Lonestar - San Antonio

Everything is bigger in Texas.

Last day in San Antonio!  I'm writing this blog entry at the airport while I'm waiting for my flight.  One of the Vancouverites I was with really wanted to eat ribs in Texas before returning and I agree with her!

We were recommended a Texas style steak joint on the Riverwalk so we went to check it out.  The drink menu featured something called "The Big Shot".  Basically a super sized 3 flavoured margarita with a bottle of soda stuck in it.  We started chanting 'Do it! Do it! Do it!' and she caved into peer pressure.

Look how big that thing is!!  It looks cool but you drink off the top two layers pretty quick and left with a cup full of red soda.

I ordered a full rack of ribs.  I've had full rack of ribs in Vancouver no problem and didn't think it was a big deal.  So here comes my order:

It can't fit on 1 plate so it's served on two!  Two buns, a bowl of beans, potato salad, and some pickles.  Whoah.  I ended up eating only 1 plate and gave away the 2nd plate to my friends who were dining with me.  Have to say though that I was disappointed with the flavour.  The rub on the ribs was way too salty.  I prefer my ribs a lot more tender than what I was served.  Not quite falling off the bone but comes off easily when I bit into it.  The ribs here had a lot more chew to it than what I prefer.  Last of all it was drenched in sauce.  I do like saucy ribs but this was too much for me.  I did like the BBQ sauce when I scrapped most of it off - it had a nice spicy tang.

Another friend that I was dining with had the Smoked BBQ Sandwich.  I took a photo and asked her for her opinion and she basically just layed into her meal.  "Uninspired" "Boring" "Chicken was too dry".  From the picture below you can see what she meant.  It's basically dry chicken covered in BBQ sauce on a hot dog bun.

It's too bad that my last meal in Texas wasn't a good one - as most of the trip was outstanding.

While I'm writing my blog entry they just announced that my flight is delayed by 1/2 hour and that the flight is overbooked.  I hope I can make my connecting flight back to Vancouver ok.  Apparently American Airlines staged a last minute strike and is messing up air travel for everybody today.

Biga on the Banks - San Antonio

Things have been so busy for me in San Antonio that I didn't get a chance to do too many culinary detours.  But my flight leaves back to Vancouver tomorrow so I decided I must visit this one place before I go - no matter what.

Chef Bruce Auden gets consistantly nominated for a James Beard Best Chef award (the culinary equivalent to the oscars) and his premiere restaurant "Biga on the Banks" is just a 10 minute walk from my hotel.  

After placing my order I was surprised with a complimentary starter salad.  According to my server the chef felt sad that I was dining by myself so he gave me a gift.  I'm sure he's just playing with me but I appreciated it!

The salad was pretty simple with golden beats, cherry tomatoes, feta, shredded carrots and cucumbers tossed together with lettuce using a standard house vinaigrette.

I don't know why but I recently started to become a fan of beats and feta in my salad so I definitely enjoyed my complimentary starter.  I usually like walnuts to provide that extra texture element in a salad like this but I guess the tortilla chip provided that in this case.

The next course is a dual of roast quail and elk.  I don't remember ever having elk before so I was really interested in this dish.  I had venison before at La Crocodile and didn't quite care for venison.  Is elk and venison the same?  Not quite sure.  Anyways the elk prepared here was delicious!  Coasted with an 11 spice rub and cooked to medium rare.  I tried to look for a gamey taste but I couldn't detect anything.  It pretty much tasted like a chewier version of a beef tenderloin.  The quail was great.  The trickiness of quail is that you want to make sure it's cook thoroughly but because it's so small it's often overcooked.  Not this time.  Accompanying the proteins is a parsnip puree (tasted a lot like mashed potatoes but healthier!), chestnuts, Brussels sprouts, cranberry raisin chutney, juniper demi sauce.  I don't eat brussels sprouts very much but after trying it here I decided that I like it!  I'll have to learn how to cook brussels sprouts now.  My only criticism is that there isn't the care and attention to detail in terms of presentation that I would expect in a high end restaurant.  A little bit too rustic.

