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Monthly Archives: February 2011

Demo and Dinner at the Westin La Cantera

Posted on February 27, 2011 by John DeMers

It’s hard to get or feel any closer to your food than to have it prepared before your eyes in the kitchen by executive chef John Armstrong of the Westin La Cantera Resort on the western edge of San Antonio. Chef John is an engaging guy - talking about his childhood in Ohio that gave him his work ethic, his wife and kids that give him something to work for, and the lengths his hard work goes to keep things local and seasonal at this huge golf and spa resort.

Every time you’re tempted to think how complicated Chef John’s cooking is - by home standards anyway - he does something to make you realize just how simple it is. Here, for instance, he plates pan-seared scallops atop a sauce made mostly by pureeing the green parts of zucchini with Texas pecan oil, which he insists is even better for you than olive oil. The tiny salad on top adds the perfect taste and texture.

In the Westin La Cantera’s fine dining restaurant, Francesca’s at Sunset, most of our table went with the antelope Diane, the meat coming from the famed Broken Arrow Ranch just a bit farther west in Ingram. Feeling contrarian, I had to order the beef filet that’s been a favorite since Francesca’s opened its doors. And with a cabernet from Rodney Strong to accompany, the whole thing was pretty much carnivore heaven.

The idea of German chocolate cheesecake might strike you, as it struck me at first, as mixing too many metaphors. Still, it was pretty hard to resist anything that packed this much chocolate punch beneath this Jetson-like swirl of crispy tuile cookie. There’s also a spin on s’mores offered that would make me want to take up camping anytime.

I must put in a good word for Francesca’s sommelier Steven Krueger. Whenever this guy isn’t conducting early evening tastings of the very best Texas wines (20 wines, organized into a quintet of four-wine flights), he’s picking out great things from around the world for your every dinner course. Dessert, on this occasion, was quite welcome to show up (and stay a very long time!) with glasses of Brachetto d’Acqui from Rosa Regale, a sparking wine as sweet as it is deep-jewel red.

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Gage Hotel, Le Mistral on Weekend Shows

Posted on February 25, 2011 by John DeMers

Our 21st Year of Delicious Mischief on the Radio!

HOUSTON Saturdays and Sunday 4-5 p.m., NewsRadio 740 KTRH

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

SATURDAY: This week we travel to Far West Texas, for an update on one of our favorite restaurants inside one of our favorite hotels. The hotel is the Gage in tiny Marathon, pop. 400 or so, the gateway to adventures in Big Bend National Park. And the restaurant, recently cleverly retooled as Twelve Gage, is something we talk about with Houston-born owner Alicia Bryan Haynes, San Antonio-born chef Mike Alvarez and Kerrville-born barman extraordinaire Matt Hicklen. In our Grape & Grain segment, we taste some great new seasonal ales and stouts with Spec’s beer guru Justin Cody.

SUNDAY: We head out west for our Sunday show too, but nowhere near as far as on Saturday: landing at Le Mistral on Eldridge Parkway, in the heart of Houston’s crazy-busy Energy Corridor. We visit with our friend chef David Denis, who has just opened an ambitious retail outlet called Foody’s Gourmet, plus a wholesale bakery selling great bread to local restaurants. In our Grape and Grain segment, we taste and talk about the wines of Pine Ridge.

AUSTIN Saturdays 10-11 a.m., Talk 1370

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

This week we travel to Far West Texas, for an update on one of our favorite restaurants inside one of our favorite hotels. The hotel is the Gage in tiny Marathon, pop. 400 or so, the gateway to adventures in Big Bend National Park. And the restaurant, recently cleverly retooled as Twelve Gage, is something we talk about with Houston-born owner Alicia Bryan Haynes, San Antonio-born chef Mike Alvarez and Kerrville-born barman extraordinaire Matt Hicklen. In our Grape & Grain segment, we taste some great new seasonal ales and stouts with Spec’s beer guru Justin Cody.

