Good days people! i have recently joined a great team at beaver’s ice house in houston…back on the washington strip feels like coming home to me. so many of the regular customers from that other place on washington have been in to welcome me back and i thank you all!

one customer commented to me:

“what are you doing here? you are too talented to be at an ice house making barbecue!”

my answer to that is this person does’nt truly get me or what i am about. i work at a restaurant with an ice house perception where the foods are creative, organic, wholesome, often sustainable and more often local. being under monica popes umbrella does’nt exactly suck for me either…hell i have been riding her coat tails of the farm to fork movement for years…she started this shit in h-town anyway! yay for me.

with all due respect to my friend who made the comment…i have traveled and cooked with some of the best culinary talent in the world and all i want to do is salt of the earth, great texas food from our own back yards!!!

I will be at Jolie Vue farms this weekend at the Outstanding in the Feild event assisting monica with her dinner. I am cooking whole Duroc hog ala caja china, slow grilled bellies, smoked pulled shoulder and smoked sausage. I also made brawn ala fergus henderson!!! trotter gear baby!!! it is delicious.

be back at ya soon!

come eat at the beaver!!!

guys i am back and ready to blog. my first wine dinner was a smash. it was with concha y torro winery of chile and it was hot…to all wine snobs out there, i tasted some really great juice from these guys so dont be judgemental!!! remember…even box wine on the table is still wine on the table! if you don’t “get it” go search yourself!!!

here are some near quality photos while we were on the move that night:

Amuse is mushroom ceviche in a classic peruvian key lime leche de tigre. morel, hon-shimeji, blue foot, baby shitake, aji amarillo, micro basil

i am missing the first course photo. goats and sheeps cheese of spanish unpastuerized garotxa aged goat, manchego riserva sheep, valdeon blue aged goat and cow, texas “del ciello” goat camabert,                          “la cuesta” chevre

course two: hazelnut puree, poached lobster and texas gulf shrimp, tahitian vanila & key lime vinaigrette, aji amarillo & papaya granita, micro lemon minimint

intermezzo was chicha morada-cava spritzer…Chicha morada is a beverage made from certain forms of fermented corn and spices, in this case it was purple corn.

third course: raz al hanout braised six point berkshire pulled pork (compressed into a square…thanks randy rucker of tenacity), organic blue corn sopes, texas “oaxaquena” cheese, blackberry-pasilla salsa, blackberry foam, micro comino sprouts, finished with extra virgin avocado oil

fourth course: cherrywood smoked colorado lamb “sous vide”, poached peruvian giant lima beans and lima bean puree, “carrots on carrots”…baby carrots poached with carrot juice than some were pureéd with carrot juice, cabernet-chicha morada gastrite

fifth course: three chile spiced texas akaushi short rib sous vide, wild mushrooms, ramps, baby potatoes ala huancaina (huancaina is a room temperature cheese sauce made with milk,crackers, queso fresco and aji amarillo….i made a play on potatoes au gratin by topping the huancaina sauce with parmesan and torching it than placing the baby potatoes on top…), maca demi-glace (maca is a south american root which is ground into a powder much like gensing…it is considered natural viagra, giving you energy. it has an earthy yet sweet-bitter flavor.)

well its nice to be back!!

special shout out to: carlos testino, alvaro raffo, valerie schroth, daniel of “osaka”, augusto, senor rey del camera, jose durante and randy “mf” rucker of tenacity

some of the plates are still a little clumsy…i will work that shit out later.

This is dedicated to my good friend chef randy rucker!!!

Smoke that shit!!!

This picture is from Lone Star Aquafarm…My favorite fish, better than red snapper…Texas Redfish!!!

The link to cleanfish is another supplier for Texas Refish if you are out of state. Cleanfish is a great company as well as Lonestar.

h

ttp://www.cleanfish.com/product.htm#lochd

www.lonestaraquafarms.com

Yokum Texas…who would have thunk it?

http://www.texasmonthly.com/2007-12-01/multimedia2.php

check out the video at lamberts…Tyson Cole is one of the judges.

This is a cobia farm off the coast of Puerto Rico. Rumor has it that they are making more plans to raise red snapper, the most overfished indigenous reef fish in our Gulf of Mexico.

I have eaten this cobia and its quality is only rivaled by the aquafarmed Kona Kampachi.

Jj

so jared fergusen of montrose, houston, texas, somewhere(???)

found me a couple of years ago and went through culinary boot camp…he is now at austin culinary academy where he also works for starlight and staged at uchi…where he earned the respect of tyson and his crew…

anyway on this first night of a six night culinary festival, i was burried up to my third or second chin in fuck-all…jared, who had climed on a bus early morning on one of his two days off, shows up at 8pm and jumps on the expo line and bails out yours truly like he had been working with us all week. i am so proud of “my son”…hes all grows up and grows up!

Tyson…houston texas is sooo fucking proud of you!!! in an epic battle with greatly skilled oponents  not often seen in kitchen stadium(as some battles are just goofy…seeing that you don’t get to pick you own opponent as it would seem)…ginger reined as the supreme ingredient. Tyson, the young gaijin samurai, faced the veteran ronin, morimoto, with great honor, discipline and skill…morimoto could be seen sweating…it has been a long time morimoto, since you have had an honorable battle. nice to see you are not ready for the grave just yet. Tyson, you will be a master yet!

just a matter of time…(your a master in my book already!)
GO TEXAS

this was a hell of a day…