things to the next level and began brewing their own craft beer in-house.

“Ever since [we opened], the attraction of beer was our mainstay here,” explains Dipak Topiwala, Amrit and Chandan’s son and Whip In’s general manager. “I think it still is. And the idea that we can actually make beer is like an homage to the idea of beer being our god, almost. The things that keep people happy and satisfied.”

Kevin Sykes was a regular customer who started to bring in two to three batches of his own home brew each week to share with the staff.

They were so impressed that they brought him on as the head brewer of the newly coined Namaste Brewing. Sykes and the three-member “brew crew” have done a lot of experimenting since the summer, and will have three consistent house brews on tap by winter (plus seasonal special releases).

The Austoner-Weiss is a low-gravity tart wheat beer that changes with the seasons. “It’s the same base beer but it’s not always the same fruit,” explains Sykes. “We’re trying to use whatever’s local, whatever’s in season, to keep it different every time.” In the fall, notes of pears from Engel Farms highlighted the brew, while Hill Country peaches were dominant in the summer.

The Brahmale is a deceivingly 9.5 percent alcohol by volume “postcolonial” India pale ale, dry hopped and enhanced with organic

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grapefruit peel from the Valley, lemongrass and Good Flow honey. “Originally, we were pairing with the food,” says brew-crew member Arjit Mahapatra. “Because it’s hoppy, Brahmale goes great with the beef and beer chili or anything on the menu that’s spicy.” The Shivastout is made from bourbon-soaked dates, oatmeal and Good Flow honey, and they’re currently fermenting a chai porter with cacao nibs. A Belgian tripel made with rye and rose hips, dubbed Vishnavitripale, will be ready for release by spring.

Sustainability is part of the brewing focus.

Whenever possible, the kitchen salvages grains used in brewing by putting them into housemade muffaletta bread, or incorporates fruit used in brewing in a special dessert. The remainder of the used grains help feed the goats at Windy Hill Farm (brew-crew member Ty Wolosin’s family’s farm), and all other organic kitchen scraps are sent to local compost producer Break it Down.

Right now, the crew is turning out between three and six 10-gallon batches each week, with special releases typically running out the same day they are tapped. In the next year, Dipak hopes to purchase more tanks so that they can brew 120 gallons at a time. “We’re truly in the infancy stage of a brewpub. We’re literally getting our feet wet,” Dipak says with a pause. “Well, not anymore, actually…. We all have boots on now…[but we’re] figuring out how to do what we do on a small scale and then hopefully, within the next year or so, we’ll acquire another brewing system where we make more beer. But the ultimate dream is to be able to produce a lot of beer and have a lot of people smile over it.” —Veronica Meewes Whip In 1950 S. I-35 512-442-5337 whipin.com

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Tooling Around

Photography by Nicole Lessin

I

t was logical that the Holly Neighborhood Coalition would ask a team of public interest design graduate students at the University of Texas for a mobile toolshed. Providing money-saving home repairs to fellow homeowners in danger of being priced out of their neighborhood had become the focus of the coalition’s latest initiative—Holly Neighbors Helping Neighbors (HNHN)—and the students needed a volunteer community project as part of their intensive course of study.

Yet when the students canvassed the area, many longtime Holly residents revealed a different aspiration. “There was a lot of interest in gardening—especially among older residents who couldn’t necessarily do it all themselves,” says Teri Sperry, an active member of the coalition. “[They] remembered in the past having really enjoyed growing their own food and wanting to be able to do that—in part to offset some of their food bills—but needed a helping hand.” Last summer, that helping hand came in the form of an eye-catching mobile toolshed just for gardening, which sits most days at the East Side Food Park on East Cesar Chavez.

The four-by-eight-foot unit has become an integral part of the East Side Garden Exchange—a community-led effort to create a network of plantings around the neighborhood. The trailer features an iconic butterfly roof that shades a tiny seating area and diverts water to a planter filled with succulents. Inside, there are storage compartments filled with dozens of gardening tools that individuals can check out, as well as hundreds of free seed varieties for a community exchange. “We just feel really fortunate to have it and love showing it off,” says Sperry, who coordinates the tool-lending library.

Getting the project off the ground required a multi-week effort by the students that included soliciting donations from area businesses, design work and construction. Still, Sperry encourages admirers from all over Austin to try their own versions of the toolshed. “You don’t have to have grad students working on it,” she says. “Get inspired. Look at ours. Think about what your needs are, and maybe do it a little differently.”

Since last summer, volunteers have used the shed to help install seven gardens around the neighborhood. At a volunteer workday in

Teri Sperry and Elizabeth Walsh with the East Side Garden Exchange mobile toolshed

September, neighbors helped install a garden filled with broccoli, chard and other greens in the front yard of HNHN cofounder Elizabeth Walsh, who recently picked some of the bounty. “It’s really fun to have people over and to share from the garden itself,” she says.

“I’ve harvested a bunch of lettuce and had a bunch of peppers from Teri’s yard and shared it with my next-door neighbor.”

Walsh says the garden was planted in conjunction with an HNHN event through which another neighbor received much-needed home repairs. “I needed help building a garden; I’ve never built one on my own,” she says. “And my neighbor needed insulation. So we came together, learned new things, helped each other out and we all get to build a neighborhood we love together.”

Organizers say this type of modern-day barn raising has increased trust and fostered a new sense of community among diverse groups. “I think it has been especially good for bringing together all the different generations,” says Sperry. “We have people who are retirees helping, we have little kids helping and everything in between. It’s really great to find out we have things in common, and we have ways to help each other—no matter what our age.” —Nicole Lessin

“The Ultimate Nursery for Herbs” Austin Chronicle

- www.g reenmangorealestate.com 16

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Culinary herbs for chefs— and fruit trees, veggies and native plants for gardeners

Sign up for free gardeners tips newsletter at

itsaboutthyme.com

512-280-1192

11726 Manchaca

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DISCOVER BASTROPTX For The Holidays Works by over 50 artists and artisans.

Candy & Gift Wonderland

Santa will be here for pictures Dec 18 - 22 6:30 to 8pm

Open 7 days a week Mon- Sat 10 -9 Sunday 12 - 5 114 Loop 150, Bastrop TX 78602 512-321-3777 WWW.sugarshackbastrop.com

Lost Pines Art Bazaar 603 Chestnut Bastrop, Texas 78602 512.985.6403 lostpinesartbazaar.com

Experience World Culture..With a Twist

Featuring fine art bronzes from Deep in the Heart Art Foundry www.deepintheheart.net

Lost Pines Christmas

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Historic Bastrop, TX

Thursday December 6th Downtown 6 to 9 Ticket Price $20

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Purchase Online at localwineevents.com

The variety of unique, one-of-a-kind gifts is endless!

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Bastrop Opera House

"See It. Experience It. Remember It."

Holiday Shows Opening Soon For Showtimes

Bastropoperahouse.com or call 512.321.6283

Bastrop 1832 Farmers Market

1302 Chestnut St. Bastrop, TX Open Year Round Visit us soon & discover a wide variety of fresh, locally grown vegetables & fruits, grass-fed beef, eggs, local honey, herbs & plants, prepared foods, baked goods, breads, & artisan wares: jewelry, paintings, pottery, soaps, candles, metal arts, more.

$2 OFF YOUR PURCHASE WITH THIS AD! www.bastrop1832farmersmarket.org Market Hours: Tuesday: 2-6 & Saturday: 10-2

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VisitBastrop.com or call the Bastrop Visitor Center at 512-303-0904

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And on That Farm…

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• Grassfed Angus beef • Pecan granola (including gluten-free) • Seasonal, chemical-free produce and nuts

indianhillsfarmtx.com SFC Downtown and Sunset Valley Farmers’ Markets • 512-237-4792

The Leaning Pear Cafe` & Eatery Serving the Texas Hill Country Fresh &

Seasonal Favorites Using Local Ingredients

leaningpear.com Wednesday to Monday ~ 11:00 am-3:00 pm Friday and Saturday ~ 11:00 am-8:00 pm

111 RiveR Road • WimbeRley, Texas • 512-847-PeaR

Richardson Farms Grass Fed Beef, Pastured Pork, Poultry, & Eggs

www.richardsonfarms.com

512-446-2306

home/garden

jrdvm72@aol.com

h e a lt h / b e a u t y

ind EIEIO’s garlic mayo and cilantroF pecan pesto at Brookshire Brothers and Hill Country Natural Foods in Wimberley, and at Wheatsville Food Co-op and Whole Foods Market in Austin. Or sample the goods and meet Kathleen in person at the farmers markets in Wimberley and Austin. For more information, visit eieiotx.com

Enjoy our wholesome farm products!

food

ast July, in the middle of the worst drought Texas had seen in a hundred years, Kathleen Mooney of Wimberley’s EIEIO’s Organic Farm was out amid her struggling crops. “I just sat down between some thirsty-looking eggplants and started crying,” she recalls. “I asked God to help me figure out some kind of revenue that would not be weather-related. It really sounds like a bad countrywestern song,” she says with a laugh, “but I had half-dead crops in the field and a young son to feed, a mortgage, blah, blah, twang.”

Suddenly, Mooney had an epiphany: make and sell mayonnaise from her chicken eggs—something that she had in abundance!

Mooney had already had success creating her first retail product six months earlier, using cilantro and pecans from the farm. She’d been selling the pecans at farmers markets in Wimberley and New Braunfels when customers started requesting them shelled. “At the time, there was cilantro growing everywhere—in between huge broccolis, in between rows—everywhere! I was selling that for two dollars a bundle at markets, but there was such a ridiculous amount that I just thought, Why not try makin’ pesto? Then all the shelling might be worth it.”

Earthy and lighter than pine nut-heavy pesto, EIEIO’s cilantropecan pesto became an immediate hit. “Vegan folks really like it, as do kids, on their pesto pizzas,” says Mooney. “The Pilates-gal crowd out here in Wimberley loves it as a dip with crudités and vino.” Mooney says customers are constantly telling her about their newest way to spread it: layered in lasagna or quesadillas, tossed with pasta and shrimp, drizzled in fish tacos or migas. Now, EIEIO’s new creamy garlic mayonnaise has joined the product line. Also a versatile product, it can double as an Alfredo sauce or be blended with the pesto to create a dip for sweet potato fries. “Some cool musicians out here say it makes damn near award-winning potato salad and deviled eggs. And a guy at Wheatsville likes to sauté vegetables with it and then pour it over brown rice.”

True to EIEIO’s organic, family-farm roots, their products are made from pure, fresh ingredients, so that what you see is what you get. “After I started selling the mayo along with the pesto at markets, I started ingredient-spying on new mayonnaises at specialty shops,” says Mooney. “They [all] had some kind of preservative, and no one seemed to be doing truly garlic mayo then, either.”

Future products Mooney would like to produce include cucumber and beet relishes, peach-ginger marmalades and nutmeg-pear preserves. She looks forward to compiling her collection of recipes into a cookbook someday—when she finds time between the field, her commercial kitchen and running the ever-growing CSA program at EIEIO’s. —Veronica Meewes

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T H E B E S T WAY TO C A P T U R E the flavor of the Hill Country? Use ingredients from

T H E H I L L C O U N T R Y.

Overlooking the 18th greens of the two TPC golf courses, 18 Oaks Restaurant at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country is a casual fine dining experience showcasing prime cuts and traditional steakhouse fare. With a wide variety of our meats, cheeses and produce sourced from local ranchers and farmers, the flavors you’ll taste here are like nothing else on earth. Call for reservations today.

866.882.4420 jwsanantonio.com

Edible Endeavors

Bakery Lorraine

Photography by Marks Moore Photography

b y Sha r on A r m s t r on g

O

n an early September morning in San Antonio, the rain comes down in sheets. It streams down gutters and bounces off the line of umbrellas stretching down the sidewalk as pastry fans wait patiently to celebrate the grand opening of Bakery Lorraine’s new permanent location. When the door finally opens, customers are instantly surrounded by a whirl of conversation and throngs of color, the inviting fragrances of rich chocolate, lavender, sugar and coffee and that rarest and most beautiful buzz of all: imminent satisfaction.

Chefs Anne Ng and Jeremy Mandrell stand in their spanking-new kitchen looking a little tired, a little bemused and a lot happy. “We are just blown away by this,” says Ng, as she peeks out at the crowd.

“It’s unbelievable.”

Partners in every sense of the word, the couple met and fell in love while working as overnight bakers at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in Napa Valley. “We both consider Bouchon our real educa-

tion,” Mandrell says with a smile. “Seriously, you worked ten hours straight, no break, and you still didn’t get done with what you were supposed to do. I had a total meltdown. I was like, ‘I wasted all this money on culinary school and what will I do?’”

The intense, long hours finally took their toll on the duo, and finding themselves “pretty much burned out on baking,” they decided to try something else when a job opening with the Internet company Rackspace drew them eastward to San Antonio. Working in a field other than the culinary one was not new ground for Ng, who had, prior to Bouchon, worked as a biochemist for Fresh & Easy, a national grocery chain, using natural additives like oregano to preserve food. “That was what I went to college for,” she says. “I thought that I would be able to satisfy my love of food and science by taking a job like that, but it wasn’t my niche. There was no soul in a job like that; it’s not a craft.”

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Uptown Blanco Restaurant It’s in the middle of everywhere.

Whether you live in Austin, San Antonio or just a short drive away in the Hill Country you’ll enjoy our daily specials, expertly prepared using many of the local ingredients grown and produced throughout south Texas.

On the Town Square in Blanco 317 Main Street 830 833-1579

-

-

Blanco, Texas

www.UptownBlanco.com

“With Dos Lunas cheeses, you get a strong taste of the milk and what the cows have been eating.

A great balance of good herbs and grasses.”

Ask for Dos Lunas Artisan cheeses at your favorite markets, restaurants or order online.

doslunascheese.com • 512-963-5357 22

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Photo by Alice Rabbit

—Chef Mat Clouser, Swift’s Attic

FSM.Edible Austin.SayAdios_12-12_Layout 1 11/4/12 7:29 PM Page 1

Prior to college, Ng’s upbringing included a lot of travel through Asia with her Chinese parents. “That exposure definitely opens your eyes to new things,” she says. “Pastries that you wouldn’t find in the West—a lot are made with savory elements like salted duck eggs or salty cheese, and ginger and lemongrass.”

Mandrell grew up in a military family, which meant that he moved around a lot, but that army-brat upbringing also exposed him to a wide array of different culinary customs. “One of my morning duties in Germany was to go and get bread for breakfast every day,” he says.

The couple’s formal culinary training took place in different countries, as well. Ng attended The International School for Culinary Arts and Hotel Management in the Philippines, while Mandrell studied at the Art Institute of California–San Diego. It was during these years that both say their eclectic tastes collided with, and benefitted from, education in classical French cuisine, particularly pastry making.

Newly settled in San Antonio, the baking bug bit them anew.

Over the past year, they’ve become a weekly fixture at the Quarry Farmers & Ranchers Market, where their goods have garnered a deluge of praise and loyal customers. After flirting with the idea of a pop-up bakery as an affordable expansion, they teamed up with friend and current business partner Charlie Beidenharn to look for a suitable permanent location to host their art. They eventually found one in a derelict residential building. “The last owner passed away, and [the building] was really rough when we first saw it,” remembers Mandrell. “We actually turned it down a couple of times, it was so bad. It was just a sad little home, but not anymore.”

The line of smiling faces going in and out of the door seems to agree.

“I think that there is more of a consciousness now,” explains Ng. “People are starting to realize that…I don’t just have to take what you give me…you know? I want something better than this, and I can get something better than this. And this just helps elevate the awareness all around; it’s a domino effect. People are more demanding now; they want to know where their food comes from and who is making it for them.”

“Our eggs come from Parker Creek Ranch,” Mandrell notes as an example. “I made a coconut cream pie when we first started using their eggs, and it was yellow…and the richness! People are so used to this pale yellow that you get from store-bought eggs.”

The selection of goods at Bakery Lorraine changes depending on seasonal availability and what Ng describes as a certain whimsy. Currently, customers are clamoring for pain au chocolate, sweet and savory tarts, a variety of rich cookies and astonishingly ethereal macarons, among other things. Future plans include bread and to-go sandwiches.

“To bring out the flavor and the beauty of the ingredients…I think of our jobs as that,” says Ng. “We have to stay engaged and mentally stimulated; otherwise you fall into that daily grind and that is how you get stale. Isn’t that just what a baker would say?”

Bakery Lorraine 511 E. Grayson St., San Antonio 210-862-5582 bakerylorraine.com Tues.–Fri. 6:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m.

Sat. 8 a.m.–4 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

We make the Pottery...

Nature Provides the harvest...

You Create the Feast!

512-894-0938

4002 E. Hwy. 290, Dripping Springs, TX 78620

SunsetCanyonPottery.com EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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Preserving traditions through noodles

Texas Wendish Heritage Society b y K r i s t i W I l l i s • p h o t o g r a p h y b y Pa u l i n e S t e v e n s

From left: Zelda Richards, Hattie Schautschick and Carolyn Bamsch

E

arly on Monday and Wednesday mornings, in the converted century-old schoolhouse at the Texas Wendish Heritage Society, three women cheerfully toil away in the kitchen making batch after batch of the delicate, yellow egg noodles that are a cornerstone of their food culture. The Wends are a Slavic sect from Lusatia, now part of eastern Germany, who immigrated to Central Texas 24

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in 1854 to escape persecution by the Prussians. The settlers formed a community near Giddings where they could speak their own language and practice their Lutheran faith. It’s the work of the society to preserve Wendish culture through a museum and programs funded, in part, by the sale of those distinctive handcrafted noodles (over 7,000 pounds of noodles were sold in 2011).

Hattie Schautschick, the lead on this team, started making noodles with the Heritage Society in 1992, and has been eating the noodles her entire life. “We always made noodles growing up and always had noodles on Sunday…fried chicken and noodles,” Schautschick remembers. “My mother hung the noodles over her quilting frame to dry them, and then she would have us all help cut. We had to cut, because that is how you learned.”

In the society’s kitchen, Schautschick relies on a pasta machine to help produce the 200 pounds of noodles they make each week. She carefully feeds the dough made of flour, eggs and a touch of salt into the pasta machine, then snips each strand by hand as the machine extrudes the thin noodles. Zelda Richards, Schautschick’s daughter, and Carolyn Bamsch lay the cut noodles on a frame, then gingerly place the frames in a converted baker’s rack to dry for two days—being careful to leave space between the frames so that the noodles can breathe.

The noodle makers have the process down to a well-timed waltz— whirling from the drying racks to cracking eggs before the dough runs out. “We are so in sync that we are ready to go before the next person is ready,” says Bamsch. The work is tiring, but was recently made easier by the purchase of the new pasta machine. “I finally have a sittingdown job!” says Schautschick. “When we used the old machine, I was up and down and was always worried I’d fall backward. With the new machine, I can sit in a chair to cut the noodles and it fits perfectly.”

On Wednesdays, the noodle makers return to weigh and package the noodles into one-pound bags that are sold at the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum and several small groceries and bakeries in the towns surrounding Giddings. The noodles also appear on the menu at area benefits like the volunteer fire department barbecue, the St. Paul Lutheran Church picnic in Serbin, the annual Texas Wendish Fest and as part of a traditional Wendish meal served to tour groups at the museum.

On this day, a congregation member from Redeemer Lutheran Church in Austin arrives to pick up noodles for a celebration for their pastor. She asks for advice on how to cook the noodles noting, “My husband will be sad if I mess up his noodles.”

Schautschick explains her favorite preparation: “You have to get the water or broth to a rolling boil, add a stick of butter then put your noodles in and let them cook for three to four minutes. Cut the burner off, put foil over it, put the lid on there and forget about it.

…the finished noodles should be tender and moist—having soaked up the broth and butter in the pot.

The short, string-size noodles don’t fall apart in liquid, which make them easy to cook and ideal for soups.

If you don’t take the lid off, they stay nice.”

“Don’t use Knorr’s bouillon; it doesn’t dissolve,” adds Richards. “If you don’t have stock, use base. Just remember: bring the water to a rolling boil, then add the butter, then add the base.”

According to these noodle experts, the finished noodles should be tender and moist—having soaked up the broth and butter in the pot.

The short, string-size noodles don’t fall apart in liquid, which make them easy to cook and ideal for soups.

As the noodle-making trio discusses preparation techniques, a lively debate erupts about the proper garnish for the noodles. Schautschick uses fresh parsley—but only fresh, not dried. Jan Slack, the museum director, says that her family puts nutmeg on their noodles—drawing perplexed looks from the other women. “I’ve never made the noodles with nutmeg and neither did my mom or grandmother,” Schautschick gently notes. Slack politely acquiesces that it was probably a nonWendish relative who added the spice.

The intense pride in the room is almost palpable. “When my grandchildren come to the house, all they want is noodles,” says Bamsch.

“When our granddaughter was little,” adds Slack, “she loved the noodles so much that she ate them with a spoon…then ate them off of her shirt…then lifted her shirt and ate them off of her belly.”

Raucous laughter fills the air as the noodle makers slowly drift back to work.

