Foodblogger Event: Vivo 2

Hey, real short post here. I was invited to Vivo's new second location to help them celebrate their grand opening. There was music, food and drinks a plenty. Lots of hospitable folks and even more guests, everyone from friends and family, investors, to us food bloggers. Guest bartender Tipsy Texan was on hand to serve us some very tasty drinks.

The space is tucked away in a strip mall shopping center, they're still working on signs and lights, but once I walked in I had to do a double take to make sure I was at the right place. The restaurant is darkly lit, but the decorations are colorful and really catch your attention, everything from the Graffiti art at the front, to the painting from San Antonio artists that cover the walls. This place definitely has character and isn't shy about making statments.














Vivo seems to be going for a adult themed type restaurant where folks can hang out listen to live DJs (as seen above in the dedicated DJ station) at the semi enclosed bar, or have a nice dinner in one of the many alcoves of booths and various segmented rooms. It's on the one hand very open and the other, very sectioned off. Music from the DJ is piped throughout the restaurant from the ceiling speakers, so no matter where you are you don't miss out on any of the lively entertainment.











Very sparce shot at foods I'm afraid, the lighting was very dark and was not great for taking photos, I managed to sneak one photo of the nachos in one of the smaller dining room before the whole place filled up. General description, everything I had was extremely yummy, and although everything was what you'd find normally in a tex-mex menu like nachos, taquitos etc, they managed to make a spin everything to taste light and more healthy feeling (alfalfa sprouts on nachos? interesting).

My favorite was the puffy taco I'm told it's one of their signature dishes. The taco shell basically disintegrated in a flaky puff as I took a bite. Crisp lettuce and onions, along with the very flavorful shredded chicken really made this an enjoyable little bite, something I'll be back to order.






I'm very excited that Vivo's moved into the north west part of town. I happen to live near the area and often bemoan the fact that all they have around here is chain restaurants. I'm very happy that a local "more up scale" type of restaurant is testing out the waters here, and I hope some of the Austin character will make it's way up here upon their success. If nothing else, I'm glad that I have another choice in happy hour destinations.

As always it's great to see my blogger friends, HungryEngineer, Apron Adventures, Maggie, Peter from Tasting Buds, DininginAustin, BootsIntheOven, EatthisLens, MisoHungryNow, FeteandFeast and a new friend AustinEpicurean. (whew long list, sorry if I left anyone out)

Fall is Back in the Air

Not really any good cohesive theme today. These are a few of the dishes I've had on my list of "gotta try" that say fall to me. It's gotten cold and dreary lately and what better way to warm the bones than with some stews and soup.

Let's start with the main dish, Chicken and chickpea stew. Its a nice blend of spices and vegetables, more reminiscent of a thin curry with more going on than I usually attribute to a stew. The carrots provided a bit of unexpected sweetness to the overall taste. The original recipe called for chicken thigh, but in the interest of trying to cut back on fats I went with chicken breast, in hindsight this may have been a mistake because the chicken thigh would have produced a more flavorful stew it was a call between health and flavor we'll see what the jury has to say about it.

Here we have a nice Penne pasta with Green Pea Pesto. Usually that much basil pesto would really turn me off of a dish, but the green peas really sweeten and lightens up the pasta and toning down some of the richness from the cheese and olive oil. I didn't have to use as much oil to get the pesto together since the peas provided plenty of moisture. I never considered using pea as part of a pesto, but this would be a great spread atop a bruschetta or even stuffed in a ravioli, probably a lot healthier.



This next dish is courtesy Dai Due Supper club, they shared their recipe with the local paper and I've been saving it because it looks so simple and delicious, perfect for a fall feast. It's a roasted oyster mushrooms with arugula, champagne vinaigrette and some fresh gouda. I didn't have the luxury of all of the great farm fresh items as with Dai Due, but the dish was great none the less. The arugula's peppery taste was a great way to finish the smokey earthy taste and textures of the roasted mushrooms. I happened to have some bread on hand and tasted the oil after roasting with the mushrooms and it was fantastic.