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Recipe for Patatas Bravas - A Tapas Favorite

Posted on February 23, 2011 by John DeMers

1 pound small new potatoes (about 1″ diameter)

1/2 red or green bell pepper, seeded and sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoon dark beer

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 dried New Mexico chile, seeded and broken into pieces

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon smoked hot Spanish paprika

1 teaspoon red or white wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Boil potatoes until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and quarter. Using a blender or small food processor grind together garlic, cumin, chilies, and paprika. Add vinegar. Heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add potatoes and bell pepper and brown potatoes. Add beer and cook until almost dry. Stir in vinegar/spice mixture, taking care to coat all potatoes. Add salt to taste and serve. Serves 6.

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Results of Rodeo Uncorked and Best Bites

Posted on February 21, 2011 by John DeMers

More than 4,000 wine enthusiasts delighted their taste buds, sampling 300 winning wines from the Wine Competition in addition to savory bites from more than 70 local restaurants, catering and culinary institutions. Saddles, chaps and buckles were awarded to the 2011 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition champions and the 2011 Best Bites winners were named.

The 2011 Wine Competition held boasted 1,788 wines from 592 wineries in Texas, across the United States and around the world. Sixteen countries participated in the competition and 1,146 medals were awarded by 15 panels of judges, consisting of local, national, and international wine experts.

2011 International Wine Competition Champions:

  • Grand Champion Best of Show – Alexander Valley Vineyards CYRUS, Alexander Valley, 2006
  • Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show – Stanton Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, 2007
  • Top Texas Wine – Becker Vineyards, Viognier, Texas, 2009
  • Top Spanish Wine – Acústic Cellar Blanc, Montsant, 2009
  • Top All-Around Winery – d’Arenberg, Australia
  • Top Wine Company – E&J Gallo Winery
  • Top Sparkling Wine – Heidsieck & Co. Monopole Blue Top Brut, Reims, NV
  • Top White Wine – Vasse Felix Chardonnay, Margaret River, 2008
  • Top Red Wine – Vision Cellars Pinot Noir, Gary’s Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands, 2008
  • Top Sweet Wine – Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars Riesling, Bunch Select Late Harvest, Finger Lakes, 2008
  • Top Value Wine – Fat Monk Merlot, Central Coast, 2009

A panel of celebrity judges awarded 5 buckles. In addition, 1st and 2nd place ‘Popular Choice Awards’ were decided by event guests.

2011 Best Bites Competition Winners

Popular Choice Award

First Place – Royers Round Top Café

Second Place – Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse

Trailblazing Appetizer/Entrée Award

First Place – Beef Short Rib Roast Ragu on Polenta Grand Parma – Hasta la Pasta Italian Grill

Second Place – Pork Taquito with Green Sauce – Molina’s Cantina

Third Place – Blackened Tenderloin and Fleming’s Potatoes – Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar

Two-Stepping Bread/Cheese/Dessert Award

First Place – Veldhuizen Cheese

Second Place – Richly Flavored Texas Coffee – Pip’s Just Great Coffee

All champion wines will be auctioned at the Rodeo Uncorked! Champion Wine Auction and Dinner, Saturday, March 5, 2011, 5:30 p.m., Reliant Center, 600 series meeting rooms. A separate ticket is required to attend the auction.

Winning wines from the 2011 International Wine Competition will also be available at the Champion Wine Garden, located in Carruth Plaza, by the taste, glass or bottle. The Champion Wine Garden is open Monday through Thursday, 4 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 10 p.m. In addition to its regular hours, the Wine Garden also will be open this year during the World’s Championship Bar-B-Q Contest, February 24 – 25, 4 to 11 p.m., and February 26, 2 to 11 p.m., next to The Hideout.