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GIFT CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE

Traditional Wendish Noodles Courtesy of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society 5 c. broth (chicken or beef) or water 1 stick butter ½ lb. Wendish noodles Chopped parsley, to garnish (optional)

Bring the broth or water to a rolling boil, add the butter and then the noodles. Cook for 10 minutes. Add chopped parsley, if using, and serve.

(Alternatively, cook the noodles for 3 to 4 minutes, turn off the heat, cover with foil and a lid and let sit for several minutes before serving.)

Where to Find Texas Wendish Heritage Society noodles B&W Food Market 1079 E. Austin St. Giddings 979-542-3544

Texas One Stop 1704 E. State Hwy 71 Bypass La Grange 979-968-8100

Lukas Bakery 135 N. Main St. La Grange 979-968-3052

Texas Wendish Heritage Museum 1011 CR 212 Giddings 979-366-2441

Oakridge Smokehouse 712 U.S. Hwy 77 Schulenburg 979-743-3372

Weikel’s Bakery 2247 W. State Hwy 71 Bypass La Grange order online at weikels.com 979-968-9413

Rebas in Giddings 208 E. Austin St. Giddings 979-542-4700

Winchester Depot 211 W. Front St La Grange 979-242-3354

Start Your New Year with Some Fun at the

2013 Uptown Swirl in Downtown Brenham JanUary 19 s 3pm-7pm s $25.

Purchase online at BrenhamUptownSwirl.com or in person at various Downtown locations

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“It was life-changing to go from living in Texas and shopping at H-E-B to living on a farm and having cows, fruit orchards, chickens, fresh cheeses and all these seasonal ingredients.”

—Jackie Letelier

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People

Jackie Letelier b y L ay n e Ly n c h • P h o t o g r a p h y b y M a r c B r o w n

O

ver the years, pâté has become one of the world’s most revered delicatessen; the crowning glory on warm slices of fresh-baked bread, toasted disks of crusty bruschetta and delicate crisps of multigrain crackers. Oftentimes, the cooks and chefs who prepare this silky, smooth liver spread must endure numerous trials and errors before perfecting the trademark texture and balance of pâté.

There are the rare few, however, who just seem to have a knack for quickly getting it right.

Jackie Letelier, owner of the Letelier Food Company, is one of these deft few, although her first attempt at preparing the spread from a Joy of Cooking recipe during her teenage years is a memory she’d probably like to forget. “I remember slicing into it and seeing blood flow out from the middle,” Letelier confesses. “It turned out to be a disaster.”

Until the age of 13, Letelier lived in McAllen, but when her father decided to move the family back to his childhood farmhouse in Aculeo, Chile—40 miles south of Santiago—Letelier’s Texas life was uprooted to South America. The move to a foreign land didn’t sit well with her at first, but over time, her angst faded and she grew fond of the Chilean countryside—particularly the country’s native foods and wines. “It was life-changing to go from living in Texas and shopping at H-E-B to living on a farm and having cows, fruit orchards, chickens, fresh cheeses and all these seasonal ingredients,” Letelier says. “After I got to Chile, I started to realize how much I loved food.”

Years later, while visiting her aunt in Brazil, Letelier was perusing a charcuterie shop when she stumbled upon a delicious-looking locally made pâté. She brought it back home to share with her aunt, but Letelier was in for a huge surprise. “I remember [my aunt] looking at it saying, ‘That’s my pâté,’” she says. It turns out Letelier’s aunt had been using a long-standing family recipe to prepare the spreads for local shops. “It’s funny,” says Letelier, “because I had no idea she even sold them.” That summer, Letelier was able to refine her pâté-making skills into an artful science. “My aunt taught me how to prepare my great-grandmother’s pâté and I just kept making it,” she says.

Through years of living on her bountiful family land and eating feasts of roasted lamb, whole hogs, beef empanadas, bean stews, blood sausages, homemade preserves and cured meats, and drinking Chilean wines, Letelier cultivated an affinity for cooking and entertaining. It was during a semester abroad at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) that she decided to follow her passion and attend the Culinary Academy of Austin (now the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts). “I felt at home almost

immediately,” she says. “At the time, it seemed like Austin had such a creative culture and a lot of potential in the food world.”

After finishing culinary school, Letelier returned to Chile, managed a catering business, studied enology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and eventually returned to Texas—fully intending to found a gourmet Chilean wine club. The wine-delivery business failed to succeed, however. “I was upset it didn’t work,” she says, “but I honestly believe it was for the best. I needed to take a break and figure out what I wanted to do.”

For a few years, Letelier worked as the head of sales at her father’s South Texas newspaper—El Periódico USA—before finally making her return to the cooking world two years ago. Initially, Letelier was resistant to diving back into the hospitality business, but this time around she felt like she would be filling a niche in the Austin culinary scene.

“I thought it was a good time to start selling the pâtés I had been making for friends and family for years,” she says. “At first, I was worried [that] getting the right ingredients would be a problem, but it absolutely wasn’t. I formed relationships with farmers and ranchers, and it’s been great to support them and feature their amazing products.” Some of the fresh ingredients she incorporates into her spreads are Dewberry Hills Farms’ chicken livers, Good Flow Honey wildflower honey, Johnson’s Backyard Garden onions and Garza Gardens fresh herbs.

Letelier’s eclectic, Texas-centric pâtés are unlike any most customers have ever tasted before. She ventures well beyond the typical goose liver and, instead, features smoked salmon, mushroom, white bean, bison heart, pork liver and duck liver. “I’ve tweaked [the recipes] a bit and added different local ingredients like honey and lavender to adapt to the Hill Country,” she says.

Pâté is only the beginning of Letelier’s culinary endeavors, though. Eventually, she’d like to go into cheesemaking and open a boutique hotel with a charcuterie and cheese bar that would also sell her trademark pâtés. “Austin is the perfect place for entrepreneurs, and there is so much room for growth. It’s been great to be in the midst of all this excitement.” ind Pâté Letelier at Henri’s Cheese and Wine, Aviary Lounge, Fresh F Plus Grocery, Hillside Farmacy and Coterie Market, and at the SFC Farmers’ Markets (Downtown and Sunset Valley), HOPE Farmers Market, Cedar Park Farmers Market and Mueller Farmers Market. For more information, visit pateletelier.com

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Farmers Diary

A Barnyard Dance b y D o r s e y B a r g e r • P h o t o g r a p h y b y J o d y H o rt o n

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ife on HausBar Farms in East Austin is a marvelous, circular dance between vegetables and animals; a whirling waltz of eating and pooping, fertilizing, regrowing and eating some more. My partner, Susan, and I invited many of our animals to this barn dance because of our decision not to use gas-powered equipment on the farm.

Sure, we could dig the 51 beds of vegetables using just pitchforks and shovels, but there was no way that I nor my helpers were going to be pushing around a push mower for the rest of the two acres to beat down grass and weeds. Nor were we going to spray the poison ivy that grew up our trees like kudzu with Roundup or any other foul chemical.

“Get you some goats,” our friend Stephanie Scherzer of Rain Lily Farm said. “They’ll eat your poison ivy in no time.”

So we got a couple of goats (Jaq and Mamma G), then a miniature donkey (Julian), then another one (Rose), who do the work for us. Graze. Poop. Repeat. They joined the couple-hundred laying hens we already had scratching up the dirt to eat bugs and chase flying insects. The hens help control garden pests (there are no crop-killing grasshoppers on our property), lay goldenyolked eggs and leave tons of one of our farm’s greatest assets: chicken poop. The donkeys and goats self-distribute manure around the farm as they bend to their mowing duties, fertilizing as they munch. But hens, which sleep on perches in a henhouse at night, provide us with conveniently located, easily shoveled, nitrogen-rich, compost-igniting organic gold. With the addition of leaves from our enormous pecan trees, a sprinkling of water from our well and a couple of good tossings with a pitchfork for aeration, in a couple of months we have what has become the only thing we add to our garden beds: HausBar ChickenPoop Compost.

We have rabbits that poop a lot, too. Rabbit droppings are said to be the only manure that can be applied directly to vegetable crops without burning tender vegetation. We wouldn’t know. Since our rabbits are free ranging, we don’t have a way to efficiently collect their poop, so their little, brown, pea-shaped droppings just stay where they are laid and slowly release their goodness back into our pastures.

Our ducks and geese squirt out a bunch of poop throughout the day. They might be the only animals I know of that actually look cute as 30

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they poop. They waddle and poop, waddle and poop. It’s absolutely adorable!

And soon we’ll be in the fish-poop business, too. Behind the yellow farmhouse that we’ve just constructed to be our forever home, we’re building a natural swimming pool. The pool water—chemical-free rainwater from our 30,000-gallon cistern—will cool us off in the sweltering heat of summer and then be pumped to a pond where we’ll raise fish.

Nutrient-rich (read: poop-laden) water from the fishpond will then be gravity fed to a series of hydroponic lettuce tanks. Lettuces thrive on this natural food source and clean and filter the water as they grow. Sparkling clean water will then flow back into the pool in a circular dance of water nymphs.

We have a far less beautiful dance (if it can be called a dance at all) going on in our mosh pit of a meat composter. The few animal entrails that we can’t eat or sell after we slaughter chickens or rabbits go into a large plastic tub inhabited by meat-eating black soldier flies and all manner of beetles. The hardworking insect larvae grow as they devour our leftovers, and when nature tells them it’s time to go on to the next phase of life (or when they simply become overcrowded), they crawl up a plastic channel, jump down a tube and become a protein snack for our chickens—some of which hang out all day waiting.

Red wiggler worms lend us a hand with daily chores as household food scraps are deposited into a cinder-block vault that’s home to these worm casting-spewing, blind, slimy workhorses. Their excrement is cherished not only for its ability to enrich soil by providing readily available nutrients to plants, but also for its role in retaining soil moisture.

And there’s always a party going on at the garden fence. Whenever farm helpers Samuel and Lola and I harvest or prepare a bed for planting, we throw unusable greens, plant stems and any bug-eaten vegetables over the mesh to the crowd that always gathers. Donkeys jockey for the juiciest morsels, chickens try to avoid the flying hooves and the geese and ducks give honks of thanks. There’s never a need to clean up crop residue or even throw it on the compost pile. The compost process begins all over again, inside the churning crops and stomachs of our beloved animals.

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preserving traditions

yes, we can F

or thousands of years, humankind has preserved foods. Via dehydration, heating, cooling, freezing, fermenting, smoking, pickling and preserving with salt or sugar, people around the world figured out how to make foods last from summer growing seasons through lean winters, from bountiful harvest years through years of drought, want and war.

And along the way, we’ve come to appreciate the varieties and transformations of flavor, texture and aroma that food preservation creates.

Preservation by canning is a rather late development. Things really got started in 1795 when the French government offered a prize for improved methods of preserving food. Nicolas Appert developed a system of boiling and sealing food in containers with no air—allowing food to be stored at room temperature without spoiling. His seals were wired-on cork stoppers.

A succession of developments followed, like tedious tin canning and glass jars with lids sealed with wax. In 1858, John L. Mason in New Jersey patented a reusable glass jar with a threaded zinc lid and a rubber gasket to seal out air—the mason jar. This inexpensive and relatively foolproof invention made putting up produce accessible and practical for home canners.

In 1882, Henry Putnam of Vermont filed a patent that married the all-glass construction of wax-sealed containers with the gasket seal of mason jars. Called “lightning jars,” Putnam’s invention used simple wire closures and kept food from touching metal. Brothers Frank C. and Edmund B. Ball launched their fruit-jar empire in 1880, and Alexander Kerr, in addition to manufacturing the first wide-mouth jars in 1903, also invented the two-part lid in 1915, which remains the style most widely used today.

In the first half of the 20th century, there were long-standing, concentrated efforts by both federal and state governments to encourage 32

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women—especially women in rural areas—to can and preserve at home and collectively in community canning kitchens.

The United States Cooperative Extension began working in Texas in 1903, with farmers’ institutes and boys clubs. This evolved into the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, primarily an educational institution intended to increase agricultural productivity. Each county extension agent’s job was to provide practical and scientific information to farming families and teach them to use it.

In 1912, Edna Trigg became the state’s first woman extension agent. In rural Milam County, she organized girls aged 10 to 18 into what were known as “tomato clubs.” Each girl cultivated one-tenth of an acre of tomatoes, sold part of her harvest and canned the rest. Agent Trigg traveled the county by horse and buggy teaching canning methods and other homemaking skills to the girls clubs.

This pilot program proved so popular and effective that more women were appointed county agents across the state, and by 1917, it wasn’t just for girls anymore. Extension agents expanded their services and performed home demonstrations for farmwives on all aspects of domestic economy, including food preservation, nutrition and sanitation.

In 1915, the Texas Agricultural Extension Service introduced the concept of community canning centers, which enabled farm women to share facilities for efficient and cost-effective food preservation for their families and for a source of income. Under the leadership of extension agent Mary Evelyn Hunter, isolated rural communities built 267 home canning centers over the next 10 years.

Agent Hunter, in her Steps in Canning program, explained that most farm families had access to fresh garden produce only four months a year, leaving 240 days without vegetables. She encouraged each family to “put up 240 cans of vegetables, so they would have at

Reproduction of painting by Bail Franck courtesy of Library of Congress. Copyright by Brony & Co.

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least one can for each day of the year not supplied by the garden.”

During World War I, preserving produce (along with planting victory gardens) was a way that both rural and urban women could contribute to the war effort. In Austin, a community canning center was set up at the University Methodist Church on Guadalupe Street.

According to a 1918 newsletter from the Housewives’ League, the canning station had a gas stove and two steam canners, and local women organized to put up surplus fruit and vegetables. The newsletter proclaimed, “If anything goes to waste in Austin this year, it will NOT be the fault of the Housewives’ League.”

Community canning efforts in Texas continued through the Great Depression and World War II, when high food prices and rationing encouraged renewed interest in victory gardens and putting up produce. Preserving food at home reached an all-time high in the 1940s, but diminished after the war as commercially processed food became cheap and readily available, home refrigeration proliferated and more women entered the workforce. Two decades later, though, as part of the back-to-the-land movement of the ’60s and ’70s, there was a resurgence in gardening, healthy eating and home food preservation.

Following the economic excesses and rampant consumerism of the ’80s and ’90s, the wheel has turned again, the zeitgeist is right and home food preservation is enjoying another renaissance. As part of a larger interest in mindful eating, local sourcing, pride of accomplishment and looking after ourselves, people are again practicing the craft of making preserves and putting up food. We may call it artisanal this time around, but it’s good to remember that it’s really the latest manifestation of a long and honorable tradition.

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People

Stephanie McClenny b y M M Pa c k • P h o t o g r a p h y b y A n d y S a m s

W

earing one of her quirky signature aprons, Stephanie McClenny closely monitors the enormous pot of gently bubbling fruit in the corner of a busy commercial kitchen. This is, as McClenny refers to it, “the jam factory”—the sweet aromatic heart of Confituras, her award-winning preserves company.

Confituras is the Spanish version of the French confiture, a preserved food. (The common Latin root is conficere: to make, to complete.) McClenny defines confituras as fruit reduced to its most flavorful essence, and that describes the jams, jellies, marmalades, curds and fruit butters that she prepares in small batches.

McClenny’s clearly found her calling; she taught herself how to make preserves about four years ago and founded the company in September 2010. By January 2011, she’d won a Good Food Award for her Texas Fig Preserves at the national competition in San Francisco. The next year, she won again for her Bourbon Brown Sugar Peach Preserves. For 2013, she’s serving as a judge rather than competing.

Recently, Confituras’ Cranberry Cinnamon Jam was featured in Saveur magazine’s holiday issue (#151). “It’s all moved pretty fast,” McClenny admits. “When I began making small-batch preserves, I didn’t even realize that there were other people doing similar things in other parts of the country. Since then, though, I’ve become part of a large, supportive online community.”

While growing up, McClenny wasn’t specifically focused on food. She spent her childhood in Orange County, California, although her first three years were in Kenya, Tunisia and Uganda, where her father held foreign-service posts. “Supposedly, my first word was in Swahili,” she says. When McClenny was 10, her family spent a year traveling around Europe in a VW van—an experience that she says encouraged her independence and selfsufficiency.

McClenny moved to Austin in the late 1980s. “I was twentyone and ready for a new situation,” she says. “It could have been anywhere, but I liked music, so why not Austin? I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, but I went to a True Believers concert my first night, met good people and within days I had a job and a place to live.” For 10 years, she worked at Les Amis Café, the iconic counterculture crossroads featured in the Austin-centric

film Slacker. (In the 2005 documentary video, Viva Les Amis, she has some quality screen time.)

Later, McClenny earned a nursing degree at the University of Texas. “While I was in school,” she says, “I had a job looking after an elderly couple. That’s when my interest in cooking really took off. I had a generous budget and time to shop, so I got obsessed with finding the best ingredients and researching the best recipes.

I started cooking seriously for friends and housemates, as well.

Later, as a pediatric nurse in elementary schools, I got off work at three-thirty and would go home and cook all afternoon.” All this led to her co-ownership of the Dandelion Café in 2004 and starting her Cosmic Cowgirl food blog in 2008.

That interest in quality ingredients has only increased; Confituras focuses on produce from regional farms, and the various preserves are available only as fruits are in season. Luckily, peaches, figs, tomatoes, pears, strawberries and apples grow well in Central Texas. McClenny gets lemons, oranges and grapefruit from the Rio Grande Valley and blueberries and mayhaws from East Texas. And she and her husband, Houston McClenny, go on foraging expeditions for native fruits like prickly pear, mustang grapes and agarita berries. She makes good use of local honey, herbs and chilies.

Creating unusual, but compelling, flavor combinations (Fresh Apple Rosemary Jam, Lavender Peach Butter) has become McClenny’s trademark. “Canning has been around forever,” she notes, “but it is also new. I call myself a maker of New World confitures—traditional styles of jam but with newer flavors.”

Future plans include teaching more preserving classes and giving community outreach demonstrations. McClenny’s involvement in Foodways Texas inspired an interest in oral history. “I’d like to do work on the history of canning…capturing memories,” she says. “I’m interested in returning to some food traditions that have been forgotten, such as pickling fruit like peaches and blueberries.”

Since its inception, Confituras has grown steadily. “I get lots of requests about orders for shops around the country,” McClenny says, “but we’ve decided to stay local. We’re going to continue to do what we’re doing now, only better.”

For more information on Confituras, visit confituras.net

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Confituras Backyard Grapefruit and Chile de Arbol Jam Courtesy of Stephanie McClenny Yields 5 to 6 half-pint jars 8–10 large, Ruby Red or other pink grapefruit (about 5 lb. total) 3–4 dried chiles de arbol, thinly sliced (seeds removed if you desire a bit less heat) 3–4 lb. organic cane sugar, to taste Juice of 1 small lemon 1 t. kosher salt Grated zest of 1 small lemon

Remove the zest from the grapefruit in long sections with a zester and cut into thin slivers. Set aside. Cut the ends from the grapefruits, then carefully cut away and discard the white pith. Remove the grapefruit segments from the cores and set them in a preserving pan or Dutch oven. Add the grapefruit zest, chiles, sugar, lemon juice and salt to the pan and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat. When cool enough to handle, pour the mixture into a glass or ceramic bowl, cover with parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, strain the mixture and set the solids aside. Boil the liquid until it becomes a thick syrup (or reaches 220°). Add the solids (including the chili slices, if desired) back to the syrup and bring to a boil over high heat—stirring occasionally. Continue to cook over high heat and stir more frequently as the mixture becomes thicker and more jam-like.

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Turn off the heat and test the gel of the jam. Put a bit on a saucer that’s been chilled in the freezer, then place the saucer back in the freezer for 1 minute. If the jam on the saucer wrinkles when you gently push on it, it is done. Add the lemon zest, then taste for sweetness and balance of flavors. Fill sterilized glass canning jars to within ¼ inch of the top, screw on the lids and process in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes.

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Confituras Prickly Pear Jelly Courtesy of Stephanie McClenny

CUPpieCAKES Now Available!

Cupcakes with pies baked inside. The turducken of desserts.

Yield depends on the amount of fruit used The prickly pear cactus bears gorgeous magenta fruits, called tunas, in late summer and early fall. The flavor is lovely, with comparisons to melon, cucumber and berries. This jelly can also be used to color and flavor marinades, vinaigrettes and cocktails.

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Prickly pear fruits Lime juice, strained Pomona’s Universal Pectin (follow directions on box) Organic cane sugar ote: The amounts of sugar, lime juice and pectin depend on N the number of cups of juice you have after processing fruit.

Holding each tuna with tongs over a gas flame, burn off the spines— being careful not to touch the spines with your bare hands. Cut each tuna into quarters and place in a pot with just enough water to cover.

Bring to a boil, then cover and lower the heat. Allow the mixture to slowly simmer for 25 to 30 minutes, until the fruit is very soft. Pour the pulp and juice over a mesh colander draped with two layers of cheesecloth. Allow the fruit to drain overnight, and resist the temptation to press on the fruit to extract the juice (this could produce a cloudy juice, which is a big no-no in jelly making). Measure the juice and pour into a preserving pan or Dutch oven.