For a soup, we have a Ancho Roasted Butternut Squash soup, this really speaks fall to me. The slight heat from the ancho peppers and roasted squash just warms you up. Heck, just looking at it and it's golden brown color warms me up. Again, quite a few vegetables and spices to bring this soup together. Surprisingly, despite it's rich taste there's very little fat and oil in the soup only a drizzle went into roasting the squash.

Recipe requested: find it here. original recipe by Rachel MacIntyre of the Friendly Kitchen


Dessert might have been the only somewhat "bad for you" part of lunch. I saw this recipe for a Buttermilk Pudding Cake with maple raspberries. How is it with the same batter you have cake and pudding at the same time? I was in disbelief and set about making the dessert. Sure enough cutting into the cake/pudding the top was a very light fluffy cake and near to the bottom was more of a pudding like texture. The maple syrup and the raspberries add nice flavors to the cake's texture and together you have quite an amazing cake/pudding.

I had a great time putting together lunch for today. I was sure that my prep the day before would have helped me cut a bit of time, but I suppose churning a 14 lb turkey out in the middle of making bentos does put a cramp on the time management. Anyhow, one more bento before the holiday season starts. Stay tuned!

Foodblogger Event: Promise Pizza

The folks at Promise Pizza invited a few of us over to tell us their story and dish out their pies. Promise Pizza literally started out of a garage of one of the owners where they set about perfecting their pizza recipes. The thing that really sets Promise pizza apart from your run of the mill pizza joint is that they are focused on natural and organic fresh pizzas. This required quite a great deal of research, trial and error, but a well fed neighborhood no doubt appreciated their experimentation. From their company owned fleet of deliver Smart Cars to building their facility according to Austin Green Building certification, Promise pizza has a second mission of social responsibility. This includes their cooking facility, equipment, and even offsite facilities (more on that later), a lot of thought and planning went into building the identity of this "more than meets the eye" pizza parlour.


Our kind host was George Cordeiro, one of the four owners of Promise Pizza (we dubbed them the four dudes). He had a wealth of information on not only the struggles and history of Promise Pizza, but also the ingredients, equipment, and effort to turn out quality pizza pies. He explained that all of their utensils, cups and plates are all recycled or bio degradable materials. Everything is all natural here which includes the sodas which are made with real cane sugar rather than the regular fructose. They even have a naturally brewed ginger ale, which was quite tasty.











We started out with a couple of appetizers, stuffed mushrooms and jalapeno poppers. Promise pizza offers both gluten free options as well as vegan options. Both of these appetizers are gluten free. I believe they are working on vegan versions using their special vegan cheese. Very tasty, I think both stuffings were simliar only differing in the delivery vessel. Also up were the garlic cheese sticks, these were delicious a good amount of garlic with a nice thin crust so you didn't feel like you were filling up with bread.

I took a great interest in their equipment (being the gadget geek that I am), in order to conserve energy and reduce their carbon footprint the folks here at Promise invested in some higher end energy efficient equipment. For instance, pictured to your right is their pizza oven, it forces hot air to cook the pizza via convection (as opposed to top down cooking). The net positive, as explained to us, cooks the pizza faster but also forms the crust quicker to prevent oil from pooling at in the middle of the pizza as evidenced by our not so greasy recycled plates.











So pizza can really be a religion, there are lots of points of view and everyone believes their favorite pizza is the best. Thin crust vs thick, sweet vs garlicky sauce, big pepperoni or tiny coin sized ones, floppy and foldable or crispy and the list goes on and on. For the record, Promise pizza serves regular crust pizza with a slightly sweeter sauce. All of the ingredients are very fresh, someone even commented on how fresh the portobella mushrooms looked on the veggie pizza. I think the real standout here is the fresh ingredients that and the cheese.