For dessert I had a grand mariner souffle.  I've had soufflés prepared for me at Hubert Keller's Fleur de Lys, the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Vegas, and at Dale McKay's Ensemble and this one is my favourite.  It had a lightness / airiness to it that I enjoyed a lot.  Again the presentation is not as good as the others though.  Professional souffles usually raise straight out of the ramekin and this one had a muffin top but in terms of flavour and texture it was there.

Altogether with a large bottle of San Pellegrino and taxes my meal was $65.  It also came with a complementary bread basket which included some delicious corn bread.

Air Canada First Class Lounge @ YVR

I'm in San Antonio right now for a Church Conference.  But I think I'm in trouble.  It's 1 AM here in San Antonio time but 10 PM in Vancouver time.  No way I'm getting to sleep until like 3 AM local.  But my first session tomorrow is 6 AM Vancouver time.  Oh oh.  I hope after I write up this blog entry I'll be able to get to fall asleep soon.

I was offered an upgrade to First Class when checking in so I decided to do it for another $75.  Not only does this come with comfier seats (I hate sharing armrests !!) I get access to the first class lounge!  Although this is the Air Canada first class lounge in the US departures terminal, you will get access to it if your first class ticket is for any Star Alliance airline carrier.

The first class lounge was really exciting to get into but once I got to see it - it's kinda disappointing.  They offer an all you can eat salad bar:

They have some Automated coffee machines that grinds your beans to order and make cappuccinos and lattes:

Free Cookies (English Bay):


An open fridge for you to grab Sodas, Juices, etc:



But probably the most interesting thing is all you can drink Booze (which I did not partake):

And shower facilities:

Not pictured:

• Tortilla Chips and Salsa
• Minestrone Soup

So the First Class Lounge was a bit of a let down.   Hopefully I will be able to dine at some neat places while I'm here in San Antonio and I'll be sure to share it on my food blog!  On my list of food to eat: Texas BBQ, Cajun/Creole, Tex Mex, Mexican.

Chocolate Lava Cake

This week on Masterchef we saw 'Ryan' the big villan get kicked off.  I'm sure the show edited Ryan to be twice the jerk then he actually is but I got bought into the story they were selling and was happy to see him go.  The pressure test that sent Ryan home packing was the 'Chocolate Lava Cake'.  A Chocolate Lava cake is basically an undercooked brownie.  Nice and chocolate cakey on the outside, warm chocolate pudding in the middle.


I did this for the first time at a friends place so it was kinda like a pressure test.  I never got a chance to rehearse so it better come out great or I'll look bad!





Ingredients
4 Large Eggs
4 Large egg yolks
2.5 sticks of butter
6 tbs of sugar
7 ounces of dark chocolate
6 tbs of flour
8 tsp of cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp of vanilla

In a bowl prepare the 4 eggs and add the 4 egg yolks

Add the sugar.  I have a little assistant to help me this time!

Beat the egg and sugar mixture until it becomes pale yellow in colour.  

In another bowl, melt the chocolate and butter together.  You can use a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter but I just stick it in the microwave at a low (defrost) setting.  Mix together until smooth.

Mix together the melted butter/chocolate with the eggs.  If the chocolate is really hot then you'll might need to temper it.  But in my case the microwave only heated the chocolate just enough to melt and it wasn't too hot so I just dump it in.

Mix.

 Sift in the flour and coca powder.

The sifting is to help prevent lumps in the batter. 

Fold it all together gently.  Don't overmix.

Ladle the batter into buttered ramekin

Clean the edges of the ramekins if any batter got spilled on it.  Tap the ramekins on a hard surface to knock out any air bubbles and then place on a cookie sheet.

Cook in a preheated oven at 425 F for 13 min.  

After letting it cool for 10 min run a knife around the edge.

Pop it out on a plate. 

Dust with icing sugar and serve!  I don't know if the picture shows it well, but you should be able to see the 'lava' ooze out.  Maybe if I cooked it for 1 less minute it would be a little bit more runny.