For each cup of juice: Add 1 tablespoon of lime juice and 1 teaspoon of calcium water to the juice. (Pomona’s pectin includes powdered calcium.)

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Thoroughly blend together ½ cup of sugar and ¾ teaspoon of pectin in a large bowl.

Bring the juice to a rapid simmer. Add the sugar and the pectin mixture all at once to the boiling juice and stir vigorously for 1 to 2 minutes.

Bring back to a boil, then remove the pan from the heat and allow it to sit for a few minutes, undisturbed. Fill sterilized glass canning jars to within ¼ inch of the top, screw on the lids and process in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes.

Note: For information about canning safety and canning practices, see National Center for Home Food Preservation (nchfp.uga.edu).

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COOKING FRESH

Sweet memories

by Elizabeth Winslow • photography by knoxy

I

married for love, but if I’m being completely honest, the recipes had something to do with it, too. My husband’s family is rich in recipes—the dog-eared, sugarstained, time-tested and perfected kind. These recipes are for dishes that appear year after year at family gatherings, holidays, celebrations and special occasions. I fell in love with my husband’s grandmother’s pepper jelly and charlotte russe (known in East Texas family parlance as “charlotte rouge”), my mother-in-law’s famous dinner rolls and pecan fudge and the hot onion dip everyone seems

to make. But the most famous and sought-after recipe of them all is my sister-in-law’s mother’s toffee recipe.

Elaine “Lainey” Smith’s toffee has legions of fans in our hometown. It’s the kind of recipe that makes for a true heirloom—worth sharing and keeping, worth handing down for generations to come, special, but simple to make and perfect for special occasions. Lainey was generous enough to share it with all of us and we offer it here, along with recipes from our community’s best pastry chefs that are sure to become family keepsakes.

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Black Cyprus Salt Truffles Courtesy of Edis Rezende Makes approximately 12 to 18 truffles For the truffles: 1 c. heavy cream 12 oz. dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces 3 T. unsalted butter To finish: 2 lb. dark chocolate, melted in a double boiler Black Cyprus salt

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the heavy cream just to a boil.

Remove from the heat immediately. Add the chopped chocolate and butter and stir until the mixture is completely smooth (this mixture is called ganache). Chill the ganache until it is hard enough to roll into balls. Measure out by heaping teaspoons, and quickly roll the ganache into 1- to 2-inch balls and place on a wire rack. Refrigerate the chocolate balls until firm, then pour melted dark chocolate over them to coat. After you coat the chocolate balls, sprinkle a little black salt on top before they harden completely. Refrigerate until firm. Chocolate truffles should be kept in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container. To serve, bring to room temperature.

Edis Rezende of Edis’ Chocolates in Austin offers two chocolate truffle recipes—ideal for gift giving or serving with Champagne after an especially festive dinner.

Lenoir’s Jessica Maher inherited a set of vintage rosette irons from her grandmother (who called them florettas) and still uses them in this rosette cookie recipe.

Spiced Mexican Vanilla Truffles

Florettas (RosettEs) and Chocolate

Courtesy of Edis Rezende Makes approximately 12 to 18 truffles For the truffles: 1 c. heavy cream 1 t. Mexican vanilla 1 dried chipotle chili 1 cinnamon stick 3 cloves 12 oz. dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces 3 T. unsalted butter To finish: 2 lb. dark chocolate, melted in a double boiler

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the heavy cream, vanilla, chili, cinnamon stick and cloves just to a boil. Turn off the heat, cover and steep for 30 minutes. Strain the solids from the cream, return the cream to the saucepan and bring just to a boil again. Remove from the heat immediately.

Add the chopped chocolate and butter and stir until the mixture is completely smooth (this mixture is called ganache). Chill the ganache until it is hard enough to roll into balls. Measure out by heaping teaspoons, and quickly roll the ganache into 1- to 2-inch balls and place on a wire rack.

Refrigerate the chocolate balls until firm, then pour melted dark chocolate over them to coat. Refrigerate until firm. Chocolate truffles should be kept in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container. To serve, bring to room temperature.

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Courtesy of Jessica Maher Makes approximately 20 cookies For the rosettes: 1 egg 1½ t. sugar ¹/8 t. salt ½ c. all-purpose flour

½ t. lemon or orange zest ½ c. milk Grapeseed or canola oil for frying Special equipment: rosette molds

Whisk together the egg and sugar. Whisk to add the dry ingredients, the zest and then the milk until the batter just comes together. Allow the batter to rest for 15 minutes, then heat the oil to 350° in a medium pot to a depth of 4–5 inches, with the rosette molds resting in the oil. Allow the oil to drip from the mold, then dip into the batter and then back into the oil. Jiggle the mold to release the cookie and continue cooking. Flip the cookie once to get an even color then use a slotted spoon to pull from the oil and drain on a rack. Repeat with the remaining batter. Before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Spicy Chocolate: 2¼ c. milk, divided 1 strip orange zest 1 green cardamom pod

8 oz. dark chocolate, chopped 1½ t. cornstarch 2 T. sugar ¹/8 t. salt

Bring 2 cups of the milk, zest and cardamom to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate to the milk—stirring occasionally. When the chocolate is melted, whisk together the sugar, salt and cornstarch, then whisk that mixture into the remaining milk. Return the chocolate mixture to the heat and cook for approximately 15 minutes— whisking constantly. Add the cornstarch mixture and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. When ready, the chocolate should thickly coat a spoon.

Serve immediately with rosette cookies. (To reheat, warm slowly over heat and add milk if the mixture is too thick.)

Alex Manley, pastry chef at Austin’s Elizabeth Street Café, learned this recipe for Breton butter cake from a woman who owns the local boulangerie in Coursel, France. This recipe has been in the Breton baker’s family for generations. Alex brought it back from her travels and now bakes it often at Elizabeth Street. You’ll need a bakery scale for this recipe.

Breton Butter Cake (Kouign-Amann) Courtesy of Alex Manley Makes 1 8-inch cake For the dough: 357 g. flour 267 ml. milk 10 g. instant yeast Pinch of salt For the bourrage (stuffing): 230 g. Plugrá butter, slightly softened To roll: Granulated sugar Gray sea salt

Preheat the oven to 360°. Put all the ingredients for the dough into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix for 2 minutes on low. Turn to medium and mix a further 8 to 10 minutes. Let the dough rest in the mixing bowl at room temperature for 45 minutes.

Photography of Florettas by Jenna Noel

Prepare the bourrage by pounding the butter between 2 silicone baking mats until it is a rectangle about ⅓-inch thick. Using a bench scraper, shape the butter into a neat rectangle about 5 by 7 inches. If it is very soft, refrigerate it for a couple of minutes. The bourrage should be malleable but not mushy. Roll out the dough so that it is about 11 by 8 inches. Place the bourrage on the lower half of the dough. Fold the dough over the butter and pinch the edges together. This is called a “lock in.” Sprinkle the work surface liberally with the granulated sugar and lightly with the salt. Roll out the dough (with the bourrage inside) into a rectangle 2 times as long as it is wide then fold it into thirds, like a letter. Repeat this rolling and folding 3 times, ending with a square of dough 3/8-inch thick after each repetition. Keep the work surface well coated with granulated sugar and sprinkled lightly with salt, replenishing both as needed.

Place a square piece of parchment paper into a pie pan so that the edges hang over and the entire surface of the pan is covered with the paper.

Place the dough in the pan and tuck the edges of the dough underneath itself so that it nestles nicely into the pan in a circular shape. Bake until caramelized, about 15 to 25 minutes.

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Macarons can be tricky to make, but as with many heritage recipes, practice makes perfect. La Boîte’s Dan Bereczki and Victoria Davies share this recipe for jewellike macarons. You’ll need a baking scale for this recipe.

Macarons Courtesy of Dan Bereczki and Victoria Davies Makes approximately 25 filled macarons 110 g. almond flour 200 g. powdered sugar 90 g. egg whites 25 g. granulated sugar Confituras seasonal jams or lemon curd

Preheat the oven to 300°. Combine the almond flour and powdered sugar in a large bowl, then process the mixture in a food processor to thoroughly combine into a fine powder. Sift the processed mixture for a smoother finished texture.

Beat the egg whites with a whisk attachment in a stand mixer at medium speed. Once the whites have become frothy, sprinkle in the granulated sugar without stopping the mixer. Once all of the sugar is added, increase the mixer speed to high. Continue beating the whites until the meringue holds stiff peaks. Transfer half of the flour-sugar mixture to a large bowl and add the meringue. Fold in the meringue using about 10 strokes. Add the rest of the flour-sugar mixture and continue folding. No need to be gentle—the goal is to knock a fair amount of air out of the meringue and fully combine it with the almond flour and sugar. About 40 more strokes will get the batter to the desired consistency. You want your batter to flow like lava.

When you think you are close to the right consistency, drop a spoonful onto a cookie sheet. If the spoonful settles into an even, smooth, flattened dome with no peaks or defined ridges, you’re ready to pipe. If the spoonful doesn’t settle into a flattened dome, give the batter two more folding strokes and test again. (If the spoonful spreads to a thin disk, you’ve overbeaten the batter.

You can pipe and bake these, but they won’t form the pretty, delicate cookies you’re looking for.) Once the batter is ready to pipe, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) and pipe 1½-inch rounds spaced ½ inch apart. Bake the cookies for 14 to 16 minutes or until the cookies look dry and are firm to the touch. After the macarons have cooled, peel them from the parchment paper and fill them with Confituras seasonal jams or lemon curd.

And, now, the aforementioned famous toffee recipe.

This is one you’ll come to treasure.

Lainey’s Toffee Courtesy of Elaine Smith 1 c. butter, plus extra for buttering the sheet pan 1½ c. sugar ½ c. water ½ c. light corn syrup 2 t. vanilla 2½ c. salted cashews, finely chopped 5 1.55-oz. Hershey’s milk chocolate bars, broken into pieces

Butter a 12- by 18-inch sheet pan and set aside. In a large nonstick skillet, combine the butter, sugar, water and corn syrup. Cook until the mixture turns a dark caramel color. Add the vanilla and cashews. Pour onto the buttered sheet pan and spread evenly. Immediately top with the broken chocolate bars.

When the chocolate melts, spread the mixture evenly with a knife or spatula.

Cool for several hours or overnight, then break into small pieces. (Other types of nuts and fancy chocolate may be substituted, but Lainey has found that cashews and “regular old Hershey’s bars” are everybody’s favorite.)

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“Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?’

—Marcel Proust, from Remembrance of Things Past

Amity Bakery’s Barrie Cullinan shares this recipe for perfect madeleines. The small, delicate French cakes of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past will make memories in your family, too.

Chocolate Madeleines Courtesy of Barrie Cullinan Makes 12 madeleines 6 T. butter, plus extra for buttering the pan ¹/³ c. sugar 2 eggs ¼ t. coffee extract ½ c. flour 3½ T. cocoa powder ½ t. baking powder ¹/8 t. salt

Place the butter and sugar into the bowl of a mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until light in color and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time—scraping down the contents of the bowl in between. Add the coffee extract. Sift together the dry ingredients and fold them into the butter mixture. Let the batter chill in the refrigerator 2 hours or overnight. Preheat the oven to 375°.

Butter a madeleine pan. Divide the batter evenly among the molds of the pan and press down on each to level out. Bake until the tops of the cakes feel just set to the touch, about 12 to 15 minutes.

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Culinary “Zauber” that goes far beyond Bier und Brats.

If you come to Fredericksburg anticipating authentic German cuisine, we will not disappoint. But further exploration will reveal restaurateurs that offer decidedly more diverse menus. Escolar and lobster.

Seared duck breast with ginger/orange glaze.

Tender steaks. And very naughty desserts. All complemented by award-winning cabernets, tempranillos, viogniers and rieslings from our numerous vineyards and wineries.

Incidentally, “Zauber” is the German word for “magic.” Guten Appetit. H V i s i t F re d e r i c k s b u r g T X . c o m

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preserving traditions

Get Your Goat

Photography of Windy Hill Organics goat by Janice Williams

b y C l a u dia A l a r c ó n

O

n a cool, early fall evening, chefs James Holmes and Andrew Francisco hosted a seven-course goat-and-beer pairing dinner at Olivia. Among the spectacular dishes were pickled goat heart, goat tartare with caramelized Brussels sprouts and smoked goat ribs with IPA barbeque sauce. It wasn’t so long ago that even the most adventurous of chefs would have shied away from serving goat because of its long-standing reputation as gamy, or too unfamiliar and suspect to appeal to mainstream diners. But as Holmes and Francisco expertly exhibited, those perceptions appear to be changing, and palates expanding, as more and more chefs and diners embrace this delicious meat.

Many ethnic cuisines have proudly included goat for thousands of years. Goat remains have been found in Neolithic sites in China, and both goat and mutton were eaten in the ancient kingdom of Sumer, now Iraq. India’s Rig Veda, an ancient collection of sacred hymns, mentions goat and sheep as food, and goats continue to be a big part of

the cuisines of the Mediterranean, Balkan and Middle Eastern regions.

In addition, goat is the staple meat in Muslim and African countries, while the Portuguese enjoy whole roasted kid and chanfana, a stew prepared for special occasions.

In Jamaica, curried goat is a festive dish, and many goat recipes exist in the French Antilles. In the Philippines, eateries called kambingan specialize in goat dishes such as caldereta, a piquant stew of Spanish origin that incorporates olives, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes, and sinampalukang kambing, a tamarind-based hot-and-sour soup. “In Malaysia, they serve a dish called kari kambing, which translates to ‘mutton’ or ‘goat curry,’” says Chef Francisco, who spent part of his early years there and who is now opening a new restaurant in Austin called Mettle. In central Mexico, goat is used for traditional pit barbacoa, and is the main ingredient in birria, a spicy soup or stew widely known as a hangover cure in Mexico City and the state of Jalisco. And more familiar to Texans, of course, is the ubiquitous cabrito of northern Mexico origin.

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Even though the rugged, harsh-weather-adapted and versatile goat is the most widely eaten red meat in the world, the rise of the meat on traditionally goat-averse, high-end menus throughout Austin is, in large part, a result of the work of Ty Wolosin. After earning a master’s degree in environmental geography in Montana, Wolosin returned to the ranch owned by his mother and stepfather, Janice and James Williams, in Comanche. The couple kept a handful of Boer goats, a breed developed in South Africa in the early 1900s especially for meat production, but Wolosin really wanted to put the land to work.

Wolosin started Windy Hill Organics with a garden—selling his produce at farmers markets in Brownwood and Abilene—but his first attempts at selling goat meat failed. He finally found success at the White Rock Local Market in Dallas, and by the summer of 2010, he was selling a steady supply to Chef Graham Dodds of Dallas’s Central 214 restaurant, as well as to The Turtle restaurant in Brownwood. Seeing a change in tide, Wolosin grew his Boer herd and started selling at Austin’s HOPE Farmers Market in the fall, where Chef Sonya Coté bought the meat for the hamburgers at East Side Showroom.

In the summer of 2011, Wolosin’s farm unfortunately had to slaughter half their stock because of the drought. “We couldn’t afford to feed them; we didn’t have a choice,” he says. “We ended up with a surplus of meat, so I started making cold calls to restaurants.” Soon, the surplus was snatched up, and somewhat suddenly, Windy Hill’s chevon (meat from goats aged 6 to 14 months) has become highly regarded by chefs at restaurants like Barley Swine, Swift’s Attic, Olivia, Lenoir and Hillside Farmacy, among many others.

Because Windy Hill can’t sustain many goats, Wolosin sources from other area ranchers who meet his specifications of sustainably raised, antibiotic- and hormone-free animals to keep up with the growing demand. He is currently partnering with Mary Walker-Chyle of Hilltop Place Ranch in Leakey—who sells in the San Antonio, Kerrville and Uvalde areas—and he trades cuts of meat with her that are best suited to their respective markets. “Last year we sold a total of forty goats,” says Wolosin. “This year, we are on par for four hundred.”

And other local farms and ranches are following Wolosin’s suit.

Rocking B Ranch, owned and operated by the Brownson family in Hext, has also had recent success selling grassfed Boer chevon at Austin restaurants like Jack Allen’s Kitchen and Chupacabra Cantina, and at Barton Creek Farmers Market and Dripping Springs Farmers Market. In Bastrop, RRR Farm raises a handful of Boers—mainly as part of their heirloom vegetable and flower operation. “[Boer goats] were chosen because their breed is primarily for meat,” says farm co-owner Renee Miller Rangel, “but they are also very domesticated and will stay on our property without fencing.” On occasion, the Rangels will butcher a goat to cook for parties at their home and sometimes to sell at their farmers market stand. And Martine Pelegrin, chef at Whip In, is delighted with the new attention goat meat is receiving, and notes that their number-one-selling menu item is the goat sliders. “Goat appeals to me on so many levels,” she says. “I like it because it approaches the flavor of lamb, but it’s actually less gamy. It keeps things small, local and sustainable. And in Texas, if it’s on the hoof, we love it.”

Currently, Texas produces 70 percent of the nation’s goat meat, but 90 percent of that goes to the East Coast—something that Wolosin desperately wants to change. “I want to convince goat ranchers to sell their goat in Texas,” he says. “My vision is to have a goat-meat trading co-op so that area goat farmers can help each other succeed. The idea of Texas feeds Texas is important.”

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Birria (Chili-Marinated Goat Stew) Courtesy of Chef Iliana de la Vega and the Culinary Institute of America, San Antonio Serves 6 For the goat: 1 lb. goat meat ½ lb. goat foreshank ½ lb. goat ribs Salt 2 dried pasilla chilies, veins and seeds removed 3 dried ancho chilies, veins and seeds removed 2 dried guajillo chilies, veins and seeds removed For the stew: 1½ lb. Roma tomatoes, dry roasted ½ white onion, dry roasted 1 garlic clove, dry roasted 1 t. dried oregano

3 dried de árbol or cascabel chilies 3 garlic cloves ½ t. peeled and grated ginger root 2 allspice berries 1 t. dried oregano ½ t. thyme ½ c. orange juice ½ c. apple cider vinegar ½ c. rice vinegar 2 t. dried marjoram

2 T. vegetable oil or lard 2 qt. chicken broth or water Salt, to taste

Garnishes: 1 white onion, diced finely ¼ c. dried oregano 6 lime wedges ½ c. salsa picante (homemade or store-bought) 18 corn tortillas Salt, to taste

Rub the meat generously with salt, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Place the chilies in a bowl, cover with boiling water and soak for 10 to 15 minutes, or until soft. Remove and transfer the chilies to a blender along with the garlic, ginger, spices (except the marjoram), orange juice and vinegars. Pass through a strainer and reserve. Remove the meat from the refrigerator and rub the chili-vinegar adobo marinade on the meat.

Cover with plastic warp and refrigerate for one day. Place the seasoned meat and the adobo marinade into a Dutch oven, add the marjoram and cook, covered, in a 325° oven for 4 to 5 hours, until tender.

Meanwhile, blend the tomatoes, onion, garlic and oregano for the stew until smooth. Heat the vegetable oil or lard and fry the stew mixture until the color darkens. Add the chicken broth or water, season with salt and reserve. When the goat meat is tender, cut it into small pieces and place into individual bowls. Ladle the warmed stew over the meat and serve with the garnishes on the side.

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Goat Tartare Appetizer with Crab Salad, Caramelized Brussels Sprouts and Cajeta

Courtesy of Chef Andrew Francisco Serves 4 The goat loin and tenderloin are the best cuts for tartare because of their natural tenderness and absence of interior connective tissue. Like any other red meat, goat will oxidize, so dice the meat at the end of preparation, and keep it well wrapped to minimize oxygen exposure. Windy Hill’s goat meat is uniquely sweet and clean tasting. Keep in mind that the raw goat meat should be the majority of the dish. Make the cajeta in advance and serve at room temperature—I use Rick Bayless’s recipe. It works every time.

For the cajeta: 1 vanilla bean 2 qt. goat’s milk 2 c. sugar ½ t. baking soda

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Split the vanilla bean in half and, using the back of a knife, scrape the seeds away from the pod halves. Add the seeds, the pod halves, the goat’s milk, sugar and vanilla to a pot. Bring to a simmer and remove from the heat. Add the baking soda—be careful; it will bubble. Place the pot back on the heat and simmer until it reaches a deep golden-brown caramel color. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer or chinois and let cool to room temperature. (Refrigerate any leftover cajeta for other uses—it tastes good on absolutely everything!)