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Faces of Last Night’s Rodeo Uncorked

Posted on February 21, 2011 by John DeMers

One of the major food and wine events of the year was last night’s Rodeo Uncorked. Only a few years ago, people hearing about the plan for such an event exclaimed, “Fine wine and, like, gourmet food? At a rodeo?” The thousands who attend Rodeo Uncorked each season and vote enthusiastically in its Best Bites food competition figure this idea makes all the sense in the world.

Here (starting with the guys from The Barbed Rose in Alvin, pictured above) are a few of the folks on both sides of the table who made last night at Reliant Center so spectacular.

Hundreds of wines were being poured for any guest (of legal age, of course) who smiled real nice. It’s always a pleasure to make new friends, especially the kind who live in a bottle you haven’t tried before.

It is a rodeo, after all. So for all the seafood and fresh vegetables on display, Houston restaurants figured out a long time ago that handing out meat was a better than average way to go for the gold. And the hats don’t hurt your chances either!

Still, the sky’s pretty much the limit when it comes to food type, from tortilla soup to duck gumbo to chicken curry. To move from table to table among Houston’s best restaurants all night, your taste buds had better be ready for anything.

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Culinary Travel, Scott Tycer on Weekend’s Shows

Posted on February 18, 2011 by John DeMers

HOUSTON Saturdays and Sundays 4-5 p.m., NewsRadio 740 KTRH

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

SATURDAY: We’re in Austin this week, talking with a very creative young company that offers travel for those who love to eat and drink – which includes just about everybody likely to be reading this. Petite Peche specializes in richly agricultural places like Tuscany and Provence, but they’ll take you to Paris if you insist. And in our Grape & Grain segment, we catch up with Spec’s “allocation specialist” Nate Rose, for a tasting of wines the wineries make so little of they don’t want us to be able to buy them. That’s where Nate comes in.

SUNDAY: Chef Scott Tycer has always been a welcome fixture on this show, all the way back to the time that his Aries was the toast of both local and national food media. There’s been a lot of foie gras under the bridge since then, however, and Tycer’s main gig these days is running Kraftsmen Café – the comfortable and stylish retail offshoot of his wholesale Kraftsmen Baking. In our Grape and Grain segment, we taste and talk about the wines of Bridlewood with golden-locked-surfer-dude-winemaker David Hopkins.

AUSTIN Saturdays 10-11 a.m., Talk 1370

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

In Austin, we’re talking with a very creative young company that offers travel for those who love to eat and drink – which includes just about everybody likely to be reading this. Petite Peche specializes in richly agricultural places like Tuscany and Provence, but they’ll take you to Paris if you insist. And in our Grape & Grain segment, we catch up with Spec’s “allocation specialist” Nate Rose, for a tasting of wines the wineries make so little of they don’t want us to be able to buy them. That’s where Nate comes in.

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Recipe for Apple-Blackberry Upside Down Cake

Posted on February 17, 2011 by John DeMers

Topping:

1 cup of firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sliced apples

1 cup blackberries

Cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
6 tablespoons cake flour
6 tablespoons ground almonds
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream

¼ cup Calvados apple brandy

Calvados Whipped Cream:

2 cups whipping cream

2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar

1-2 tablespoons Calvados apple brandy

Make the caramel topping. Take brown sugar and butter and combine and melt in a saucepan on medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture is bubbly, this should take several minutes. After sugar melts, don’t stir. Pour mixture into a 10 inch diameter stick-free cake pan with 2-inch high sides. Arrange apple slices and blackberries in a single layer on top of the caramel mixture.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Whisk the flours, almonds, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the sugar and butter together until light. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream and apple brandy in 2 additions each, beating well after each addition. Pour cake batter over caramel and pineapple in pan.

Bake until tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Turn cake out onto a platter. Using chilled beaters in a chilled metal bowl, beat the cream until fluffy with the sugar and Calvados. Serve cake warm or at room temperature with whipped cream. Serves 12-14.