You know that stringy, gooey cheese falling of that amazing looking piping hot pizza you see on the commercials? You know the one, it's the opposite of the one you stare, with a great degree of disappointment, sitting on your plate. Whatever the formula they use, they got it right, the cheese was almost absurdly stretchy and there were strings of cheese all over the table even after the pizza had sat for a while. George attributed this to the creamier consistency of the organic cheese as well as the blend of provolone and mozzarella.












Gluten free menu offerings are becoming more and more prevalent these days. I'm glad to see they are offering gluten free pizzas, having done my time it's hard to resist the siren call of pizza. Of note, they only sell the GF pizzas as 8" personal pan pizzas. The pizzas were quite tasty but as with most gluten free options, it's pretty obvious that the crust is not quite the same. The crust was a lot crispier and lighter, almost cracker like. I think the use of ingredients to overshadow the crust was a wise choice. They made it a point to serve the gluten free pizzas last since they have to fire a special oven for the pizzas to insure no gluten contamination. The GF pizzas are prepared off site and cooked at the store. It's good to see that not only do they offer a gluten free menu, but they are well aware of what it means to be alergic to gluten and they take all of the proper precautions.

This was the pizza I came to try at Promise Pizza. A coworker had mentioned that he tried their vegan pizza and it was both tasty and interesting. Vegan pizza huh? I had to give it a shot. If you look closely at the picture you can see cheese shreds in various states of meltiness. The crust was thinner, not as thin as the gluten free, but noticeably thinner. The cheese is the big difference, I don't know much about vegan cheese, but my understanding is that it's hard to find vegan cheese that melts like real cheese and that's really one of the core things that makes a pizza. Apparently after a great deal of research the owners of Promise settled on Daiya cheese, it's a heady mix of ingredients that I couldn't possibly remember. Although, it didn't act exactly like cheese, I have to give it marks for effort. The result was more creamier than melted cheese, kinda like a cheese sauce, I liked it just fine some of the others, not so much.

They were really generous at Promise, we had a ton of pizza still on the table when they started in on dessert, I was only able to remain for the first one, the Cinnamon knots. Pretty self explanatory and they went pretty fast so they were probably every bit as good as they smelled. The other was a brownie that I missed.






I had a great time at Promise Pizza, a big thanks to the owners for inviting us, and the kitchen staff that churned out all those pizzas. If you happen to be up in the Round Rock stadium area drop by and give them a try.

Tools of the Trade: Blendertec blender

Another gadget post this week, it's been a good two week recharge, full of catching up with stuff and gathering new ideas for the coming year. I only have a few more bentos for the year with the holidays and all but I promise to bring you a food post next week.

This week's gadget is the Blendtec blender that's right, from the folks that bring you "Will It Blend" (I can practically hear a studio audience chant the phrase as I type it). I decided on this purchase based off of my inability to blend my broccoli soup to the consistency I needed it to be, unacceptable. I spend so much time in the kitchen that I've made it a point to try to always buy commercial grade equipment, ultimately only two made the final list. I was trying to decide between a Vitamix or this Blendtec blender, it turns out what was available at my "local shop that allows me to use my handy-dandy coupons" only had the Blendtec so there we have it. I understand the Vitamix is also a great blender, but I've only got the hand I was dealt. Although I'm not doing a proper review and compare, it would have been nice to see how the Vitamix performs side by side with the Blendtec.

Enough yammering down to the features. What came in the box: blender base, blender jar, dvd, instructions and recipe book. Pretty basic stuff here. The thing to note is that the blender jar is actually a one piece, there's no unscrewing, or opportunities for leaking (yet). Cleanup consists of sponge cleaning and a thorough rinse, I've not yet had any issues with "gunk" in the jar from not being able to clean it. Another nice feature, instead of rubber teeth that lock into the base it's a solid metal peg with teeth. In practice this should lead to better long term performance, since rubber will tend to degrade, my recent trip to the local restaurant supply store, shows they stock bins of replacement "blade units" telling me that it's one of the first things to wear out.