For the goat: 10 oz. Windy Hill Organics goat loin or tenderloin 8 t. extra-virgin olive oil (grassy- or peppery-tasting) Kosher salt, to taste Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste Special equipment: ring mold for serving For the crab salad: 4 oz. jumbo lump crabmeat (picked through for shells) 4 T. aioli or mayonnaise 4 t. fresh lemon juice 4 green onions, tops trimmed, sliced very thinly 4 t. minced chives Kosher salt, to taste Pinch cayenne pepper Fresh ground black pepper, to taste

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For the Brussels sprouts: 8 Brussels sprouts ¼ c. olive oil Kosher salt, to taste

Chill four small plates. Carefully remove any connective tissue from the goat meat and discard. Wrap the meat tightly in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. In a small mixing bowl, gently mix all of the crab salad ingredients together and reserve in the refrigerator. Clean any bruised leaves from the Brussels sprouts and trim the bottoms. Gently remove the first layer of leaves from each and reserve. Quarter the sprouts.

In a pot of boiling salted water, blanch the leaves for a few seconds then place them in ice water to shock (stop the cooking). Dry the leaves on a towel. Blanch the quartered sprouts for 1 minute, until still firm in the center, then shock in ice water. Drain and dry. Remove the goat meat from the refrigerator, dice finely with a sharp knife and place in a bowl. Cover Continued on page 53

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the bowl with plastic wrap and return to the refrigerator. Heat the olive oil for the Brussels sprouts to the smoking point in a small sauté pan, add the sprouts, one by one, and caramelize the interior of the vegetable. Season with kosher salt. Remove the meat from the refrigerator and season with the olive oil, salt and pepper.

Spoon the cajeta onto the chilled plates. Using the ring mold, place a quarter of the goat tartare on each plate then place a dollop of crab salad on top. Place the caramelized Brussels sprouts around each plate and garnish with blanched Brussels sprout leaves. Serve with crostini, crackers, chips or bread.

Spicy Goat Curry

over high heat until the seeds pop. Stir in the cloves and fennel seeds. Add the onions and sauté with the salt, garlic, ginger, cayenne and coriander.

Cover the pot and reduce the heat to low. Allow the onions to sweat until they have given off their water—about 20 minutes. Raise the heat to high, add the goat meat and its marinade and mix well. Stir in the black pepper, bay and curry leaves and turmeric, bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook, checking and stirring often, until the meat is cooked through—about 30 minutes. Return the heat to high and stir in the tomatoes. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook, covered, until the meat is tender—about 1 hour. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Garnish with fresh cilantro leaves and serve with rice or boiled potatoes.

Courtesy of Chef Martine Pelegrin and Whip In Serves 6 2 lb. goat stew meat For the marinade: 1 T. crushed garlic 1 T. grated ginger 1 t. cayenne 1 t. garam masala 1 t. turmeric 1 t. ground coriander 1 t. ground cumin 2 t. sea salt 2 c. yogurt

For the curry: 4 T. ghee 1 t. brown mustard seeds 2 cinnamon sticks 6 cloves 1 T. fennel seeds 2 large yellow onions, sliced Sea salt, to taste 2 T. crushed garlic 2 T. grated ginger 2 t. cayenne 1 T. ground coriander 1 T. black pepper 2 bay leaves 12 curry leaves 1 t. turmeric 4 Roma tomatoes, sliced Cilantro leaves, to garnish

Combine all of the marinade ingredients in a bowl, add the goat meat and coat well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. Melt the ghee in a large soup pot. Add the mustard seeds and cinnamon and cook

WHERE TO FIND LOCAL GOAT MEAT Windy Hill Organics goat meat is available for purchase from Greenling home delivery service, Farmhouse Delivery, Wheatsville Food Co-op, Green Gate Farms meat CSA program and HOPE Farmers Market. Rocking B Ranch sells at the Barton Creek Farmers Market and Dripping Springs Farmers Market. RRR Farm harvests goats occasionally and sells it at SFC Farmers’ Market–Sunset Valley and –East, and at HOPE Farmers Market and Mueller Farmers’ Market.

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Edible field cooking

Jesse Griffiths INTERVIE W b y S h a n n o n O e l r i c h • P h o t o g r a p h y b y J o d y H o rt o n

J

esse Griffiths started Dai Due Supper Club with his wife, Tamara Mayfield, in 2006 as a way to, according to their mission statement, “serve foods that are fresher, buy food that is produced in a fair and equitable way, pay homage to the local culinary traditions and support farmers and ranchers who are striving to improve the quality of our food.” Since then, they’ve expanded their operation to include the Dai Due Butcher Shop at the SFC Farmers’ Market Downtown, cooking and butchering classes, and hunting camps as well. Along the way, Griffiths has forged a solid reputation in the sustainability movement as a tip-to-tail guru of almost heroic proportion, and in his new book Afield: A Chef ’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish, he offers us a more personal, stunningly photographed peek into his world, his passion and the offal truth.

Shannon Oelrich: In the forward to your book, chef, food writer, teacher and television star Andrew Zimmern opens with a societal observation: “One’s status used to be tied to one’s own usefulness, but is now tied to one’s wealth.” He then offers your way of doing things— hunting, dressing, butchering, preparing your own meats with respect and resourcefulness—as an antidote to that. Do you believe that to be true? Was that part of what you hoped to achieve with this book?

Jesse Griffiths: I really just wanted to emphasize to people who are interested in being involved in obtaining their own food that it is possible…that they can do it, and do it well, with respect, with thrift and with delicious results. That’s the point in the end. It’s our food, and not any more complicated than that. If more people connected with their food and other resources more intimately, we would have fewer problems in general.

SO: How important was it to include step-by-step photos of field dressing, and why?

JG: This book was written for two people: an experienced hunter who wants to improve their cooking and butchering skills and take control of their food from a negligent processor, and the new hunter who is unsure and intimidated by the tasks at hand when an animal

is actually down. Editing the field dressing would be a disservice to the people who really need to know what they’re doing.

This isn’t a coffee-table book. It’s meant to get a little blood and some scales on it.

The graphic nature is unsettling, of course, because it really is happening. It isn’t for everybody, but that’s how it’s done. What’s step one when field dressing a hog? If it’s a male pig, then…well, step one can only be one thing. We have to normalize hunting and the killing of animals for food, take a stark and honest look at how that happens and analyze how to make it better. We’ve fetishized it or looked the other way for a long time. Hunters are seen as cruel and malicious because they choose to handle this part of the system themselves, [but] I think that shows some honesty on their part; they are taking all of the responsibility for their food. The killing of an animal used to represent nourishment for a lot of people, and had a corresponding celebration—like people might celebrate a good grain harvest. I think that people are now very in tune with their food sources, so witnessing or understanding the whole process isn’t so risqué anymore..

SO: You allude to Texans’ hatred for feral hogs. Why do you think they’re so maligned? What do you think about mass hunts to control population?

JG: [Feral] pigs do $500 million in damage every year to agricultural crops, so they’re hated by people who are financially impacted by them, and I can’t judge that. They’re also hated by people who need an excuse to hate something. It’s like in the movies: you can kill as many Nazis and zombies as you want because the violence toward them is acceptable and encouraged. I respect hogs for their tenacity, intelligence and their ability to survive. That said, I will kill and eat every one I see.

I am saddened by the waste of the population-control hunts because I see that we have a market for the meat, not to mention people who are hungry. If you’re charging $250 a day to hunt hogs on your land, or $500 an hour to shoot hogs from a helicopter, you don’t have a hog problem anymore; you have a financial opportunity.

SO: Preparing quarry with respect is a mainstay in your book, and EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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“This isn’t a coffee-table book. It’s meant to get a little blood and some scales on it.”

—Jesse Griffiths you write that you’ve received “eye-rolling” from other hunters for plucking, as opposed to skinning or breasting, doves—a personal rule if someone’s hunting with you. Is there any other kind of flack you’ve received from fellow hunters? Does everyone come around to your way of thinking, or have some simply refused?

JD: Plucking birds in general, and our whole-carcass approach to large game, are met with apprehension. The story does not end at the shot; it’s at the exact middle. There’s a lot more work to be done, like plucking little birds and salvaging every little bit of muscle and bone from a deer. What we try to intimate in these situations is not a condescending sustainability lecture, but a thrift-based ideal that uses more of the animal and, in turn, yields more product. Add to this the culinary advantages of leaving the skin on or whole-animal butchery and we have a strong case. It’s the your-grandparents-didit-this-way argument, and that resonates well with a lot of people.

Of course, not everybody is going to take five times as long to pluck their doves, but they’ve heard a decent argument in its favor and know it’s an option.

SO: When describing fishing for catfish using venison liver, you write, “I see the pale flash of his mouth opening and I think for a moment about how we both like venison liver.” You’re able to empathize with your game without being sentimental.

JG: I know that animals don’t want to die and will do everything in their power to avoid it. A catfish will kill a crawfish without remorse and a quail might likewise eat a grasshopper. You can overthink the whole process pretty easily. I bet that if my cat weighed two tons, it might kill and eat me.

SO: It’s obvious that you know meat intimately. Is there anything that would push you to become a vegetarian?

JG: Sometimes I feel sad after killing an animal, but I’m cool with that, and don’t want that to pass, ever. It’s a good thing to feel. I could never be a vegetarian because I feel like eating meat is intrinsically human and the right thing to do, though there are a lot of things wrong with the current system, which in turn leads lucid and intelligent people to become vegetarians. I respect anybody who thinks about their food, even if they’ve come to another conclusion than I have. If you’re going to eat meat, though, you must be able to look at the whole process and be comfortable with that, because you’re a part of it now and you must assume responsibility for that decision.

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Duck & Goose Excerpt and recipes from Afield: A Chef ’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish,

by Jesse Griffiths Welcome Books. Text © 2012 Jesse Griffiths.

Photographs © 2012 Jody Horton. Foreword © 2012 Andrew Zimmern. welcomebooks.com/afield

W

e drive to the same pond where we hunted duck last year, and this time I’m not surprised when hundreds of Canada geese and ducks rise off the water as we approach with our shining flashlights and clanking decoys. This pond is a well-kept secret and hasn’t been hunted all season. It’s a gold mine.

About three dozen decoys are soon set, mostly pintails, in two clusters to the left and right of our grassy bank, in expectation of the birds landing into the wind between the two groups. I’m on the left, Eliot’s in the middle, and Jack takes the right. The birds are back immediately, with big flocks of teal circling above. It’s impressive. The air is literally thick with birds, and when Eliot nonchalantly announces it’s shooting time, it sounds like warfare.

Before I know it, I’ve got two shovelers (“spoonies”) and a greenwinged teal down, all graciously fetched by Zorro. I’ll never get over how nice it is to have a good dog along on a hunt. They seem to enjoy it even more than I do, and that’s saying a lot.

Eliot is now vocally steering me away from the shovelers— whose aquatic diet can make them the least desirable of the puddle ducks for the table. (Though as I write this, a pot of spoony-and-oyster gumbo is bubbling on the stove. It is indeed assertive, but also delicious, and served over rice from the very same prairie.) I start to pass on some shots in the increasing daylight for better chances at the tasty gadwalls that are now showing up in force.

Twenty minutes into legal shooting time, the action slows to a standstill and the high-flying geese take center stage. Last year, with a dense fog forcing low flights, Jack and I each scored a big specklebelly goose from low-flying flocks cruising over the pond.

Remembering the way my big goose had thudded to the ground ten feet from my head then, I waste a lot of shots in a vain attempt to down another one—the geese are flying too far up.

Groups of pintails and gadwalls are now working our spread of decoys, but aren’t committing and are staying out of range.

Maybe it’s the bright sunlight reflecting off our gun barrels, maybe it’s our unpainted faces or even Zorro’s big black presence. Anyway, the shooting slows down and we pick off a couple of more birds here and there, including a suicidal green-winged hen that refuses to fly after landing in the decoys a mere ten yards in front of me. Eliot’s goading and name-calling (“Hey,

dumb bird!”) finally annoys or frightens the bird enough to take flight, at which point I promptly harvest it. I do love to eat teal.

Finally, as the birds make it apparent that they are done for the morning and our hunger is setting in, we pack it up. Twelve birds among the three of us—plenty for the dinner we have planned for this evening, and some extra to take home to the family. With straps loaded with a mix of shoveler, teal, and gadwall, and the auspicious addition of a delicious canvasback and a pretty drake redhead, we head into town to take the birds to the pickers (this tiny town has two businesses that pluck waterfowl) and grab some breakfast.

Hot coffee and some very spicy food are comforting, and we get a little rest before the evening’s festivities. I busy myself making a mincemeat pie, onion and sage dressing, and glazed carrots while the others nap and a couple more guests arrive, including Jack’s lovely wife, Anne, and Eliot’s friend Sam, who we’ve been told can tell an exquisitely elaborate dirty joke.

The ducks are roasted rare with tangerines, just picked and supersweet. The snipe from the previous afternoon are wrapped in bacon and a sage leaf, then skewered shut with their own long beaks and roasted in a hot oven.

Toasts are made to the ducks, and Eliot insists that we face north to do it—it’s a tradition, see. Sometimes it makes sense to have some ritual and formality; Eliot and Sam are dressed in black tie, and the ladies look great. There is a lot of bloody bird flesh on the table, and plenty of really nice French wine. Everyone is eating the birds with their fingers, which is pretty much the only way to eat a roasted duck after the first couple of knife-and-fork cuts.

Different ducks will warrant different preparations. Diving ducks, like ringnecks, scamp, and the like, can be strongflavored and may be best skinned and used for something with a lot of spice…. Puddle ducks, like gadwalls, wigeon, pintails, and mallards, are suitable for roasting…or in Duck Yakitori.

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Duck Yakitori Serves 4 The sticky, salty and sweet sauce glazes and browns the duck, creating a nice exterior texture before the interior becomes overcooked. Try yakitori also with pieces of turkey breast or whole doves.

Pickled Radish (recipe below) 4 boneless duck breasts, about 1 to 1½ pounds 1 c. mirin (Japanese rice wine) ½ c. soy sauce 2 T. sugar 2 T. honey 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1 T. oil 8 green onions, green part thinly sliced, white part cut into ½-in. pieces 8 bamboo skewers, soaked in water

Make the Pickled Radish 1 day prior to making the duck.

If the duck has skin, remove it with sharp knife and cut the duck into 1-inch cubes. In a saucepan over high heat, boil the mirin, soy sauce, sugar, honey and garlic until reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside half of the sauce for serving.

Start a medium fire or preheat a grill. Toss the cubed breast meat in the oil. Thread the duck breast cubes, alternating with the white parts of the onions, onto 8 skewers. Grill on one side for about 5 minutes, then turn, basting with the sauce. Continue grilling and basting until browned and the meat is firm but still a little pink inside, about 12 minutes total. Discard any leftover basting sauce. Serve the duck with rice, green onions, pickled radishes and the reserved sauce on the side.

Pickled Radish

Innovative cuisine in a majestic Texas setting

Makes 1 pint Pickled radish goes well with grilled meats, especially those with a sweet glaze or sauce. Substitute cherry belle, watermelon or French breakfast radishes.

1 medium daikon, peeled and thinly sliced 1 c. rice wine vinegar 1 c. sugar 1 T. salt

Place the daikon in a ceramic or glass bowl or jar. In a pot over high heat, bring 1 cup water and the vinegar, sugar and salt to a boil. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the daikon. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 day. Serve cold. Pickled radish will keep well in the refrigerator for several months.

Special event Afield with Jesse Griffiths and Jody Horton Friday, December 14 at BookPeople, 7 p.m.

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slide show with narrated tales from the fields and streams.

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Edible filmmaking

Of Mycophagy and Movies b y J a s on C o rt l u nd , on the ma k in g o f N o w, F o r a g e r

I

t’s September 2010 as I drive from Brooklyn to a Ukrainian summer camp in the Hudson Valley to attend the annual Northeast Mycological Federation foray—a gathering of amateur mushroom hunters and professional mycologists (biologists who specialize in fungi). In addition to hunting mushrooms, I’m also volunteering for the weekend’s demonstration of mycophagy —which is the heady technical term that the fungi intelligentsia uses for cooking and eating mushrooms.

Our kitchen boss is Elinoar Shavit, a morel expert (her study of lead-arsenate-contaminated morels found in apple orchards is required reading) and excellent cook. Her menu includes a strudel of Boletus edulis (porcini) and a fruit salad festooned with the transparent jelly fungus Tremella fuciformis.

Her plans are so complex that she’s using two kitchens. Since I know how to run a deep fryer (my first kitchen job involved a Fryolator and many taco-salad bowls), I’m drafted to be Elinoar’s sous, running kitchen number two. On top of frying up a selection of battered chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) and giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea) mushrooms for 200-plus, I’m roasting 15 pounds of hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa) and figuring out what to do with three dozen duck eggs that someone brought from home.

An enormous cast-iron pan hangs on the wall, and I decide to im-

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provise a frittata with roasted onion and several pounds of sautéed Entoloma abortivum. This crazy fungus looks, and kind of tastes, like the love child of gnocchi and sweetbreads. It’s actually a honey mushroom that’s parasitized by a species of Entoloma (or vice versa; mycologists may seem tame, but they thrive on discussing competing theories, revising species names and debating the merits of DNA testing).

The frittata is huge and slow to cook; I alternate between the gas range and the salamander broiler to fire it from both directions. Eventually, what feels like 87 pounds of woodland magic sets in the middle.

It takes three of us working together to turn it out onto a pizza pan to serve. It’s perfect; the light-brown crust encasing the concoction doesn’t stick to the ancient well-seasoned pan. Sigh of relief. And the experience became a foreshadower of sorts; in a couple of weeks, I would start principal photography on a film where duck eggs and fungi would also play a part.

My codirector, Julia Halperin, and I had spent the past year in preproduction on a feature-length film about a husband and wife who hunt mushrooms around New York City. We wanted to make a food movie that was more about cooking and ingredients than it was about eating. Now, Forager was conceived as the first fiction film for the Slow Food generation.

To do this on a very modest, independently financed budget in the greater New York area, we’d have to be smart, scrappy and very lucky.

But since Julia and I came up as filmmakers in Austin, we know a thing or two about getting things done through the virtues of gristle and sass.

The story behind the film was shaped by my love for hands-on sourcing of different foods in different seasons. It follows the two main characters, married couple Lucien and Regina, from fall to early summer. As the landscape changes with the weather, their relationship also sees a transformation.

Shooting our exterior scenes in the correct seasons with naturally occurring species of fungi and flora would be our greatest production value. It would spread our production cycle out over the course of a year (which made scheduling cast and crew tricky) and put a great deal of emphasis on my ability to find all the mushrooms we’d need—from 50 pounds of wild hen of the woods for the opening sequence, to the fatally toxic destroying angel (Amanita bisporigera), to a selection of elusive spring morels.

Which brings us back to the duck eggs. In a pivotal scene late in the story, Lucien finds morels and cooks them with duck eggs out in the woods. We shot these scenes in season the previous May with morels that I had gathered the week before. The action looked fine in

wide shots. In close-up, though, the morels didn’t look right. An experienced mushroom hunter would know these morels were previously cut and then staged. It just wouldn’t do; we’d have to reshoot these the following spring.

Now, I love our crew—I’d trust them with my life. But I don’t share my morel spots with anyone. That’s mushroom hunting. Morels are sacred; knowing where they grow is earned, not given. To shoot morels in situ, I hauled a light camera package along on solo hunts and shot what I found along the way. And yes—we ate every single edible mushroom that appears in the film. Not many productions are so efficient that they eat the stars at the end of the day. That’s Austin-style independent filmmaking for you.

Morels in Cream Sauce

Wild Mushrooms in Texas?

As soon as I get home from a successful morel hunt, this is the first thing I make. Serve it with fresh pasta, roast chicken, broiled halibut, venison steaks or a bone-in rib eye. If I’m in a place where ramps (wild leeks) are growing, I’ll swap out the shallot for those.

Seeing a mushroom growing outdoors during an Austin summer seems unfathomable, but they do grow here. Central Texas is one of the only places I know that can actually have two morel flushes per year: spring and fall. The common morel species in our area appears under ashe junipers—which is maybe the only positive association for this arboreal blight to landscapes and sinuses. Besides tree species, the variables that I associate with morel fruitings are sustained rainfall over several days or weeks, soil temperature of approximately 50 degrees and limestone-rich soil composition. There are other factors, theories and superstitions about when and where to find morels, but these simple clues can get you started thinking like a mushroom. Other edible fungi like chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and chicken of the woods mushrooms also grow in our parts. The cooler, wetter Texas winters can really bring out the fungi while Northern states are dormant for the season.

Don’t eat any wild food that hasn’t been identified with 100 percent certainty by someone with experience. Poisonous look-alikes, environmental contamination or even insufficient cooking can make you sick. If in doubt, throw it out!

2 c. fresh morels, sliced (If you only have dried morels, soak them in hot water for 10 minutes and blot dry on paper towels. Reserve the soaking liquid for broth.)

3 T. butter Salt, to taste 1 large shallot, minced ½ c. Madeira wine (or Marsala, dry sherry, brandy or broth) 1–1½ c. heavy cream Fresh thyme Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Clean and slice the morels (I do mine crossways, so they form little rings).

Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the butter and melt until foamy. Add the morels in an even layer. When they are fully brown on one side, about 3 minutes, add the salt, stir and continue browning.

When the morels begin to turn golden all over, add the minced shallot.

Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the shallot softens and starts to turn translucent. Deglaze the pan with the Madeira (or some other tasty liquid) and continue cooking until it’s mostly evaporated. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the cream (more cream for saucing fresh pastas, and a bit less for serving with meats and fish). Stir and reduce until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Season to taste with fresh thyme, ground pepper and more salt if necessary.

Note: Fresh morels should be cooked at least 8 to 10 minutes. These fungi species naturally contain hydrazine compounds (similar to those in jet fuel) that can make you very sick if consumed raw. These compounds evaporate during the cooking process—so as tempting as it might be, don’t inhale the vapors—and always use your stove’s vent hood.

Now, Forager, directed by Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin, premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam and New Directors/ New Films in 2012. It’s screening in select theaters across the U.S. and Europe through early 2013. For more information, visit nowforager.com

Now, Forager Film and Feast Wednesday, January 16 Alamo Drafthouse / Slaughter Co-presented by Edible Austin and AMOA-Arthouse Experience this debut Austin screening with a feast prepared by Alamo chefs and a talk-back after with co-directors and producers Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin. Ticket information at edibleaustin.com

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department of organic YOUTH

Mushroom Hunter

W

e are hunting for mushrooms, and I find myself in a different world, lulled by the smell of the deep woods, the dappled sunlight and the rotten logs covered in moss. As we stalk through deep vertical stands of birch and hemlock, fir and cedar in the rolling hills of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the quiet is all around us—interrupted only occasionally by the call of a wood thrush, the croak of a raven, the scamper and chatter of a chipmunk or the snapping of branches as a deer pushes through the underbrush. My mom is the mushroom expert among us, but we all enjoy the wonderful and tedious business of finding and eating mushrooms from the woods.

There are many kinds of edible mushrooms to be found and eaten in the Vermont woods, but we look for our personal favorites. In June and July, we look for the orange flash of chanterelles, found in places where trees have fallen and rotted. Their turmeric color and trumpet shape are unmistakable and we usually find multitudes of them after a rain. Later in the summer, we look for boletes that look like toadstools, with thick stems and dense, porous undersides, instead of the gills of the chanterelles. The most prized of the boletes is the Boletus edulis—the famous porcini mushroom—but even though we search, on this trip it’s too early in the season to find any. Instead, we settle for other delicious kinds such as B. subglabripes and B. scaber. We are lucky to find many patches in our own section of woods because we wouldn’t have the chance to hunt elsewhere. Mushroom hunters never reveal their favorite foraging spots; they are more secretive than fishermen. Even our old friend down the road keeps his spots secret and says, “Not a chance,” when we ask if we can join him.

Identifying a bolete is the hardest part. We take each kind and cut it open, so that we can see the color when it bruises. Our Russian friend—a former CIA agent and now an expert bolete hunter— helps us label them as best we can, but advises us to create a spore

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print for each because it’s the only sure way to identify a mushroom. To create prints, we place each mushroom cap, bottom down, on white paper, cover it with a glass and leave it overnight. In the morning, we find a spore print under the mushrooms—each a different color. Our friend notes that a pink spore print indicates a bitter mushroom that could potentially ruin any sauce or dish you’d make with it. Before cooking the mushrooms, my mom tastes a sample of each one and discovers that, indeed, the one that produced a pink print is bitter, the one that made a yellow print is citrusy and the one that made a brown print is bursting with woodsy flavor.

Finally, it’s time to cook them. My dad prefers a sauce with Jersey cream, butter and onion for the boletes; my mom likes Marcella Hazan’s woodsman-style sauce with tomatoes—the one we’re using this time. The assortment of colors of the sliced boletes on the cutting board is absolutely lovely. As soon as they cook for a few minutes, though, the color is gone. We add garlic, chopped tomatoes, white wine and parsley to the sauce, ladle it over cooked pasta and top with Parmesan, salt and pepper. The result is perfection.

12-year old Alabel Chapin loves to paint, play the violin, dance, write poetry and swim in ponds. She is a student at the Girls’ School of Austin. She loves her bed, pets and family.

Photography of boletes by Nathaniel Chapin, and of Alabel with chanterelles by Elizabeth Chapin

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Adapted from Marcella Hazan’s More Classic Italian Cooking Serves 4 1 oz. dried boletus mushrooms 2 c. warm water ¾ lb. fresh boletus mushrooms ¹/³ c. olive oil 4 garlic cloves minced Red chili flakes ¹/³ c. serrano ham, cut into very narrow strips (about ¼-in. wide) Salt and pepper, to taste 1 c. fresh or canned plum tomatoes ½ c. white wine 1 lb. fettuccine ½ c. chopped Italian parsley ¹/³ c. Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated

Soak the dried mushrooms in the water in a small bowl for at least 30 minutes. When they have finished soaking, lift them out carefully without stirring the water. Rinse the mushrooms several times in cold water, chop them finely and set aside. Filter the mushroom water through a strainer lined with a paper towel and reserve. Wash the fresh mushrooms and cut them into thin slices without detaching the stems from the caps. Put the oil, garlic and chili flakes in a large sauté pan and place over medium-high heat. When the garlic becomes a deep golden color, remove it with a slotted spoon and reserve. Place the ham in the oil and cook for 1 minute, then add the reconstituted mushrooms and their water. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the fresh mushrooms and the salt and pepper and cook for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes with their juice and the wine, cover the pan and turn the heat to low.

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EMBRACING LOCAL

The Family Dinner

by Kristi Willis • Photography by Andy Sams

S

itting down for a family dinner is about more than food; it’s a precious ritual—a time to touch base, connect and share laughter and stories. Yet for many, eating in shifts or in front of the TV has become the norm, and those intimate moments for the family to engage are lost.

Dinnertime is often when kids learn their family history and traditions, and where they build the trust that helps them make good choices when they’re away from their families. A 2012 study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that when compared to teens who have family dinners five or more nights per week, teens who eat two or fewer meals with their families each week are almost three times more likely to say it’s okay for kids their age to use marijuana, and three and a half times more likely to say it’s okay for their peers to get drunk.

Families also eat better when they eat together. In a study at Baylor College of Medicine, doctors Karen Weber Cullen and Tom Baranowski discovered that fourth- to sixth-grade students who ate dinners with their families ate more fruits and vegetables and drank less soda than those who did not. Laurie David, coauthor of The Family Dinner, says, “Everything you worry about as a parent is improved by the number of nights you eat together as a family.” And the practice of family dinners doesn’t have to be difficult. David suggests families start by picking one 64

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night of the week and keeping it simple—make a pot of soup and a salad, or even serve takeout—as long as the family is eating together.

Then expand to other nights. “What you want is for everyone to come together, eat and have a good time. The key to the whole thing is talking.” David offers these additional suggestions for making the most of family meals: Make dinner an electronic-free zone. Turn off all phones, televisions, computers and other electronics and leave them in the other room. Give everyone permission to call out anyone who breaks the rule.

Try new foods. Each week, try something new to help expand everyone’s culinary horizons, even if it’s simply a new preparation of a familiar food. If the kids love cucumbers, make cucumber noodles. Try chicken or steak grilled on a kebab instead of whole. Have everyone commit to at least trying a new food even if they don’t finish it.

Involve the kids in preparing the meal. Whether the kids are setting the table, peeling vegetables or toasting bread, meals will be more meaningful if they get to contribute and participate rather than just show up to eat.

Create interactive meals. David includes a section of assemblyrequired recipes in which everyone gets to finish off their own tacos, pasta or soup with their favorite ingredients. These hands-on meals let kids pick the ingredients they like, while also making it easy for

them to experiment with new foods if they’re feeling adventurous.

Start talking. Use dinnertime to explore and share new ideas rather than just rehash the day’s events. Pick topics that encourage lively conversation and even spark debate. David posts a “Table Talk” topic to the Huffington Post Parents website (huffingtonpost.com/parents) every Friday suggesting subjects guaranteed to get the discussion flowing.

Involve extended family members and friends. Children learn how to entertain and engage guests at shared family meals where everyone is on their best behavior and enjoying one another’s company. Encourage the kids to invite their friends to dinner so that you can get to know them better.

Make it fun. Make a picnic on the floor or in the yard, use the good china on sandwich night or light a candle to change the ambience.

Small flourishes can make the entire experience more special and take the drudgery out of what can seem like a chore.

“We take for granted what happens at the table,” says David. “You don’t just get your proteins and your nutrition. Your kids will learn vocabulary words, they will learn how to debate and discuss and how to listen. They learn portion control, how to take turns and manners. They learn a whole host of things.”

There is no wrong way to create the special memories of family dinner. Sharing a meal builds a solid foundation for everyone—both at the table and during the challenges of daily life.

EASY CHEESY DINNER FRITTATA Courtesy of Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt of The Family Dinner Serves 4–6 Eggs for dinner! Or lunch, or a brunch by the sea. You crack a bunch of eggs and cook them with some filling. I say asparagus, potatoes and cheese, but you can say anything you please—maybe tomatoes, mozzarella and pesto, maybe corn and peas.

For the frittata: 8 organic, free-range eggs 2 T. grated Parmesan cheese ¼ t. salt and a pinch of pepper For the filling: 2 T. butter or olive oil 2 T. diced red onions ½ c. diced potatoes ½ c. chopped asparagus ½ c. cubed mozzarella, Gruyère or Fontina 1 T. chopped soft herbs like basil, dill or parsley

Preheat the oven to its broil setting. In a medium-size bowl, using a fork, whisk together the eggs, Parmesan, salt, and pepper. Set aside.

Heat a medium-size, nonstick, oven-safe pan over medium-high heat. Add the butter and let it melt. Add the onion, potatoes, and asparagus to the pan and sauté for 8 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.

Pour the eggs into the pan and reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir with a rubber spatula once. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes or until the egg mixture is starting to set (thicken). Top with the mozzarella cubes.

Place the pan into the oven and broil for 3 to 4 minutes, until lightly browned and fluffy. Remove from the pan and cut into wedges. Garnish with herbs.

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The Paredes family (from left): Valentina, Mariana, Adrian and Andrea.

“A lot of people in the farmers market just tell us, ‘that tamale is made with love.’ Yes, it is made with love.” —Mariana Ibañez

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People

Love in a Corn Husk B y N i c o l e L e s s i n • P h o t o g r a p h y b y N u r i Va l l b o n a

A

t 10 o’clock on any given Saturday morning, a crowd gathers in front of the SFC Farmers’ Market–Downtown booth run

by Adrian Paredes and his wife, Mariana Ibañez. The friendly, green-shirted proprietors of the Gardener’s Feast booth assess the mass of rumbling tummies and proudly offer up their handmade specialty: Central Mexican-style tamale breakfasts wrapped like presents in sparkly tinfoil.

The tamales feature organic, fluffy masa stuffed with an array of gluten- and lard-free choices like spicy marinated pork pastor with pineapple, locally sourced goat cheese and black beans, and even nopalitos sautéed in olive oil, to name a few. But Ibañez—the organizational force behind the scenes—believes many patrons come for another reason. “A lot of people in the farmers market just tell us, ‘that tamale is made with love,’” she says with a smile. “Yes, it is made with love.”

Paredes, the public face and creative visionary of the business, says his family’s passion for from-scratch cooking came from growing up in Mexico City and preparing the traditional weekend meal during an all-day family gathering. “We would spend one hour planning what we were going to do,” he recalls. “You have to go to the market, come back, wash all the vegetables and start cutting everything, preparing everything…you know, with a tequila. And you listen to music while the whole house starts smelling really, really good.”

At the markets, Paredes and Ibañez say, their mothers taught them how to determine quality ingredients, from knowing what color a raw chicken should not be (very white) to verifying meat tenderness (you should be able to pinch off a piece). “You start like touching, looking at and smelling everything,” Paredes says. And those early lessons have stayed with them. “We’re really picky about food,” he admits. “We are,” Ibañez agrees with a laugh.

Initially, the pair worked in independent careers unrelated to food; Paredes spent more than two decades as an industrial designer and Ibañez managed businesses. But the couple kept the family-meal tradition alive after they married in 1998, and after moving to Austin in 2008, they decided to turn their culinary hobby into a part-time business selling fruit- and alcohol-infused gelatins. But Ibañez says that Austinites weren’t familiar enough with the traditional Mexican dessert for the idea to catch on, and summertime transportation posed a challenge. “They melted,” she explains.

Undeterred, the couple began a more successful venture selling homemade flautas from a food trailer. But after the owner moved the trailer to a less suitable location, Paredes jumped at the opportunity

The Costeño is a version of Paredes’s grandmother’s Oaxacan pork-rib tamale in a banana leaf, and Ibañez’s grandmother’s chicken mole uses Oaxacan chocolate with hints of cinnamon.

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to fill a void left by the departure of a popular tamale vendor at the downtown market. He learned of the opportunity from the market’s director, in early 2010. “She said, ‘Oh, do you do tamales?’” he recalls.

“I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, we do know how to do tamales.’” “But the truth [is],” says Ibañez with a laugh, “we never did them before.” And they had just three short weeks to learn.

“That day, we just arrived at our house and started calling our families in Mexico, saying ‘How do you do tamales?’” Paredes says. The couple experimented and quickly mastered a light, airy masa made with vegetable stock. The trial-and-error approach also resulted in the re-creation of several family recipes, including the Costeño, a version of Paredes’s grandmother’s Oaxacan pork-rib tamale in a banana leaf, and Ibañez’s grandmother’s chicken mole using Oaxacan chocolate with hints of cinnamon. They also developed their own twist on the popular Mexican tamale rajas con queso by pairing roasted poblano peppers with Muenster cheese. “Since the beginning, we have tried to do something with our own signature,” says Paredes. And the couple’s efforts haven’t been in vain. At their very first market, they sold out of 80 tamales in just two hours. “Next time, it was a hundred tamales, and again we sold out,” says Paredes.

These days, under Ibañez’s careful supervision, a small group of employees makes about 4,000 from-scratch tamales a week, as well as tortillas, salsas and gorditas, from their Manor kitchen. The tamales are sold at 14 markets and in several cafés around Central Texas. Still, the pair are determined to own their own retail operation and, eventually, a nationwide franchise with mobile pushcarts that Paredes has already designed. What will remain unchanged, however, is the motivation to

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Uchepos are fresh-corn tamales from the state of Michoacán.

This dish is a common sight in my hometown of Xochimilco, a borough of Mexico City, where cornfields are plentiful.

5 c. fresh corn kernels ¼ c. milk 1 T. sugar 2 T. unsalted butter 2 T. sour cream 1 t. sea salt 12 corn husks (plus a few extra), either fresh and stripped of silks or dried and soaked for 2 hours

Place all the ingredients except the husks into a mixer and blend into a thick batter with a consistency between pancake batter and bread dough. If it’s not thick enough, add more corn kernels.

Immediately spread about 2 to 3 tablespoons of the batter onto the middle of the smooth side of the corn husk (the mixture will separate if it’s left for any period of time). Wrap the corn husk around the batter like an envelope with one end open. Repeat with the remaining corn husks and filling. Place the tamales in a steamer basket with the open end standing up, then steam them for 1 hour on high heat. They are ready when the corn husk and the tamale separate easily. Serve with queso fresco, sour cream and salsa.

These days, under Ibañez’s careful supervision, a small group of employees makes about 4,000 from-scratch tamales a week, as well as tortillas, salsas and gorditas, from their Manor kitchen. celebrate and share their Mexican culinary heritage not only with their children, but also with their adopted community.

“The thing that drives me here is the people and the friendship that they show to us,” Paredes says. “A couple of guys who come frequently tell me, ‘I came early just to buy your tamales.’ When they tell me that, I feel that commitment to them. I can’t fail by doing less quality, because they are waking up thinking that they are going to be having a piece of what we are doing. That is what drives me here, really and truly.” eet Paredes and Ibañez and taste the love every Saturday at the SFC M Farmers’ Market–Downtown. For more information on the Gardener’s Feast tamales and where to find them, visit thegardenersfeast.com

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Edible Traditions

Tamales y Tradición

Photography by Nuri Vallbona

b y La u r a C ottam Saj b e l

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teaming pork, chiles, beans and masa (dough) permeate the humid air with the distinctive aroma of Mexican cooking while animated chatter and the clatter of many spoons and bowls play backdrop. Welcome to the tamalada—a gathering of family and friends to make tamales that is ubiquitous in Central Texas, the Southwest and, of course, Mexico.

The custom of assembling tamales, a time- and resource-intensive task, stretches back for centuries. Some sources trace the humble tamal (the singular form of tamales in Spanish) to the ancient Maya, who prepared tamales for feasts as far back as 1200 BC. The tamalada—often held during the holidays—has evolved into a much-anticipated opportunity to renew old acquaintances, share gossip, argue good-naturedly about recipes and pass along stories of la familia. Austin sisters Rosie Peña and Bella Aviles, who were raised in Tuluca, Mexico, point out that tamales are made to celebrate special occasions when families come together. “Tamales feed people really well,” says Aviles. “We make huge piles of tamales without cooking anything else.”

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According to Minerva Camarena-Skeith, an Austin community organizer who grew up in Laredo, tamales were a treat in her family made only on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. “It is expensive,” she says.

“You have to kill the pig, cook the meat, get the chiles and the corn husks, make the masa. It is lots of work! The gathering can include family and neighbors, but is usually a lot of women…though some come just to sit and talk. You have some talking and some spreading,” she recalls fondly. “When you are young,” she explains, “you learn how to hold the spoon to spread the masa on the corn husks, the hojas. Later, someone always fixes them for you.”

Camarena-Skeith’s family used her grandmother’s recipe. “I have that recipe now, but part of it was made up as Abuelita (little grandmother) was doing it—tasting the masa and the guisada (pork stew used for filling),” she says. “We still long for our grandmother’s sense of taste; everyone still says, they’re not Abuelita’s.”

Significant to each tamalada are the rituals passed along through participation and word of mouth. The Aviles sisters talk about kneading the

…tamales were a treat in [my] family made only on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. “It is expensive. You have to kill the pig, cook the meat, get the chiles and the corn husks, make the masa. It is lots of work!” —Minerva Camarena-Skeith masa a long time until it is very soft, then leaving it for two hours to allow the ingredients to set. Yet, in the Camarena tradition, the masa is beat by hand to a specific consistency. “You have to get it to be plumitas, like little feathers,” Carmarena-Skeith insists. “Whip it, whip it, whip it. Then, throw in the ground cornmeal and add meat broth and knead into it until the dough is fluffy!” She laughs when remembering hosting her first tamalada, during her first year of marriage. “All my helpers disappeared!” she says with a grin. “[My husband] was asking, can’t we just use the blender?”

Teresa Carrera-Paprota, an Austin teacher and artist reared on a cattle ranch in the Valley near Rio Grande City, loved working with what she refers to as “all the ladies” (her mother, aunts, sister and nieces) to make tamales. Because her grandfather owned Twin Palms Food Center, a market where the family sold meat from their ranch, their lard did not come from a box or a can. “My mom would melt the fat from a pig and use that to mix into the masa and I always thought that was really gross,” she says with a laugh. “But the tamales tasted so good!”

Many experienced tamal makers agree that you must feel the dough with your hands to get the proper consistency. Securing the proper masa ingredients is a must, as well. During tamal season, cooks stand in line at the stores that sell both prepared masa and the dry cornmeal for concocting masa at home. Some traditionalists feel compelled to travel to their favorite source—even as far away as ancestral hometowns—to get the right ingredients. “We always got our masa from a tortilla factory near the San Francisco airport,” says Liz Peña (no relation to Rosie), a UT professor who grew up in Northern California. “And you might have to order it in advance. You can use the masa harina (dry cornmeal), but it tastes so much better if you can get the freshly ground corn…it would still be warm.”

Rosie Peña and Bella Aviles speak reverently about the flavor of true Mexican tamales. They still purchase maíz (corn) from Mexico, from which they make nixtamal (corn treated to make hominy)—processing it themselves by adding a handful of caustic slaked lime to a big bucket of kernels. The corn is ground in a huge molino (food mill) and cooked until the masa is very soft. The hojas are reserved to wrap the tamales.

Corn husks must be soaked, then the masa spread onto the smooth side of the husk—“feel the husk with your fingers,” several people caution—otherwise, the dough will stick when the tamal is eventually unwrapped for eating. There are hotly debated opinions about which utensils work best to spread, how thick to spread the masa and how much space to leave at the edges of the husk for wrapping. For the guiso (pork from the stew), some advocate pulling the meat, while others like grind-

ing. “In my house,” Camarena-Skeith declares as she gently pokes fun at the conflict, “the meat is shredded very nicely, into small pieces—no grinding!”

Cooking methods vary, as well. Since Camarena-Skeith’s grandmother didn’t have a steamer, she arranged little wooden sticks into a tepee around the tejolote (pestle) of her molcajete (mortar) and tied the sticks together at the top with a twisted strand of corn husk. Then she stacked prepared tamales against the sticks at an angle, layer upon layer, in a big aluminum pan. Instead of water for steaming, she used a bit of meat broth in the bottom of the pan, so that there was no waste. Liz Peña offers an alternative in which tomatillos are stewed and that juice is used to steam the tamales.