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First Visit to Latin Bites Cafe

Posted on February 12, 2011 by John DeMers

You know what they say about first impressions - especially when you get to eat them! Here’s a quick look at some of the things I tasted yesterday during the first of several visits to Latin Bites Cafe on the quirky side of downtown Houston. Which means you’ll have to wait for the April HOUSTON magazine for my full description. The best-ever noodle dish pictured above, featuring beef, pork and chicken, made me ask Peruvian executive chef Roberto Castre if he was secretly Chinese.

Few restaurants describe their mission and their cuisine quite this clearly in a sign above the kitchen.

I visited this same space some years ago, when it was the original Dharma Cafe. Yes, it’s still tiny, with eight tables that seat only 35 to 45 people depending on how partners Carlos Ramos and his wife Rita Castre (yes, she’s the chef’s sister) set things up.

I don’t think empanandas have ever had it so good: fluffy baked pastries filled with not-cheap beef tenderloin, served with two different dipping sauces in spoons.

This “sashimi tiradito tres sabores” is one of the dishes at the heart of Peruvian cuisine as represented at Latin Bites. It’s, of course, Japanese sashimi blanketed in three different cream sauces colored and flavored by three different chile peppers. And yes, that would be sweet potato livin’ on the edge.

One final delicious creation I sampled was the Pescado a la Macho. There’s an incredible piece of pan-seared fish under there somplace, I promise. But there’s shrimp, squid, clams, mussels and octopus to burrow through on the way. And yes, those are potatoes in the back. Historians tell us that all the potatoes on earth originated in Peru.

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Sandestin, Randy Evans on This Weekend’s DM

Posted on February 11, 2011 by John DeMers

HOUSTON Saturdays and Sundays 4-5 p.m., NewsRadio 740 KTRH

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

SATURDAY: Today’s show comes from a beautiful place we’ve been visiting for more than 15 years. In this case and in this often-chilly season, we’re not traveling to Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort to stretch out on some perfect white sand. We’re chatting with the people who are pulling off another spectacular Sandestin Wine Festival this spring.. There’s wine, there’s food – and yes, there’s always one of the world’s loveliest beaches within an easy stroll.

SUNDAY: Executive chef Randy Evans of Haven joins us to talk about the latest addition to his restaurant’s wildly popular style of farm-to-table cooking – a farmers market staged in conjunction with brunch each Saturday afternoon – right on Haven’s property. It’s the first farmers market we’ve heard of that isn’t in the morning – therefore, perfect for chefs – and the first one where you can walk around carrying an adult beverage. Definitely an idea whose time has come. In our Grape & Grain segment, we taste the Italian wines of Ruffino.

AUSTIN Saturdays 10-11 a.m., Talk 1370

A Presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods

Today’s show comes from a beautiful place we’ve been visiting for more than 15 years. In this case and in this often-chilly season, we’re not traveling to Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort to stretch out on some perfect white sand. We’re chatting with the people who are pulling off another spectacular Sandestin Wine Festival this spring.. There’s wine, there’s food – and yes, there’s always one of the world’s loveliest beaches within an easy stroll.

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Dessert Nachos at the Gage Hotel

Posted on February 10, 2011 by John DeMers

I think I had one of the best desserts of my life last night at Twelve Gage, the newly baptized restaurant at the legendary Gage Hotel in Marathon, population 400 or so. I think it must have taken all 400 to pitch in making this dessert. Deconstructed a bit - something I hate it when chefs do - the base here is cinnamon and sugar bunuelos (kind of related to sopapillas, except flatter and crisper). Then there are scoops of three different flavors of ice cream: praline with crumbled pecans, “coffee and doughnuts,” and a pink-purple wonder made with blackberry and way-local prickly pear. On top of that, there’s a drizzle of chocolate and caramel sauces, a handful of thinly sliced strawberries and a few dollops of whipped cream. I know Marathon is the Gateway to Big Bend National Park in Far West Texas, but after this dessert, I don’t feel ready for any kind of hiking or climbing.

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