I haven't really looked at the recipe book, but apparently this is a new item added into the package previous reviews that I read online had a lot of negatives on how Blendtec doesn't provide a recipe book. I'm not certain why this would be a problem, it's a blender, it does what blenders do. Anyhow, anyone that was on the fence can rest assured that now it has both DVD and recipe book.

The Blendtec has a fairly straightforward button menu each button denotes a special program for creating soups, smoothies, batters, milk shakes. You can control the speed via the up down buttons, although I think I'd rather a dial here. I'm intrigued by the Ice cream/Frozen Yogurt setting, not quite sure what that's about I'm sure it's on their dvd/recipe book. I've only managed to use the pulse button which is pretty much all I need. Note the nice LCD panel, when you hit the programs it tells you what it's doing, it also counts your usage and for note, it did keep the usage count despite being unplugged.











Well? How well does it work? Can it pulverize? Will it leave you with weird chunks? How about dead space? The actual performance of the blender is really an explaination of what "power" means in a blender. Your regular run of the mill blender will run at 500 Watts, you're nicer ones tend to get you about 700 watts. This thing runs at a blazing two horsepower (roughly 1490 Watts). Zounds! Pictured above is a before and after shot of a bunch of ice cubes before they met their demise at the hands of this Tasmanian devil. The resulting fine snow powder took about four seconds. Right, four, no jiggling, no shaking, no tamping down, I simply held down the pulse button, and something akin to a jet engine went off.











Ok, ice is fine and good, let's make soup with something chunky. As before in my quickfire post, I made some broccoli soup, very simple whole broccoli florets and a bit of water. This took a little longer, something like ten seconds, but as you can see there is no trace other than the bright vibrant green that would hint at broccoli. In fact, once again, if held longer it actually whips the soup with air and brings about a fluffy texture.

So what do I think? I'm pretty happy with my purchase, it's the same blender the local coffee shops use to make their iced coffee drinks and smoothies. Good enough for the daily use of a coffee shop, then plenty good enough for me. On the off chance I need to blend some golf balls or rubber mallets, I have the option to do so. No real seems or buttons to get messy or stick over time, so cleanup is really simple on the base unit. The only real complaint I have about this blender is that it's louder that a regular blender but I expect loud noises out of blenders, especially ones that are as powerful as some lawn equipment.

I've got a few more pieces of equipment queued for review during the dead spots this holiday. I also have noticed quite a few travelers coming in looking for my orion cooker post, I'm going to chronicle smoking a thanksgiving turkey being that I didn't get any left overs from home this year, so look for the details and recipes on making that turkey I did last year.

Tools of the Trade: Obentec's Laptop Lunches 2.0

No lunch this week or next so you'll have to suffer to through some of my "yammering" posts. As usual for my off posts you'll be seeing some of the tools that I use to produce lunch.

So with my additional eaters I went ahead an invested in six more obentec boxes. I've been eyeballing the 2.0 system for some time now and am pleasantly surprised at some of the modifications they've made. The new gear seems more robust, "refined" and grown up than their first iteration. I'm glad they've incorporated some of the changes that seemed to answer for some of the minor gripes I had.












Let's start with the containers. They beefed up the outer box and thinned the walls of the inner containers. This has quite a few major benefits. The outer box snaps shut a lot tighter than the original box and initial tests shows it doesn't suffer from the upper lid "warp" from dishwasher wear and tear. Also, the thin segments in side the outer box (to keep the inner boxes from sliding around) have made room for one "super large" inner container (sold separately). It's a fabulous option to allow for a large sandwich or pizza slice. The inner containers have thinner walls and can actually nest inside one another, the old boxes would, at best, sit on top of each other forming a precarious tower of containers. This make storage a lot easier and consumes a lot less space in the cabinets. I think the trade off is that some of the inner containers show a bit of warping from time spent in the dishwasher even from sitting only on the top racks. The slightly larger box and the thinner inner box walls actually provide more space for food which is very noticeable when I fill a 1.0 box versus a 2.0 box.