Each tamalada is so laden with custom that a popular play, performed annually in San Antonio, parodies the differences between various rituals. In Las Nuevas Tamaleras, three friends begin their tamalada with lit candles—invoking the guidance of their abuelitas’ spirits. Unseen by the modern generation hosting the gathering, the ghosts of the grandmothers appear onstage and proceed to quarrel, with the audience privy to the amusing commentary.

In Austin, tamaladas are popular community-building events. Travis Heights Elementary School has hosted its annual tamalada in December for nearly two decades. The idea for the event came about in 1993, when longtime teacher Carlos Gonzales, now retired, talked with thenPTA president Ray Lopez about the tamal fund-raisers he remembered from his youth at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. Parents, the principal at the time, Carola Garcia-Lempke, and teachers like Isabel Contreras and Ysabel Peña (no relation to Liz or Rosie), established an event that they hoped would bring together both Spanish speakers and English speakers.

With recipes from those original participants and ingredients donated by neighborhood restaurants and groceries, volunteers gather in the school cafeteria each year to assemble approximately 1,200 tamales.

Mrs. Contreras, who has taught at Travis Heights for 31 years, invariably ends up in the cafeteria kitchen doctoring the donated masa and bickering cheerfully about consistency with Mrs. Peña and cafeteria manager Norma Bautista. “In the beginning, we cooked our own meat, cooked our own chiles and made our own masa by hand,” recalls Contreras.

“We finally gave in and started using modern equipment like the big mixer in the cafeteria.”

Michelle Lehman, who has volunteered at the tamalada the past four years, describes the requisite colorful bandannas and aprons in the cafeteria kitchen and reminisces affectionately about the mamacitas (little

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mamas)—parents, grandparents and teachers—in the kitchen debating proper techniques and ingredients. Though some believe masa should be simply ground cornmeal and lard (or manteca, which Lehman confides sounds more appetizing), others add garlic and chiles to the mixture.

Soon, corn husks that have been soaking are drained and brought out on baking trays, and big silver bowls of beans, pork guisada and jalapeñocheese mixture are set out. There is always a last-minute dash to the restaurant-supply store for more spoons, though some volunteers bring their favorite spreading tools.

As with all tamaladas, participants work together toward a common goal, get to know each other better and share the smells, sights, textures and tastes as they become ingrained as memories. And the tradition “allows those with more experience to help others learn,” adds CamarenaSkeith, (former Travis Heights PTA president). “[Learning] from someone who knows different skills changes the relationship. It allows people to see and respect each other in a new way.” ravis Heights Elementary will be selling their finished tamales during T the Tamalada Festival on December 8, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

(Call ahead to reserve your dozen!)

2010 Alameda Dr. 512-414-4495

Tips for Making Tamales Adapted from Sunset Mexican Cook Book, edited by Marjorie Ray, and instructions from Edith Rios and Isabel Contreras

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• If using dried corn husks (available at grocery or specialty stores) soak them in warm water until pliable—2 hours or longer. Fresh corn husks may be simply washed and cleaned of silks.

• Select a wide, damp husk and lay it flat—smooth-side up. Spread ap-

proximately 2 tablespoons of masa from the middle to three edges of the husk, leaving 1 to 2 inches of husk visible at one narrower edge (this edge will become the top, to be folded down at the end of the process).

If one husk is not wide enough, lay another husk partially beneath the first and use masa to finish making a rectangle of about 4 by 5 inches (although tamal size varies by region and personal preference).

• Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling into the center of the spread masa. Roll or fold the right side over to the center of the filling, then fold the left side over the filling. The rough side of the husk is now on the outside of the tamal. Fold the top end of the husk (where it is not covered with masa) down and under the tamal. Lay the tamal fold-side down to keep it closed.

• To cook the tamales, use a large kettle or pot with a rack set inside to

keep the tamales above the liquid. Fill the pot with 2 inches of water or broth. Stack the tamales on the rack—arranged loosely enough so that the steam can circulate. Cover the kettle and boil gently over medium heat (cooking time varies according to the number of tamales, but this will usually take 45 to 60 minutes).

•

o test for doneness, remove a tamal from the top, and one from the T center, of the stack. Tamales are fully cooked when the masa dough is firm, no longer sticks to the husk and has no raw, doughy taste.

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Masa 1

Masa 2

Courtesy of Liz Peña

Courtesy of Liz Peña

This recipe comes from Eduvijes (Edu), a family friend, who makes the most wonderful jalapeño and cheese tamales. Every year, on special occasions, we wait for Edu’s tamales and fight over the ones that contain the chili and cheese. When we were growing up in Fremont, California, our family got together with the Olivares family, who lived down the street from us, to make tamales for Christmas. We children mainly played among ourselves and sometimes helped by spreading the masa on the corn husks, filling them and folding them over. We’d make several dozen and steam them in a gigantic tamal pot. I remember that we’d make both red and green tamales. The red ones were beef, and the green ones were pork— they were both delicious.

Twenty pounds of masa yields enough for 100 big tamales or about 500 little ones. For the filling, you’ll need about 12 pounds of pork or 5 to 6 chickens. Boil either the chicken or pork and reserve the broth. The recipe doesn’t say, but you can add an onion and some garlic cloves to the broth to flavor the meat a bit.

This is my great-grandmother’s recipe. It’s really similar to Edu’s but has proportionally more lard. This recipe makes three electric stand mixer bowls’ worth of dough, using a little over a pound of masa each round.

4 lb. lard 20 lb. freshly ground, unprepared masa (available at tortillerias such as El Milagro, Tortilleria Rio Grande, El Lago and Fiesta Tortillas in Austin) Pork broth 10 T. baking powder Salt, to taste

3¹/³ lb. (approximately) freshly ground, unprepared masa (available at tortillerias such as El Milagro, Tortilleria Rio Grande, El Lago and Fiesta Tortillas in Austin) Pork broth (or chicken or beef) 3 T. baking powder 2 T. salt 1¹/³ lb. (approximately) lard

Place the masa in a big bowl. Add the broth, baking powder and salt.

Begin to mix, then add the lard and mix for one hour, or until the masa is fluffy. (The trick here is that a pinch will float in a glass of water.) If using a heavy-duty mixer, you probably won’t have to mix as long—more like 10 minutes. Do not take shortcuts here; this is a critical step that greatly affects the taste and texture of the tamales. After the masa becomes fluffy, let it rest for about 1 hour.

Pork Guisada Courtesy of Rosie Peña and Bella Aviles

Melt the lard one day before preparing the masa. Heat it until it comes nearly to a boil then let it cool. The next day, place the masa in a giant bowl. Add the broth, baking powder and salt. Begin to mix, then add the lard and mix for one hour, or until the masa is fluffy. (The trick here is that a pinch will float in a glass of water.) If using a heavy-duty mixer, you probably won’t have to mix as long—more like 10 minutes. Do not take shortcuts here; this is a critical step that greatly affects the taste and texture of the tamales. After the masa becomes fluffy, let it rest for about 1 hour.

Place a 5- to 8-pound pork shoulder, or similar cut, into a deep pot and cover with water. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cook until very tender—at least 2 to 2½ hours. For sabor (flavor), sauté together chiles guajillos (guajillo chilies), garlic, onion, clavos (cloves), comino (cumin), pepper, a little oregano and a tiny bit of cinnamon. Once the mixture is cooked and cooled, blend and strain it to eliminate chunky pieces. Stir it into the cooked and shredded meat with chiles rojos (red chilies) as filling for tamales.

Chile-Cheese Filling

few minutes. Peel off the blackened skin, slice each chile lengthwise and remove the seeds. Slice the chiles into long strips. Sauté with 1 chopped onion, some garlic and 1 or 2 diced tomatoes (if you want it very spicy, add a couple of roasted jalapeños to the mix). When filling the tamales, sprinkle 2 to 3 tablespoons of shredded cheese (a mix of white and yellow cheeses or Chihuahua cheese is good) on the spread masa and then spoon some of the chile mixture onto the cheese before wrapping.

Courtesy of Edith Rios (Travis Heights dual-language teacher) Roast 8 Hatch, Anaheim or poblano chiles over an open flame, or under a broiler, until blackened. Place them in a plastic bag, sprinkle in a few drops of water then close the bag to allow the chiles to steam for a

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Capital Area Food bank

’Tis The Season b y J ohn T u r ne r

S

hoppers aren’t the only ones feeling the squeeze of rising food prices. Here at the food bank, we rely on public and private partnerships to ensure that 48,000 Central Texans are nourished every week. For the past three years, we’ve been working at full warehouse operational capacity—distributing, on average, two million pounds of food every month. This year, while the need remains the same, we’ve taken three big hits to our food sources, and our shelves have recently become 75 percent empty.

First, in the summer—usually our busiest time of the year, which always reduces our inventory—our largest single supply of food, from the USDA commodities program, was down 35 percent. Second, the worldwide demand for food has increased and the drought and severe weather elsewhere have reduced the supply of food. (Consequently, as the cost of food continues to increase, our dollars don’t go as far—just like your pocketbook at home.) And third, the large quantities of food we’ve traditionally received directly from producers and manufacturers or rescued from retailers have also been reduced because of a tightening in the business climate. These factors have combined to create a perfect storm of continued high need, yet less food to distribute to hungry Central Texas families. We’re trying to fill the shelves by purchasing more food and relying on food drives and donations, but it’s a big hole to fill.

The good news is that we see some help coming over the horizon. The USDA is purchasing more food that will become available to the foodbank network over the coming months. We’ve had some success unearthing new food suppliers and we’ll continue to work hard developing new food-sourcing partnerships. And while our struggling economy means that some people are less able to give, many in the Central Texas community always generously step up during the upcoming season of goodwill with food and funds.

From all of us at the Capital Area Food Bank, thank you for your support. Know that every dollar or can of food donated helps, and your gift will help fill our shelves and put food on tables. ’Tis the season to help, and together we can turn hungry holidays into happy holidays. o find out more about the Capital Area Food Bank and how you can T help, visit austinfoodbank.org

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A Little Sour b y K at e Pay n e • P h o t o g r a p h y b y J o A n n S a n ta n g e l o

L

ast fall, my small garden was fraught with neglect after book-touring events took me everywhere, it seems, except my backyard. Thus, my delight in discovering a head of cabbage tucked within the rogue tangle was immense and deserving of a ceremony. I chose a celebration of sauerkraut.

I set to the task of digging up my family recipe by dumping out the contents of the tattered manila envelope my late grandfather prepared for me when I was 10. I hoped there would be some reference to foods consumed or made stashed somewhere among the exhaustive charts of names, birth and death dates and cities of origin for the Payne/Hansson line. Instead of recipes for fermented foods, though, I discovered that my great-great-grandfather was exactly as tall as I am the day he enlisted in the Union army in 1863, and that both sides of my paternal grandmother’s parents had families from Germany. If there’s German in me, there is certainly sauerkraut somewhere in there, too.

I called my grandmother and grilled her on sauerkraut and her experience eating it growing up. “Well, we ate it with mashed potatoes…you know, with butter…and sauerkraut and pork,” she said. “My dad was a sauerkraut guy so my mother made it all the time.” Then my grandmother confessed that she’d never made it herself—apparently my grandfather was not a sauerkraut guy.

My mom certainly never made it, either; she hates sauerkraut.

Therefore, I turned to fermentation guru Sandor Katz for some suggestions. Now, after two generations of soured-cabbage quiet, our old friend is back—a tangible link to my ancestors sitting on the refrigerator shelf in a quart-size mason jar. And thanks to our CSA program’s turnip abundance, I got to experiment with another kraut-like slaw called sauerruben.

Both sauerkraut and sauerruben can obviously be made in larger quantities than those below, though I’ve found that first forays into newly revived foods—whether from deep within our ancestry or just from a generation or two ago—are best made in smaller batches. It can be a real bummer to end up with a gallon of something that doesn’t captivate a house full of modern palates. A single pint jar of sauerruben was plenty for this household of two—one of whom was never quite sold on soured turnips. Both of these are excellent served over a hot dog and drizzled with mustard.

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eat well.

11th & lamar 512-482-8868

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Small-Batch Sauerkraut Makes 1 pint

INTRODUCING

1 small head of cabbage (about 1 lb.) ½ t. dill seeds 5 black peppercorns 2 juniper berries 2 t. kosher salt

Core and finely shred the cabbage into long strands. Add the dill, peppercorns and juniper berries to a wide-mouth quartsize mason jar. Pack the cabbage into the jar—sprinkling the salt evenly throughout the packing. Condense the salted cabbage by firmly pushing it into the bottom of the jar. Weight the cabbage with a 12-ounce jelly jar (an 8-ounce jar will also work, but taller jars work best). Place a heavy book on top of the jar weight. Within 5 minutes, the salt and the combined weights will begin extracting moisture from the cabbage to create a brine. Let the cabbage sit for 2 hours then remove the book, but keep the jelly jar in place. All of the cabbage should now be submerged in the brine. Cover the whole thing with a large piece of cheesecloth or muslin bag to keep fruit flies and other things from settling in the jar. Store the jar, unrefrigerated, out of direct sunlight in a cool place for 7 to 14 days. Assess the progress of the jar daily—skimming off any foamy residue and bits of slaw that might float to the top and replacing the jar after each skimming. The sauerkraut is ready when it’s soured to taste preference. Remove the jelly jar, peppercorns and juniper berries, clean any residual foam, transfer to a pint jar and place in the refrigerator. Sauerkraut will keep for many months in the refrigerator.

Sauerruben Makes 1 pint 1 lb. purple-top or other variety turnips ¼ t. cumin seeds ¼ t. coriander seeds 5 black peppercorns 2 t. kosher salt

Remove the top and root end of the turnips and wash well, but do not peel. Shred the turnips and follow the method for sauerkraut above.

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Behind the vines

Don Pullum b y T e r ry T h o m p s o n - A n d e r s o n • p h o t o g r a p h y b y S a n d y W i l s o n

T

he journey from the theater to the vineyard has been an interesting one for Texas winemaker Don Pullum. Since he’d always had a passion for literature and a flair for the dramatic it was natural for him to pursue a career in the theater as a young man.

His plan was to get some theater experience under his belt then return to his hometown of Corpus Christi and start a small regional theater. He apprenticed as an actor at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, but knowing that he would need to learn the business end of running a theater, he later went to work in the company’s business office. There, he found the financial picture of operating a repertory company to be quite dismal and began to rethink his future.

Don had married his high school sweetheart, Diana, shortly after graduating from Harvard. After deciding that the theater was not his future, he got a job as a teller at a savings and loan in Waltham, Massachusetts. All was well until the apartment that the couple lived in and dearly loved began to convert to condos. Since they couldn’t afford the asking price, they decided to move to Houston, where Diana was hired as the director of compensation at Continental Airlines. Don found a position as a commercial banking teller, and the couple took advantage of Diana’s travel perks—making many trips to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, where Don expanded his knowledge of wine.

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Don eventually worked his way up to the service-manager position at the bank where he met his wine mentor: the iconic Houston restaurateur Camille Berman, owner of the legendary Maxim’s—the quintessential spot for business lunches and dinners in 1980s Houston. After meeting Don over banking business, Mr. Berman became a friend, and every meal that Don enjoyed at Maxim’s would always include a wine from Berman’s extensive wine cellar (as well as discussion on the merits of the wine). During this time, Don began exploring the idea of growing grapes. He planted a few rows of Alexandria vines and made his first wine from a winemaking kit.

The couple next ventured to Washington, D.C., where Diana went to work for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Don entered the world of venture capital. But like many native Texans, the couple always intended to return to their home state, and when Diana was offered a position in Dallas, they headed back to Texas.

Now Don’s dreams of making wine were moving to the forefront.

Eager to get off the corporate track and into the dirt, he began a search for just the right property. Eventually, he came across a piece of property in the Hickory Sandstone soil of Mason County, which he bought in 1998, and began planting his Akashic Vineyard. Don started with grenache vines that, in their third year, produced four and a half tons

of fruit. He sold the grapes to Jim Johnson at Alamosa Wine Cellars.

Scott Haupert and Manny Silerio had also recently moved to Mason County and opened a taqueria that became an instant success.

In fact, it was so successful that they needed additional parking, and purchased the building next door. Don discovered that Haupert and Silerio were his neighbors across the road from the vineyard and began talking to them about starting a boutique winery in the newly purchased building. The pair liked the idea and Sandstone Cellars Winery was born.

In 2004, Don became a commercial winemaker with the release of the Sandstone Cellars 2004 Syrah, a wine that won a considerable amount of praise. Don has been the winemaker at Sandstone for eight years now, and critics agree that the wines get better each year.

Soon, Ken Maxwell, owner of Fredericksburg’s popular Torre di Pietra winery on Wine Road 290, approached Don about doing some temporary consultant winemaking (a consultant winemaker offers a complete service—winemaking, business, marketing), then Joe King, who was in the process of starting Junction Rivers Winery in Junction, hired him to develop his wines. Don designed the wineproduction facilities, sourced grapes for the first releases then made the wine. The Junction Rivers Winery’s wines have been heartily embraced by the local community.

Finally, brothers Carl and Darren Money wanted to start a winery in Pontotoc (a Chickasaw word that means “land of hanging grapes”), and they, too, called Don. Pontotoc Vineyard released their first Doncrafted wine, the 2011 Tempranillo, in August of 2012. The wine was included in the Grand Tasting at the 2012 Texas Sommelier Conference in Dallas.

Don had envisioned a wine culture in Mason County since he first planted his vineyard. It certainly appears his dream is becoming a reality; Mason County grapes are being touted for their excellent quality and now there’s a new regional wine trail composed of Sandstone Cellars Winery, Junction Rivers Winery, Pontotoc Vineyard, plus a couple of new wineries not yet opened. The best news of all for Don, however, is that the trail will include his own winery, Akashic Vineyard Winery, set to open in Pontotoc next year.

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Noteworthy Vintages 2011 Pontotoc Vineyard Estate Tempranillo: This is a stellar wine for the first offering from this small winery. The bouquet promises great taste to come with aromas of red currant, spice, black tea, toasted oak and dust. On the palate it shows medium body with a silky mouthfeel, with complex flavors of currants, black cherry, cola, cacao nibs and coffee bean, with figs and dusty tannins on the finish.

2011 Junction Rivers Winery Cabernet Franc: This wine exhibits a floral bouquet with aromas of black currant, forest floor, toast, fig and cucumber. It has medium body on the palate, with flavors of wild cherry, plum skins, black pepper, licorice, fig and vanilla.

2010 Torre di Pietra Ruby Port: This port has a rich bouquet of mulberry, elderberry and an aroma of spice. On the palate, the elderberry and mulberry follow through, along with peppercorn, spice and sweet and sticky. The mouthfeel is smooth and satisfying.

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Green Corn Project

in the Garden b y D av id H u e b e l

W From Farm to Pharmacy North 219-9499 • South 444-8866 • Central 459-9090 • Westlake 327-8877

PeoplesRx.com

orking alone in a garden is such a peaceful, joyfully meditative activity—even when doing mundane tasks like watering or pulling weeds. Working in a garden with others is equally rewarding, though in a much different way. Multiple gardeners tend to share stories, recipes and gardening tips—the conversation can turn to almost anything. This is true whether the group is made up of family, friends or strangers (although people don’t stay strangers for very long).

Through Green Corn Project (GCP), I’ve had the opportunity to garden with many interesting people over the years—two of whom, Liz and Wayne Kesterson, have been volunteering with GCP almost since its inception in 1998. Liz completed her training to become a Travis County master gardener about 10 years ago and discovered GCP while looking for community service hours to complete her certification. A couple of years later, her husband, Wayne, followed suit.

The GCP mission of educating people on sustainable gardening and bringing healthy food to the table resonated with Liz, a retired physical therapist and Wayne, a retired HR manager for a large corporation. “We wanted to help people and participate in something we enjoy,” says Wayne. “For us, it was more about helping than learning, but for GCP gardeners and volunteers new to gardening, it’s also a great way to learn.”

Another GCP volunteer I’ve had the pleasure of working and gardening with is Tara Maxwell, the managing editor of Acres U.S.A.—a national, sustainable-agriculture publication geared toward small family farms and ranches. Maxwell’s love of agriculture started when she was a kid. “We lived in a trailer on a hog farm in Williamsburg, Virginia, while my dad attended law school,” she says. “He helped on the farm and we had a large garden and raised chickens. I remember my mom making yogurt from scratch.” Later, Maxwell spent a number of years as a journalist for several publications in Virginia, though her love of agriculture never waned. “When I saw the opportunity at Acres, it seemed like the perfect fit,” she says. She made the move to Austin two years ago. “I can’t garden in the apartment where I live, so Green Corn Project is a great way to get my hands dirty and participate in the Austin food movement. GCP is a reflection of what’s going on across the country with a move toward knowledge and awareness of not only sustainability but a return to self-sustainability. We’re in a time where gardening is an act of subversion in our industrial-agriculture society.”