My friends found the lava cake to be pretty rich tasting.  One thing I figured out while looking at the recipe again is that I put in 8 tablespoons of coca powder when the recipe called for 8 teaspoons.  That might have made the chocolate flavour too intense.  I would definitely recommend serving it with vanilla ice cream to help cut the richness.

Home Made Apple Pie

I'm a big fan of the TV Show "Masterchef".  One of the thing I wanted to do last season was to personally try all the pressure tests the contestants had to go through.  I think most of the challenges are really interesting and learning them all should help me a lot in building up my culinary repertoire.  So now that season 3 has started I'm determined to follow through on my original plan.  However I'm not subjecting myself to the same time constraints and I get to do internet research so it's not quite the pressure test the contestants go through.  So this weeks pressure test was home made Apple Pie!  I've made my own pie crust for quiche so I felt this shouldn't go too bad.  There's a big discussion all over the internet on what apples are the best for making pie.  Tart apples like Granny Smith hold up their form really well while being baked while sweeter apples turn into applesauce.  I used a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious in this pie.

 Ingredients:

Pie Pastry
12 ounces of flour
2 sticks of butter
1/2 teaspoon of salt
8 teaspoons of ice water

Apple Filling
6 Apples (yes I know the picture has 8)
1 cup of sugar
3 Tablespoons of corn starch
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Measure out your 12 ounces of flour.  Flour compacts together so pastry recipes like to give flour measurements in weight instead of volume to be more precise.  Then throw in your salt.  I added a tablespoon of sugar just because Alton Brown says it helps brown the crust.

Throw everything into a food processor and blitz to mix everything.  This is the first time I used a food processor to make pastry - usually I use a pastry cutter.  I mentioned that I wish I had a food processor to make my pie dough to a friend of mine and he graciously lent me his!

Cut up your 2 sticks of butter into chunks and throw them in the freezer for a few min.  The whole secret to flakey pie crust is not letting the butter melt.

Dump your butter into the food processor and blitz for 1 second 12 times or until the butter is broken up into little bits like this.  If you don't have a food processor you can use a pastry cutter and just work the butter until it is this small.  The advantage of a food processor is that it does this super fast so the butter doesn't melt as much.

Add your ice water while mixing.  Don't over mix your dough or it would form gluten strands and become more bread like in texture.  Mix just enough that your dough is just starting to come together.  If you press some between your fingers it should stick together.

Dump it out on a floured work area and work it into a little ball.  I sprinkled a bit more ice water to help it along.

 Like this.

Split it into two portions and stick it in the fridge.

 Core, peel, and slice your apples.

Add your other filling ingredients and mix it together.  I decided instead of 1 cup of white sugar I did a 1/2 white 1/2 brown mix.  I also didn't measure out the cinnamon so I think there's a bit too much.  You're supposed to add the juice of 1/2 a lemon in the recipe but I forgot to buy one.

Flour your work area again and roll out one of the crust portions.  I had trouble with the edges as I couldn't keep a nice rounded edge.  So I made sure that I rolled it extra large so that all the nice pastry can fit in the 9" pie pan and the yucky edges can just be trimmed off.

Loosely roll it up on your rolling pin and then transfer it onto the pie pan.

Add your apples!  Your bowl of apples should have a lot of juices in it.  I've seen youtube videos where they will pour the juices back into the pie but I didn't want a watery filling so I omitted the leftover juices.  One thing I forgot to do was to dollop little bits of butter all over.

Roll on the top layer of pastry.  I kinda tore the top pastry a bit while lifting it off the work area.  But it ended up ok in the final product.

To seal the pie, go along the edges and fold the bottom layer pastry over the top of the top layer pastry, and then crimp with your fingers.

Give it an egg wash on top.  Just beat an egg and then brush it onto the pastry.  Sprinkle some sugar on top and cut some vents.

Cook in a 350 F oven for about 60 min, and your done!

 Yummy!