Next up, some nice to have features got added to this box. First, three out of the five containers now have lids. I confess I have yet to use them as it's easier to use press and seal on everything rather than half seal and half lids. Previously, the two containers that had lids would have a hard time sealing (or staying sealed) after a while due to dishwasher warpage. I still need to do some testing on the new lids to see if they've managed to fix that problem.




Second upgrade was the silverware, it's full metal no more half plastic. Most of my eaters preferred that I left out the cutlery because the plastic handle tended to break off the metal and thus they would feel bad for breaking them (minor peeve as I kept buying silverware for a while). The new upgrade to full metal is pretty nice, I'm sure this will last longer in the hands of grade school students.



Overall I love the new color scheme, no bright yellow or orange to sting the eyes. Very subdued colors which makes for nicer photos on the blogs. I love the improvements they made, it's clear they either listened to feedback from their customers or asked for advice on their redesign of their product. My only possible gripe is now i've got two different sets of boxes so the parts aren't interchangeable, but I think the changes are all for the better, so I'll clam up. As always their support people were really helpful in processing my order and I even got a nice email dialogue with the President, Amy Hemmert. It's always nice that they make time to speak to their customers directly it makes me feel good about buying their product.

Quickfire bento

Super sweet, I had motorcycle class so I can get a license for my new scooter, the only downside is that it left me very little time to prepare a lunches. I really needed to find a set of dishes that would be either very easy to put together or extremely quick. Hence my quickfire bento, ok not quite the same quickfire as in the TV show, but I had to call it something and quickfire has a catchy ring to it.

Like him or hate him, Gordon Ramsay is an accomplished chef and researching his "fast" and "easy" books as well as watching a few youtube videos I was very inspired by his methods and philosophy of letting ingredients speak for themselves. I will say there will probably be some future inserts of his dishes because both books had some very tasty looking stuff, but for today we're sticking with the fast and easy.

We have two quasi mains today we start with Curry dusted shrimp with Corn Salsa. I made a slight modification in using shrimp instead of scallops to trim some costs, I think overall it didn't make a huge difference. The shimp was tossed in with some curry powder and quickly sauteed with some olive oil. The corn salsa was as quick as I could prep the vegetables and simple heat up on the stove. The salsa was quite delishious it had a good zip with the lime and a really nice aroma from the sesame oil. From the picture you can see just how colorful and eye catching everything was. I think this dish *might* have been the most time consuming, which is saying a lot because it really didn't take any time at all to put together. If I actually use my food processor for prep work (which I never do), i'm sure this would have take no time.

Main/major side number two: Fusilli pasta salad with sausage, olives and sundried tomatoes. I cut all the corners here, I bought julienne sundried tomatos, I found pre-chopped mixed olives in the olive bar, and used the oil that was packed with the sundried tomatos to cook the sausage and toss in with the pasta. I really think this took about eight mins to put together since I had to wait for the pasta to boil, everything else was easily sliced and cooked to be tossed together. I didn't really add any salt to the final salad both the olives and the sausage carried enough salt to help offset the blandness of the pasta. That said, you do need to take a bite of every component to get the full effect. I think the real beauty of this dish is that you could easily have all the components on hand (buy jarred olives) to make an impromptu meal for surprise guests and whip it out quick.

These next two come courtesy of youtube, first we have Marinated Button Mushrooms. I'm a little mixed on this one, but probably because by the time I was tasting this, it had just come off the stove and had no time to let the mushrooms marinate. I'm curious as to how it tastes today, I have no leftovers, so I'll have to rely on my eaters. I can say that it smelled wonderful! The mushrooms were first browned in olive oil, some shallots were tossed in, a healthy splash of vinegar, and finally added in some freshly torn tarragon. Again a very simple dish, the tarragon was wonderfully fragrant and definitely helps infuse the vinaigrette. I had to eyeball the ingredient measurements since I basically transcribed the directions from the video, I think I got it right.