I’ll continue to spend many mornings in the peaceful solitude of my own garden. However, I will take every opportunity to get out and garden with others—hearing stories and spreading the joys and benefits of growing part of what we eat by participating in some of the many food-focused, grassroots organizations in Austin such as Green Corn Project. or more information on Green Corn Project and how to get involved, F visit greencornproject.org

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La Casita de buen sabor

Ponche B y l u cinda h u t s on

I

t just didn’t seem like Christmas. For reasons unfathomable to my youngest sister and me, a dark cloud hung over our family and the mood was not merry. Always fearless behind the wheel, my sister “borrowed” grandma’s white Cadillac DeVille and we headed across the border from El Paso.

Juárez was a much kinder place in 1970.

We joined the revelry of the fiesta de Navidad, or Christmas party, at our housekeeper Hermila Contreras’s home (along with at least 40 members of her family, including lots of tots scurrying underfoot chased by a yapping Chihuahua). Hermila’s mother, Benina, was a wonderful cook, and we eagerly filled our bowls with steaming pozole laden with hominy and chunks of chicken in a chili-spiced broth.

Benina also made sopes—little fried masa cakes with pinched edges to hold a variety of savory fillings—mounded with frijoles refritos con queso, pork carnitas doused in red chili salsa or, my favorite, papas con rajas: mashed potatoes flavored with strips of roasted green chili.

But it was the comforting scent of something sweet and spicy wafting from a big clay olla (pot) on the stove that delighted me. Within, a stew of exotic fruits, cinnamon, citrus and spice simmered into a fragrant ponche (punch). Tío Mauro Manuel ladled it into mugs, along with a hefty splash of tequila reposado for the adults, while the children sipped it unspiked and sucked on the sugarcane stir sticks. Some of us escaped the joyful frenzy of the small casita and sat outside on the patio in our coats, warm mugs in hand, under stars sparkling in the sky. It was a Christmas Eve I’ll never forget.

A few years later, while living alone in a fishing village on La Palma, in the Canary Islands, I re-created the punch. This Spanish archipelago shares customs with Spain, and as in Mexico, ponche is a seasonal tradition. Having joined neighbors on Christmas Eve for pit-roasted cabrito (kid goat) seasoned with garlic and rosemary, papas arrugadas (saltcrusted new potatoes that wrinkle when their cooking water evaporates) dunked in salsa romesco (a garlicky red pepper and almond sauce) and, of course, the requisite local vino tinto, I wanted to share something special with them in return. I found most of the ingredients at the local market to make a big pot of ponche.

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The tradition of serving Ponche Navideño is one that Spanish-speaking families (and others who have tasted it) eagerly anticipate annually.

First introduced by the Spaniards to their colonies centuries ago, ponche remains a favorite custom in many countries. It’s not just for Christmas, though. Ponche is a favorite street-vendor libation served on chilly nights in many Mexican and Spanish towns throughout the fall and winter and popular during the nighttime fiestas that follow the season’s solemn daytime religious ceremonies. It’s also beloved on Día de los Reyes (King’s Day, January 6), when children receive their gifts.

You’ll find ingredients for ponche in local Hispanic grocery stores, many supermarkets and pulgas (flea markets) in the winter. I remember joining others at Fiesta who had come to hand select exotic fruits and spices, long stalks of sugarcane, crimson jamaica (hibiscus) flowers and cones of brown piloncillo sugar for this yearly ritual. I asked them to share their ponche recipes with me, though it was simply una cuchara, un poquito or una copita of ingredients (“a spoonful of this,” “a little of that” or “a little cupful”).

Once, in my best Spanish, I told a viejita (old Mexican woman) as she frugally picked a handful of fruit for her Christmas punch, “Voy a hechar tecolotes en mi ponche.” The little woman jumped back in horror. Other women around us broke out in merry laughter. I had told her I was going to put owls in my punch! I meant to say tejocotes, the name for the small, hard, black-speckled orange-ish fruits with several big, hard seeds—a highly sought-after seasonal ingredient for ponche (and at eight dollars a pound, quite a splurge!). They come from various species of Mexican hawthorn trees and taste rather like crab apples, although tejocotes are usually about half the size. Tart and mealy until cooked, they produce pectin, which naturally thickens the ponche.

Though my ponche recipe calls for many ingredients, it’s easy to make, and I’ve offered a choice of substitutions. Here’s to hoping this festive ponche will become one of your family’s cherished traditions, as it is for mine, to pass on for generations.

Traditional Mexican ponche Serves about 25 Serve ponche from mugs and spike with your favorite tequila or mezcal— or a splash of both! (Brandy and rum are other options.)

1 sugarcane stalk about 3 ft. long, cut into segments 3 qt. water 2 8-oz. cones of piloncillo, or 1 lb. brown sugar 6 3-in. sticks Mexican canela (cinnamon) 2 t. whole allspice berries 1 t. whole cloves 2 t. anise seeds 4 fresh allspice or bay leaves (optional) Split vanilla pod or splash of Mexican vanilla (optional) 6 stalks lemongrass, rough outer leaves removed and discarded, cut into 3-in. pieces and slightly mashed (optional) 10 large tamarind pods, brittle shell peeled away and fibrous veins removed and discarded ½–¾ lb. tejocotes (see notes) 2 crisp red apples, cut into bite-size chunks 1 or 2 membrillos (quinces) or 2 crisp Asian pears, cut into bite-size chunks 1 lb. guayabas (guavas) or assorted dried fruits (see notes) 1 c. golden raisins 12 plump prunes ¾ c. dried jamaica flowers (tropical hibiscus) 2 qt. fruit nectar (such as guava, tamarind or unfiltered apple juice) 3 oranges, sliced Agave syrup, to taste 1 bottle or more tequila reposado or añejo and/or mezcal

With a sharp knife, trim away the tough peel of the sugarcane segments. Cut each segment into pieces about the size of celery sticks, yielding about 25 pieces total, and set aside. (See notes.)

Bring the water to boil in a large stockpot. Add the piloncillo, cinnamon sticks and spices and lower the heat slightly. Stir occasionally until the piloncillo has melted—about 10 minutes. Add the sugarcane, lemongrass, tamarind, tejocote and remaining fresh or dried fruits and flowers (except the oranges) and 1½ quarts of the fruit nectar. Simmer for about 1 hour, until aromatic and slightly thickened—adding the oranges toward the end of cooking. Add more nectar or water as needed.

Turn off the heat and, preferably, let ponche sit, covered, for several hours (or overnight). Reheat at a gentle simmer then ladle, piping hot, into mugs, along with some of the fruit and a piece of sugarcane. Let guests add agave syrup, tequila or mezcal to taste.

Notes: Mexicans usually drop tejocotes whole into the punch and spit out the seeds. Substitute other tart fruits like crab apples when tejocotes aren’t available. If you are lucky, you’ll find sugarcane already cut into sections. You’ll also find canned sugarcane segments and lemongrass in Asian markets, as well as tamarind—the tart, sticky pulp which adds rich flavor and color to the punch. Or how about some nontraditional ingredients? Add fresh or dried cranberries, dried cherries or apricots or kumquats. Sometimes I’ll add some crushed dried red cayenne or fresh habaneros to liven it up!

Terry Thompson Anderson, CCP www.thetexasfoodandwinegourmet.com 830-456-4393 • tta@beecreek.net

Punch recipe and some text courtesy of University of Texas Press, publisher of my book, ¡VIVA TEQUILA! Cocktails, Cooking, and Other Agave Adventures, due in the spring of 2013.

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Sustainable Food Center

Spread the Harvest

by Jess Guffey

F

resh fruits and vegetables from your own home, school or community garden are about the closest kind of food access there is. And though the number of food gardeners in the Austin area has soared in recent years, many individuals still face barriers when it comes to growing their own food—namely, acquiring the resources required to do so.

Enter Spread the Harvest, a unique gardening and food-sharing component of Sustainable Food Center’s (SFC) Grow Local program that empowers children and adults in Central Texas to grow healthy food for themselves and their families, and to share it with friends, neighbors and food pantries. Since its inception in 2001, Spread the Harvest has provided low-income gardeners with food-gardening materials and educational resources—including free seeds, seedlings, compost and classes (in English and Spanish). Currently, more than 10,000 individuals and families are participating in the program (at least 69 percent of these individuals are low-income), and in 2011, almost 6,000 meals were shared.

Many school-garden groups also participate in Spread the Harvest.

While the number of Austin school gardens has been rapidly multiplying (SFC has assisted with more than 130 school gardens in the Austin area), these garden projects rarely have built-in budgets, and often have challenges attaining resources. With the help of Spread the Harvest, thousands of Austin schoolchildren can now learn, at an early age, about the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

Jordan Elementary School, for example, serves a predominantly lowincome and minority population—meaning that many of the students are considered at risk for developing diet-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes. Jordan has received SFC resources and support through their participation in Spread the Harvest, as well as SFC’s Sprouting Healthy Kids partnership. The assistance has helped Jordan start a school garden and grow it into a vibrant community space.

“My primary interest in getting involved was because of my son,” says Silvia Moreno, a Jordan Elementary parent involved in the school garden. “The doctor told me he had early signs of diabetes, and I was worried for his health. I learned how to eat healthier and it was fun because we learned how to live in the community with other people—kids and adults together.”

In addition to providing free gardening resources, Spread the Harvest also strives to help gardeners share their harvest with food pantries, soup kitchens, senior centers and other facilities that help children and adults find meals. Because these facilities are often short on fresh produce, homegrown fruits and vegetables are much needed and always appreciated.

SFC plans to expand Spread the Harvest services even further upon completion of our new center in spring 2013. We’ll be able to offer additional resources year-round, and provide more educational and community-building opportunities via the SFC teaching garden and the St. David’s Foundation community garden. With the generous support of the Austin community, we look forward to empowering even more individuals and families by improving their access to nutritious, affordable food.

For more information, visit sustainablefoodcenter.org

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EAT WILD

Foraged Pemmican b y A m y C r owe l l

W

hen Europeans first came to Texas, the Tonkawas were the major Native American group that resided in our area. They hunted many things such as buffalo, deer, rabbit and turkey, and in lean times, skunk, opossum and a variety of bugs. They relied on foraged plants throughout the year, though, and migrated from river bottoms to high ground to take advantage of seasonal harvests from berry or fruit patches. And though the men hunted and the women were the primary foragers and food preparers, the essential cooperation between hunter and gatherer was instrumental to survival.

In the fall, the Tonkawas gathered acorns, mesquite beans and pecans.

Acorns had to be cracked, ground into nut meal then soaked in water to leach out bitter tannins before they could be used in breads or other dishes. Mesquite trees were more common in South and West Texas, but the beans were used as a minor food here in Central Texas. Pecans were one of the most important foraged foods, eventually becoming valuable as a trade item as settlers arrived. Prickly pear fruits, or tunas, and wild plums, blackberries and grapes were also commonly eaten. Tunas were even dried into fruit leather, stored and eaten throughout the year.

Pemmican The Tonkawas, like most Native American groups, made a valuable, high-energy food called pemmican. Originally a word for rendered fat, pemmican quickly spread from group to group and evolved into a highly nutritious, calorie-dense food that blended dried or raw meat, nut or grain meal, animal fat and dried fruits. In Central Texas, the recipe included dried venison mixed with seasonal foraged foods. Pemmican could be considered the original energy bar or trail mix and was

often used on long treks or outings because it was easy to pack and would keep for several months. It combines both hunted and gathered foods—making it the symbolic marriage between the two essential ways of eating.

Amy’s Vegetarian Pemmican Makes 8 to 10 muffin rounds I couldn’t bring myself to blend raw meat and lard, but I loved the idea of creating my own modern version of pemmican. I decided to create a wild, vegetarian version of the traditional food, and the result was more akin to a granola bar, delicious and very kid-friendly. ½ c. pecan meal (ground pecans) ¹/8 c. mesquite meal ½ c. rolled oats ¼ c. dried fruit (use almost any fruit—good wild fruits include mulberries, blackberries, agaritas and dried mountain grapes) 1 egg 3 T. melted butter 2 T. honey

Preheat the oven to 325°. Mix the pecan meal, mesquite meal, oats and fruit together in a bowl. Blend the egg, butter and honey in another bowl and slowly pour over the dry mixture, stirring well to completely coat the dry ingredients. Press the mixture into muffin tins—filling each cup about half-full. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool and store in airtight containers.

Home Grown Tastes Better! vegan, organic, local, gluten free with a gourmet taste.

1611 W 5th Street, Suite 165

512-477-2338 www.beetscafe.com

2730 S. Congress Ave • gonursery.com EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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Back of the House

Royers Round Top Cafe b y M a r s ha l l W r i g ht

T

he sleepy little town of Round Top sits halfway between Austin and Houston, just off Highway 159. Surrounded by bucolic pastureland, this town of less than 100 people might first appear to be lacking in action save for the twice-annual Round Top Antiques Fair. But located right in the middle of town is what some consider the epicenter of Texas cooking: Royers Round Top Cafe.

“That antique fair is wild,” says owner Bud “The Pieman” Royer from the front porch of the café his family has owned since 1987.

“Three seatings a day in the restaurant, every day, for two weeks.”

During the rest of the year, the café is open Thursday through Sunday, and the restaurant stays full most of the weekend. But don’t show

up expecting the standard chicken-fried-steak-and-gravy-type of Texas comfort food. Royers fans refer to the café as a country bistro serving gourmet food. Think hand-battered red snapper, grilled rack of lamb and decadent pastas—house specialties that boast “OMG!” on the menu “for what [your] taste buds say when you take a bite.”

Oh yeah, and pies.

The pies at Royers are so beloved that the family opened Royers Pie Haven across the street so that folks didn’t have to wait for a table at the café just to have pie and coffee. The famous pies are even available for purchase online, in case you need a fix after you’ve made it home.

Now that’s OMG. EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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Previous page: The dining room of Royers Round Top Cafe.

Opposite page: Shannon Hemmitt labels the daily pie selection at Royers Pie Haven; slicing lemon meringue pie; Chef Rick Steele mans the stove during lunch.

This page: The Cafe Burger in the window; Pie Chef Bobbi Dannar scoops the filling into the Junkberry pie.

Next page: Out front of Royers Round Top Cafe.

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The Directory ARTISANAL FOODS Antonelli’s Cheese Shop

We love cheese & everything that goes with it. Taste cut-to-order artisanal cheese for free in our shop, take a class, or host an event in our Cheese House.

512-531-9610 4220 Duval St. antonellischeese.com

Austin Gourmet Imports, LLC

We are an importer of many rare specialty Dutch-flavored Gouda-style cheeses made of wholesome natural ingredients.

Unique in flavor and appearance.

512-465-2265 5212 Cypress Ranch Blvd., Spicewood austingourmetimports.com

Blue Baker

Blue Baker is a local artisan bakery cafe featuring hand-crafted breads, pastries, sandwiches, soups, salads and stoneoven pizzas.

512-346-2583 10000 Research Blvd.

979-268-3096 800 University Dr., College Station 979-696-5055 201 Dominik Dr., College Station bluebaker.com

Broken Arrow Ranch

We field harvest truly wild animals for high-quality free-range venison, antelope and wild boar meat. Diamond H Ranch Quail from Bandera also available.

830-367-5875 3296 Junction Hwy., Ingram brokenarrowranch.com

Con ‘Olio Oils & Vinegars

A tasting bar & importer of the finest, freshest Extra Virgin Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars from around the world.

512-342-2344 10000 Research Blvd., Ste. 130 512-495-1559 215 Lavaca St. conolios.com

Coterie Market

Lick Ice Creams

Artisan ice creams celebrating the finest ingredients Texas has to offer! Handmade in small batches in our shop, locally sourced and seasonally inspired.

512-363-5622; 2032 S. Lamar Blvd. ilikelick.com

Blue Note Bakery

Perissos Vineyards

Red Oak Bakery

Spec’s Wine Spirits and Finer Foods

Blue Note Bakery is Austin’s premier custom cake shop, meticulously creating one-of-a-kind desserts for your special occasion.

512-797-7367 4201 S. Congress Ave., Ste. 101 bluenotebakery.com

Lone Star Foodservice

100% gluten free bakery using local, sustainable and organic ingredients.

Handmade and house-made artisanal sweets and savories.

830-214-6911 596 S. Castell Ave., New Braunfels redoakbakery.com

Noble Pig Sandwiches

Beverages

Lone Star Foodservice is a family-owned wholesale meat company, whose mission is to source and deliver the finest cuts of natural beef, pork and lamb to tables across Texas.

512-646-6218; 1403 E. 6th St. lonestarfood.com Local sandwich shop featuring housecured meats, made-from-scratch breads, condiments and pickles.

512-382-6248 11815 620 N., Ste. 4 noblepigaustin.com

Texas Olive Ranch

Fresh Texas-grown extra virgin olive oil from Carrizo Springs, infused olive oil & balsamic vinegar at farmers markets in Austin, SA, NB, Houston, Dallas.

877-461-4708 texasoliveranch.com

Thunder Heart Bison

We raise grassfed, free range Bison on our ranch in Dimmit County Texas outside Carrizo Springs. Our animals are raised and harvested with respect.

210-394-3977; 1104 E. 6th St. thunderheartbison.com

Tom’s Tabooley

Fresh Mediterranean Cafe since 1977.

Vegan to carnivore delights: falafels, gyros, hand-rolled dolmas, beer & wine. Live music. Open 7 days a week.

Family friendly.

512-479-7337; 2928 Guadalupe St. tomstabooley.com

Bakeries 2tarts Bakery & Catering

Coterie Market delivers the best of Austin’s food & goods to your door.

Small-batch, all-local products online.

Order anytime, 48 hour delivery Mon-Fri. 512-389-2887 coteriemarket.com

Baked goods, specialty cakes and catering all made from scratch. Locally sourced coffee and tea brewed with love. Located in Downtown New Braunfels.

830-387-4606 139 N. Castell, Ste. 300, New Braunfels 2tarts.com

Dos Lunas Artisan Cheese

Amity Bakery

Amity Bakery is a bakery goods service Dos Lunas is a specially aged raw cow’s created to provide fresh, quality breads and milk cheese. Our milk comes from grasspastries delivered to your home or office. fed, free-roaming cows in Schulenburg, 512-573-3503 Texas. We age our cheese in Austin.

512-963-5357 1208 W. 4th St. amitybakery.com doslunascheese.com

4.0 Cellars

4.0 Cellars is a tasting room and event venue serving the wines of Brennan Vineyards, Lost Oak Winery and McPherson Cellars.

830-997-7470 10354 E. US Hwy. 290 fourpointwine.com

Austin Homebrew Supply

Since 1991, Austin Homebrew Supply has been helping people craft their own beer, wine and cheese. Come by or visit us online.

512-300-2739 9129 Metric Blvd. austinhomebrew.com

The Austin Wine Merchant

Locally owned and operated since 1991 - Courteous and Professional Services - Careful selection - Competitive pricing Gift wrap - Delivery within Austin.

512-499-0512 512 W. 6th St. theaustinwinemerchant.com

Brooklyn Brewery

Leading the world in beers made in Brooklyn.

718-486-7422 brooklynbrewery.com

True to Texas. Our commitment and passion is to handcraft fine wines using only 100% Texas-grown fruit, most of which is Estate Grown.

512-820-2950 7214 Park Rd. 4 W., Burnet perissosvineyards.com

Family-owned since 1962, Spec’s offers expert service and Texas’s largest selection of wines, spirits and beers along with gourmet foods and more!

512-366-8260 4978 W. US Hwy. 290 512-342-6893 10515 N. MoPac Hwy. 512-280-7400 9900 S. I-35 512-263-9981 13015 Shops Pkwy.

512-366-8300 5775 Airport Blvd. specsonline.com

Texas Coffee Traders

East Austin’s artisanal coffee roaster and one-stop shop offering a wide selection of certified organic and Fair Trade options for wholesale and retail.

512-476-2279 1400 E. 4th St. texascoffeetraders.com

Texas Hills Vineyard

Winemaking, wine sales, tasting room, patio for picnics, gifts, award-winning wines, fun-loving staff and a beautiful place to visit.

830-868-2321 878 RR 2766, Johnson City texashillsvineyard.com

Tito’s Handmade Vodka

Still handmade, distilled 6 times in old-fashioned copper potstills right here in Austin by Tito Beveridge. Made from 100% corn and naturally gluten free.

512-389-9011 titosvodka.com

Wedding Oak Winery

We handcraft Paula’s Texas Orange and Paula’s Texas Lemon liqueurs in Austin.

Delicious as a zesty sipper or versatile cocktail component. paulastexasspirits.com

Located in the northern Hill Country, Wedding Oak Winery creates Texas wines from 100% Texas-grown warm weather varietals. Our Texas roots run deep!

325-372-4050 316 E. Wallace, San Saba weddingoakwinery.com

Pedernales Cellars

Zhi Tea

Paula’s Texas Spirits

Pedernales Cellars is a family-owned winery in the Texas Hill Country where one can enjoy delectable Spanish style wines and fabulous views.

830-644-2037 2916 Upper Albert Rd., Stonewall pedernalescellars.com

Indulge! Over 80 rare organic teas and dozens of hand-blended signatures.