Here it is, Gordon Ramsay's famous Broccoli Soup. I first heard about this from one of my friends that had said it was his favorite soup. When he told me about the preparation I was a bit skeptical. I found the youtube video online showing Gordon Ramsay preparing this soup and had to try it myself. So, while I was making bentos last week I demoed this soup for myself. First off, I discovered that my blender sucks, I could not get it to the consistency that you see to the right. There were still bits of broccoli "leaves" (?), but it was still amazingly tasty. You want the run down? Basically, you get some boiling water, blanch the broccoli for a few mins, drop it in the blender add a bit of the water from the pot, salt, and pepper (I used white pepper I like the result better) boom you're done. Yes the video adds a couple more things, but the basic soup is awesome, best ever? Well maybe not but it's up there. Again, I eyeballed serving sizes and got it just on, which is unfortunate for me since I have no leftovers.

Now you're asking yourself, "but he just said he wasn't able to get it to the right consistency". Yes, after uncovering that I had inferior technology I decided I had to upgrade. The monster blender I ended up with will be a post in the next couple of weeks since I have some downtime due to Thanksgiving, so hang on I'll get to it. It is so powerful the resulting soup actually got some air whipped into it making for an interesting almost "creamy" texture to the soup.

Finally for dessert we have Blueberries with Honey Almond Yogurt. How do you make it? Honey + yogurt, add blueberries, toast some almonds and toss on. Yeah, it was that easy and yeah, it's some tasty stuff. The honey really lends a nice sweet but distinctly honey perfume to the yogurt and resulted in a nice creamy texture. This was a nice backdrop for the blueberries and we finish it all off with the aromatic crunch of toasted almonds. Even my normal dislike for dessert was moved by this little combo.


Amazing. That's really all I have to say to sum it all up. Normally preparation for making my bentos include a complete battle list made up of inter-twined steps from all of the final edits to my recipes. This week's list was non-existent since there were virtually no multiple steps for these recipes, once you started on the dish, you were finishing it at the same step. A usual lunch rollout for me is most of a Sunday, and that's with heavy thought and preparation to make it as easy and fast as possible. This week took four hours, from starting the clock to finishing (boxing) and the kitchen completely clean. That's twelve lunches that contained five items each, so that's 70 dishes. I don't think it could have been any faster. I'll admit when I was only cooking for six it was usually much faster but for twelve it's been a real time sink. I'm going to take a closer look at the dishes I produced to see if I can take something from this experience and modify future dishes/recipes for this kind of speed. Thank you Gordon Ramsay, I never followed you in the past, but you've made me a believer (don't worry Alton, you're still my hero).

A brief hiatus from cooking over the next two weekends due to Thanksgiving, I'll be filling in with gear other yammering posts in the mean time. Thanks for stopping by!

Box Contents

• Curry dusted shrimp with Corn Salsa
• Fusilli pasta salad with sausage, olives and sun dried tomatoes
• Marinated Button Mushrooms
• Broccoli Soup
• Blueberries with Honey Almond Yogurt

Yogurt Bento

So last week's dessert was an assortment of fruits which was originally to be served over yogurt. It turned out I had so much extra fruit that I just went with serving the fruit and left the yogurt unopened. What to do with a giant tub of plain yogurt? Well, why not get more yogurt and do some investigation on cooking with yogurt. There's a whole lot of applications for yogurt, a lot of them center around middle-eastern and Indian cuisine, but as an ingredient I was shooting for using yogurt in every dish for the bento and trying not make it an "obvious" use of yogurt, like a parfait or something.

Except for dessert everything manages to be gluten free. Despite not following that lifestyle anymore, I still like to look in to see how gluten-free-friendly my boxes/recipes are just incase.

First up, the entree: grilled mint beef kabobs and grilled cumin chicken kabobs. The acidic nature of yogurt does a great job of breaking down tough cuts of meat. I find that the marinade has to have some strong flavors to get past the yogurt flavor itself. Of course traditional Indian cuisine does this all the time with the Tandoori cooking. I actually produced a lot of kabobs and didn't anticipate the amount of food I had for myself (happy accident). A very simple dish and definitely tasty, I'll have to consider yogurt for other larger applications when it comes to marinades and grilling.


Here we have lentils and couscous with yogurt vinaigrette, show casing the use of yogurt in a salad dressing. Naturally the tartness of the yogurt fits well into a vinaigrette, in this case it's the ability of the vinaigrette to coat the lentils and couscous that was really yogurt's job. I love the textures in this dish, the lentils added a nice bite to the salad. I originally feared that the dish would be too bland, but after mixing in the dressing it came out perfect, no salt added or needed the yogurt really mellowed out vinegars so that the vinaigrette itself didn't over power the dish.


Much like the dressing we use yogurt as a sauce in this Asparagus with Orange Saffron Sauce. The yogurt was cooked in with the saffron and chicken broth base. I think next time I would use less broth as the resulting sauce was a bit too runny for my tastes. The use of orange zest and juice and finally the saffron really put some neat flavors together. I was a bit dismayed that all they had were the giant asparagus at the store as I prefer the thinner stalks, but I'll take what I can get considering it's not in season.


Finally we showcase yogurt's abilities in baking: Blueberry bread. I decided to cut the lemon glaze because it was an empty waste of calories. It's interesting in that I used low fat yogurt, a similar bread recipe required a whole lot of butter and vegetable oil. This version substituted a majority of that fat with yogurt. I didn't really lose anything except got a bit more of a chewy texture which was just fine by me. From my research it seems that the use of yogurt is commonly in place of oil or buttermilk. I like it, is a great way to lighten up a recipe.

I'm very happy with my dip into yogurt land. I learned a lot about the health benefits and various uses of yogurt. That's all for now, see you guys next week!

Foodblogger Event: Four Seasons Holiday Preview

Four Seasons invited me out to their holiday preview and man did they pull out the stops. They had a station for the food, drinks, spa and even tweet/blogging station. The designer for the event did a wonderful job. I'm lucky that my photo setup could still take pictures in the holiday lighting but with the decoration and flowers it made the event feel really special. Lots of pictures and things to say but I'll try to sum up everything.
















So the theme was to showcase Four Season's Holiday offerings from spa services to bar drinks and food from Trio. To the left were the drinks and their labels, they were kind enough to give out recipe cards for the drink recipes. If you see one you wanna try write me in the comments I'll get it to you. My personal favorite was the Yule-Thyme martini, it featured thyme infused vodka which gives you this cool refreshing taste. Then they add a splash of Oban (scotch) and garnish of smoked shitake mushroom which finishes the drink with a nice smoky flavor. In fact, it was so good I headed up stairs after the event with Maggie and Ginny of MaggiesAustin to drink the full sized versions of what we sampled. That might have to be my happy hour spot for the holidays.

As you can see Trio is featuring a prix fixe menu of some really wonderful items. I didn't get to try everything, but I'll give you color commentary on some of the highlights.











Four Seasons brought out every level of staff to great us, pictured is Tom Seguesta (the general manager) and Todd Duplechan (head chef of Trio). Everyone was so welcoming and made the event extremely inviting. They really wanted to make the point that they are try to regionalize the experience and not make it a heuty teuty generic feeling four seasons. In fact their sommlier was not present because he was busy blending the wines for the hotel/vineyard exclusive blend (and by hotel I mean only Austin).