Retail gallery with table service and food menu. Plus, wi-fi and free tastings!

4607 Bolm Rd. 512-539-0717 zhitea.com

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Bookseller

Design And Construction

Farms

BookPeople

Texas Oven Co.

Boggy Creek Farm

Texas’s leading independent bookstore since 1970. Located in the heart of downtown, BookPeople has been voted best bookstore in Austin for over 15 years!

512-472-5050 603 N. Lamar Blvd. bookpeople.com

Catering and Meal Delivery Dishalicious

Restaurant-quality prepared meals made from scratch, inspired by seasonal produce and delivered to your door.

512-940-9662 dishalicious.com

Pink Avocado Catering

A custom catering company specializing in tailored menus, incredible food & surprisingly personal service.

512-656-4348 401 Sabine St. Ste. B pinkavocadocatering.com

Spoon & Co. Catering

It’s our business to delight you with the details, memorable events with mindfully chosen, prepared and presented food and a caring crew!

512-912-6784 spoonandco.com

Veggytopia

For health smart people who crave fresh meals. Plant based, chef prepared and delivered to your doorstep. The menu changes weekly. Order online now.

512-843-7700 1310 Kirkham Circle, Ste. A, Kyle veggytopia.com

Culinary Education Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts

The Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts is teaching the next generation of chefs and pastry chefs the importance of sustainable and ethical choices.

512-451-5743 6020-B Dillard Cir. escoffier.edu

The Natural Epicurean

The place to go for a plant-based, comprehensive professional services training, plus public events and classes.

Learn here: change your kitchen; change your life.

512-476-2276 1700 S. Lamar Blvd. naturalepicurean.com

Experts in designing and building woodburning ovens: Our handcrafted ovens are fire-breathing works of art. We are also a Forno Bravo pizza oven dealer.

512-222-6836 texasovenco.com

Events Lost Pines Christmas Swirl

Visit historic downtown Bastrop on December 6 from 6-9pm for a unique wine and food tasting in select specialty shops. Holiday shopping made easy!

512-332-8996, 921 Main St., Bastrop lostpineschristmasbastroptx.com

Farmers Markets 1832 Farmers Market

Shop on Tuesdays and Saturdays weekly for freshest of local produce, meats and speciality items.

Conveniently located in historic downtown Bastrop.

512-360-4799 1302 Chestnut St., Bastrop bastrop1832farmersmarket.org

F2M Texas

Cedar Park (Saturdays,9am-1pm, Lakeline Mall) & Mueller Farmers Markets (Sundays, 10am-2pm, the historic Mueller Hangar) Open year round, Rain or Shine.

512-363-5700 11200 Lakeline Mall Dr., Cedar Park 4550 Mueller Blvd. texasfarmersmarket.org

HOPE Farmers Market

Sundays 11-3 (Summer 10-2). A weekly community gathering space in East Austin for local farmers, artisans, community groups, families and urban consumers.

512-814-6736; 414 Waller St. hopefarmersmarket.org

Lakeway Commons Farmers Market

Wheatsville Food Co-op

One of the first Urban Farms in the USA, BCF offers hyper-fresh vegetables at the on-farm stand, Wed and Sat, 9-1.

512-926-4650 3414 Lyons Rd. boggycreekfarm.com

Indian Hills Farm

Family owned farm for nearly three decades, we offer quality pasture-raised and grassfed beef, chemical-free fruits and vegetables and signature granola.

512-237-4792 indianhillsfarmtx.com

Richardson Farms

Our cattle are strictly grassfed. The hogs and chickens are pastured and are never given any growth hormones or antibiotics.

512-446-2306 richardsonfarms.com

Twin County Lamb

We are ranchers embracing stewardship of the land providing premium quality all natural, free range lamb raised in the Texas Hill Country.

830-864-4717 30881 Ranch Rd 385, Harper TX twincountydorpers.com

Grocers Bountiful Sprout

As your online grocery for local goods, the Sprout is the place to find everything you need. One click and you’re there.

507 Calles St. 14210 RR 12, Wimberley 334 W. Main St., Fredericksburg bountifulsprout.com

Farmhouse Delivery

We bring the farm to your door, offering home or office delivery of local produce, meat, dairy, eggs and local, artisanal products.

512-529-8569 farmhousedelivery.com

The Lakeway Commons Farmers Market is focused on providing the surrounding neighborhoods with local, healthy, affordable food for children and adults.

512-924-7503; 900 RR 620 S., Lakeway lakewayfarmersmarket.com

Greenling

SFC Farmers‘ Markets

Downtown Austin’s Neighborhood Grocer with dairy, prepared foods, beer and wine - Royal Blue has it all, in a convenient and compact format. Catering too!

512-499-3993 247 W. 3rd St. 512-476-5700 360 Nueces St. 512-469-588 609 Congress Ave. royalbluegrocery.com

Real farms. Real food. Live music. Kids’ areas. Weekly tastings. Summer festivals. Free parking. Double dollars Tues. for SNAP/WIC. 512-236-0074 422 W. 4th St. 3200 Jones Rd., Sunset Valley Hwy. 183 and 51st St. 46th St. and Lamar sfcfarmersmarket.org

Greenling is a home delivery service of organic & sustainably produced local food!

512-440-8449 greenling.com

Royal Blue Grocery

Serving up local, organic, sustainable and humanely raised food since 1976. Full Service Deli, Hot Bar, Salad Bar, Espresso Bar and eating area with wi-fi.

512-478-2667; 3101 Guadalupe St. wheatsville.coop

Whole Foods Market

Selling the highest quality natural & organic products.

512-542-2200 525 N. Lamar Blvd.

512-345-5003 9607 Research Blvd.

512-206-2730 12601 Hill Country Blvd., Bee Cave 512-358-2460 4301 W. William Cannon wholefoodsmarket.com

Housewares and Gifts Breed & Co.

This locally owned business sells everything from French cookware and fine china to plants and paint. All you need is Breed!

512-474-6679; 718 W. 29th St. 512-328-3960; 3663 Bee Cave Rd. breedandco.com

Callahan’s General Store

Austin’s real general store! From hardware to western wear, from feed to seed...and a whole lot more!

512-385-3452; 501 Bastrop Hwy. callahansgeneralstore.com

Der Küchen Laden

Der Küchen Laden is for the little chef in all of us. We have gourmet kitchen ware, tools, gadgets, coffees and teas (just to name a few). Come check us out!

830-997-4937 258 E. Main St., Fredericksburg littlechef.com

Elements -The Rug Queen - La Ti Da Michele Hart, The Rug Queen, searches the world for the most unique home accents, providing affordable luxury and the finest in Hill Country design.

830-693-3700 202 Main St., Marble Falls latida.vpweb.com

The Herb Bar

Best place to cure what ails you and a healing resource center since 1986. Our Optimal Health Advisers are highly trained, knowledgeable and compassionate.

512-444-6251; 200 W. Mary St. theherbbar.com

Lost Pines Art Bazaar

Experience old world culture with a Texas twist. Showcasing authentic, hand knotted Persian and Hereke carpets, and American, European and Persian art.

512-985-6403 603 Chestnut St., Bastrop lostpinesartbazaar.com

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Sunset Canyon Pottery

The place to go for handmade fine craft specializing in stoneware pottery for table and kitchen. Visit the Gallery, working studio, and take a class.

512-894-0938 4002 E. Hwy. 290, Dripping Springs sunsetcanyonpottery.com

Photography and Art AMOA-Arthouse

Landscape and Environmental

The museum provides rich environments for a wide range of audiences to investigate and experience excellence in modern and contemporary art.

512-453-5312 700 Congress Ave. 512-458-8191 3809 W. 35th St. amoa-arthouse.org

The Great Outdoors Nursery

Art Connections

The best of everything for your garden.

Best plants, best selection and the best staff to help you. Come see what we offer! On SoCo. 512-448-2992 2730 S. Congress Ave. gonursery.com

It’s About Thyme Garden Center

Top quality culinary herbs for chefs, and native plants for gardeners. A nursery with expert staff and pocketfriendly prices. Free lectures most Sundays.

512-280-1192 11726 Manchaca Rd. itsaboutthyme.com

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center The Wildflower Center is a native plant botanic garden, a university research center and one of the 1,000 places to see before you die.

512-232-0100 4801 La Crosse Ave. wildflower.org

Natural Gardener

We are a garden center and teaching facility dedicated to promoting organic time-tested gardening practices.

512-288-6113 8648 Old Bee Caves Rd. naturalgardeneraustin.com

lodging Onion Creek Kitchens at Juniper Hills Farm Cooking school, private dinners, luxury cabin rentals.

830-833-0910 5818 RR 165, Dripping Springs juniperhillsfarm.com

NonProfits Oxfam America

Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice.

800-776-9326 oxfamamerica.org

Where art is heart! Discover talented local artists in a unique and picturesque setting. Portion of sales proceeds are contributed to local efforts.

512-657-4275 705 Pine St., Bastrop artconnectionsgallerybastrop.com

Andy Sams Photography

We love creating artistic, vibrant images that capture our subjects’ personalities. We pride ourselves on providing top-notch service from start to finish.

512-694-6311 908 E. 5th St., Ste. 112 andysams.com

Jody Horton Photography

Commercial and editorial photography, specializing in food, travel and lifestyle.

512-694-6649 jodyhorton.com

Marta Stafford Fine Art A pairing of art and antiques. The collection includes sculpture, representational works and contemporary expressionism in a charming vintage 1930s home.

830-693-9999 112 Main St., Marble Falls martastaffordfineart.com

TASTE Wine + Art

Austin Subaru

Continental Automotive Group’s Austin Subaru - Locally Owned and Operated, We’re All About Austin!

512-323-2837; 200 W. Huntland Dr. austinsubaru.co

Ditch the Box

Learn to eat fresh and cook from scratch with our unique coaching services: pantry makeovers, grocery store & farmers market tours and easy cooking tips.

512-294-2447 ditchthebox.com

Hummingbird EcoCleaning

Eco-friendly housekeeping, eco yard care, and personal assistant services in the Austin area. Detail oriented, reliable and trustworthy.

512-368-2268 hummingbirdecocleaning.com

Publications and Blogs Chronicle Books

Recognized for award-winning books + innovative specialty formats, Chronicle Books has been publishing beautifully illustrated cookbooks for over 25 years.

415-537-4200 chroniclebooks.com

Shearer Publishing

Shearer Publishing is an award-winning regional book publisher established in 1980, specializing in cookbooks.

830-997-6529 406 Post Oak Rd., Fredericksburg shearerpub.com

Texas Wine and Food Gourmet

Come share Texas with us and celebrate the bounty of food, drink and lore the state has to offer. thetexasfoodandwinegourmet.com

Freshly prepared dishes made of only organic, vegan, gluten-free ingredients.

Buying locally first and using local providers. We recycle, reuse and compost.

512-477-2338 1611 W. 5th St., Ste. 165 beetscafe.com

BRIO Tuscan Grill

BRIO, an upscale affordable restaurant, serves authentic, northern Italian cuisine such as wood-grilled/oven-roasted steaks, chops and seafood.

888-452-7286 10000 Research Blvd. brioitalian.com

Buenos Aires Cafe

Austin grown Argentine restaurant.

We use only the freshest ingredients available and make an effort to support local farmers. Food made with love daily.

512-382-1189 1201 E. 6th St. 512-441-9000 13500 Galleria Cir., Bee Cave buenosairescafe.com

Chez Nous

A casual french bistro, serving Austin since 1982, Chez Nous offers a delectable selection of regional French cuisine and wines in a relaxed, convivial and intimate atmosphere.

512-473-2413 510 Neches St. cheznousaustin.com

Cipollina West Austin Bistro

Join us for lunch, dinner, or brunch to sample our Mediterranean inspired, locally sourced food.

512-477-5211 1213 West Lynn St. cipollina-austin.com

East Side Pies

Real Estate

Offering a stunning art collection by 40+ established TX artists w/ a wide range of styles. Worldwide + TX wines sold by the taste, glass, bottle, or case.

830-868-9290 213 N Nugent Ave., Johnson City tastewineart.com

Green Mango Real Estate

Professional Services

Restaurants

Austin Label Company

18 Oaks at JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa

Custom Labels up to 10 x 20 on paper, foil, synthetics, multiple adhesives, embossing, hot foil, UV coatings.

Proud members of GoTexan, FTA and TWGGA. 512-302-0204 1834 Ferguson Ln., Ste. 201 austinlabel.com

Beets Living Food Cafe

Central Real Estate Austin expert since 1987. Specializing in 78704 where they have sold more homes than any other broker in Austin.

512-923-6648; 905 Avondale Rd. greenmangorealestate.com

18 Oaks is a new-style steakhouse with emphasis on local sourcing of beef, cheeses, and produce and featuring dishes from the resort’s own organic gardens.

210-491-5825 23808 Resort Pkwy., San Antonio jwsanantonio.com

We’ve got homemade, thin crust pizzas with local veggies and meats.

Gluten-free options, too! Three locations: Eastside, Airport and now Crestview.

512-524-0933 1401 Rosewood Ave. 512-454-7437 5312 Airport Blvd., Ste. G 512-467-8900 1809-1 W. Anderson Ln. eastsidepies.com

FABI+ROSI

FABI+ROSI serves classic European dishes with a young and modern twist.

Sourcing locally grown and sustainably raised provisions is our top priority.

512-236-0642 509 Hearn St. fabiandrosi.com

EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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FINO Restaurant Patio & Bar

Modern Mediterranean. Tapas - Small Plates - Paella. Eclectic Wine List & Signature Cocktails. One of Austin’s Best Patios. Easy Parking.

512-474-2905 2905 San Gabriel St. finoaustin.com

Fonda San Miguel

Offering hand-crafted traditional interior Mexican recipes in an unparalleled atmosphere; a full wine list; classic and signature cocktails.

512-459-4121 2330 W. North Loop fondasanmiguel.com

Green Pastures

Located in old South Austin a mile and a half south of the river on 5 acres. Offering lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch. Catering and events on and offsite.

512-444-4747 811 W. Live Oak St. greenpasturesrestaurant.com

Jack Allen’s Kitchen

Magnolia Cafe

Come to Magnolia Cafe! Fresh food cooked with passion in a comfortable setting, kind of like your favorite aunt’s giant kitchen, if she had one. Open 24/8 512-478-8645 2304 Lake Austin Blvd.

512-445-0000 1920 S. Congress Ave. themagnoliacafe.com

Navajo Grill

A unique dining establishment nestled deep in the heart of where historic Fredericksburg lies.

830-990-8289 803 E. Main St., Fredericksburg navajogrill.com

Papi Tino’s

With a simple and elegant interior Mexican menu, and a tree canopy covered front porch, this genuine Mexican Cantina’s atmosphere is simply quite perfect.

512-479-1306 1306 E. 6th St. papitinos.com

Texan in spirit and local in source, Jack Allen’s Kitchen serves up Texas-inspired cuisine, fresh cocktails, cold beers and good times daily.

512-852-8558 7720 Hwy. 71 W. 2500 Hoppe Tr., Round Rock jackallenskitchen.com

Snack Bar

Kerbey Lane Cafe

Texas French Bread

Kerbey Lane Cafe has proudly served comfortable food at a reasonable price since 1980. Come into any of our 5 Austin locations for a taste!

512-451-1436 3704 Kerbey Ln. 512-445-4451 3003 S. Lamar Blvd.

512-258-7757 13435 Hwy. 183, Ste. 415 512-477-5717 2606 Guadalupe St. 512-899-1500 4301 W. William Cannon kerbeylanecafe.com

The Leaning Pear Café & Eatery Serving the Texas Hill Country fresh and seasonal favorites using local ingredients.

512-847-7327 111 River Rd., Wimberley leaningpear.com

LENOIR

LENOIR is an intimate, family-run restaurant offering a weekly, local prix-fixe menu, great wine and friendly service.

512-215-9778 1807 S. 1st St. lenoirrestaurant.com

Chef-driven, globally inspired & locally sourced menu with eco-vineyard wine, craft beer, artisan coffee and tea in a stylish relaxed space. Bring the dog.

512-445-2626 1224 S. Congress Ave. snackbaraustin.com

We are a bakery & bistro serving freshly baked breads, pastries & desserts, as well as hot breakfast, delicious sandwiches & locally sourced dinners.

512-499-0544 2900 Rio Grande St. texasfrenchbread.com

ThunderCloud Subs

For fresh, fast and healthy, head on over to your neighborhood ThunderCloud Subs, Austin’s original sub shop. Now with 30 locations in Central Texas.

512-479-8805 thundercloud.com

TNT / Tacos and Tequila

Fresh, handmade & local describe this southwestern grill and Tequila Bar. Margaritas made with hand-squeezed juice, organic agave nectar & premium tequila.

512-436-8226 507 Pressler St. tacos-and-tequila.com

The Turtle Restaurant

Your destination for food prepared from locally available, seasonal ingredients.

325-646-8200 514 Center Ave., Brownwood theturtlerestaurant.com

Uptown Blanco Restaurant

Open for lunch daily and dinner Thurs. Sun. Chef Nathan creates culinary specials daily using many local ingredients.

Ballroom and courtyard are available for private groups.

830-833-0738 317 Main St., Blanco uptownblanco.com

Wink Restaurant & Wine Bar

The daily menu is based on local artisans. Wink happily embraces omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians and special dietary issues.

512-482-8868 1014 N. Lamar Blvd. winkrestaurant.com

Specialty Market For Goodness Sake Natural Foods Family owned and operated health food store featuring high quality supplements, all natural and organic bodycare plus unique grocery items. Peace & Love!

830-606-1900 1306 E. Common St., New Braunfels fgsnb.com

Comanche Chamber of Commerce & Agriculture Nestled in the hills of Central Texas, Comanche boasts of antique and gift shops, great restaurants and lodging facilities, an art gallery, plus lots more.

325-356-3233 304 S. Austin St., Comanche comanchechamber.org

Fredericksburg Conference and Visitors Bureau

Visit Fredericksburg, a small gem nestled in the Texas Hill Country. Enjoy eclectic shops, diverse lodging, amazing restaurants and Texas wines.

866-997-3600 visitfredericksburgtx.com

Marble Falls Chamber of Commerce

Marble Falls is the gateway to exciting Hill Country day trips - wineries, lakes and caves, just to name a few. Come stay with us and see for yourself.

830-693-2815 marblefalls.org

Wellness

Make It Sweet

At Make It Sweet, you can find tools, supplies and ingredients to make cakes, cookies and candies and learn fun, new techniques in the classes offered.

512-371-3401 9070 Research Blvd. makeitsweet.com

The Sugar Shack

Bastrop’s gift and candy wonderland! Be sure to visit Santa this holiday season at this wonderful shopping destination!

Fudge made daily!

512-321-3777 114 Loop 150 W., Bastrop sugarshackbastrop.com

Tourism Bastrop Opera House

Established in 1889, the Bastrop Opera House features live performances in an historic setting. Visit the website for holiday show schedules.

512-321-6283 711 Spring St., Bastrop bastropoperahouse.com

Brenham/Washington County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Brenham/Washington County is the perfect location to enjoy affordable events at historic sites, wineries and lush gardens! Great shopping, dining, lodging.

979-836-3696 visitbrenhamtexas.com

Bicycle Sport Shop

Bicycle Sport Shop has been selling bicycles and cycling equipment in Austin since 1983. Our goal is to get more people on bikes more often.

512-477-3472 517 S. Lamar Blvd.

512-345-7460 10947 Research Blvd.

512-637-6890 9900 W. Parmer Ln. bicyclesportshop.com

Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop

The retail mecca offers bikes, equipment, apparel, service and training, but more importantly, its mission is to promote two-wheeled living.

512-473-0222 400 Nueces St. mellowjohnnys.com

Peoples Rx

Austin’s favorite pharmacy for more than 30 years, Peoples integrates nutrition, supplements and medicine with natural remedies and custom Rx compounding.

512-219-9499 13860 Hwy. 183 N., Ste. C 512-459-9090 4018 N. Lamar Blvd.

512-444-8866 3801 S. Lamar Blvd.

512-327-8877 4201 Westbank Dr. peoplesrx.com

EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM

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Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2011, Dogwood twigs, wire, upholstery, basket, and mannequin, 86” x 36” x 28” Courtesy of the Chaney Family Collection, Photograph: James Prinz Photography, Chicago

art de terroir

Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight Presented by AMOA-Arthouse | The Jones Center On view through February 24, 2013

Now, Forager Film and Feast Wednesday, January 16 | 7 pm | Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane Artist Nick Cave scavenges everyday materials and transforms them into sculpture.

Now, Forager (2012) is a narrative film whose protagonist scavenges wild mushrooms and transforms them into dinner. Experience this debut Austin screening with a feast prepared

by Alamo chefs and a talk-back after with co-directors and producers Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin. Ticket information at amoa-arthouse.org/programs Co-presented by Edible Austin.

Laguna Gloria 3809 West 35th Street 512.458.8191

The Jones Center 700 Congress Avenue 512.453.5312