Above we have the brussels sprouts and the winter squash salad. I'm not quite sure what the cheese was (it's listed as farm cheese) I mistook it for goat cheese but the flavor was not tangy or salty enough to be that. I happened to like the texture from the salad, the roasted squash was sweet and had a nice texture. The brussels sprouts were cooked very well and someone even commented that they usually hated brussels sprouts and these were quite tasty. I think the sweet potatoes were a good complement in sweetness to the sprouts. Excellent side additions.











How do you pick a favorite from these three. I didn't get a picutre of the souffle but all of it was wonderful. The salmon was perfectly cooked the lingonberry sauce added a nice bit of acidity. The rib eye was melted in your mouth and the red wine sauce was subtle and let you enjoy the flavor of the meat without getting in the way. No clear winner here, I wished I had a chance to sample the pheasant (got roped into a conversation and missed out). I wasn't sure what kind of pasta it was served over, I did get a taste of that, it was spaetzle like but wasn't enough to let me decide on the full flavor so that one has a question mark until I can do some more investigation.











Dessert was beautiful, I'll confess I didn't get a chance to sample it and I doubt my shots did it justice. However, I got it on good authority from Laura and Mariah from DiningInAustinBlog that the baked alaska was the winner and really hit the spot." The light dessert really complemented the tasting we had. The gingerbread cake was good, but not after all that stuff we just ate". There you have it folks Chocolate peppermint baked alaska is the thing to try.


Finally you have my tasting plate or as I call it, "everything I could manage to fit on the plate so that I can try everything but still not get any sauces mixed together". The souffle was quite tasty and that was without the seafood sauce which everyone else tells me was very good. The pop over was light and fluffy. And of course the star of the show in my mind was the Pork belly. The piece I had was not too fatty, it was crispy and delicious, the cranberry lent a nice sweetness to help offset the richness of the pork. Why is it that pork belly always wins? I mean always, every single time it is the favorite. Oh well why question such un-answerable facts of the universe one should just enjoy it for what it is, pork belly goodness .


A big big thank you to the staff at the Four Seasons Austin, it was a wonderful time, althought I didn't avail myself of the free hand massage (which I'm sure was delightful) everything else was fantastic. It was also great seeing my blogger friends.

Indian Bento Number Two

I have to say, I'm really enjoying my new camera lens and the more natural light looking shots I'm able to take with it. Hopefully you guys out there noticed the difference. (Ok the title shot was a little dark)

So, I needed to reel back this week the bentos have been getting a little pricey on the ingredients and the dishes a tad labor heavy. I also had to buy six new boxes to accommodate my new bento-ees, so I'm trying to cut back a little at a time to re-coop some of those costs. I've been doing quite well, last week's was only a little bit over the budget. It's been a fun challenge over all this time to make changes and tweaks to take advantage of sales or simply making a recipe cheaper without losing any of the flavor.

This week I bring you my second Indian themed bento. With the new audience it was tempting to dig up the old recipes, but there were a few things I wanted to look into and my trusty "future bentos" tag on my journal held some nice notes and ideas.

First up we have a Dal Murg. I had some extra lentils in the pantry and this particular version looked really good. You actually cook the Dal separate from the chicken. The chicken is braised in a lemon juice sauce to keep it nice and tender and merged back in with the Dal at the last moment so as not to diffuse the acidity of the lemon while it does it's job on the chicken. I mixed the red lentils (by accident) having split red lentils and plain red lentils, it turned out to be a "you got your peanut butter in my chocolate" kind of mistake. I got a differing texture in the dish, on the one hand mushy on the other lentils with a still a little bit of firmness.


Can't have Dal with out rice, of course not just any rice would do I put together this fragrant fried basmati rice. We have a little coriander, clove, cinnamon, and cumin seed, very fragrant and delicious. I think next time, I'd stick with using my standard rice cooker and re-tossing and frying the rice afterwards. Stove top rice is finicky for me (at best) and using the rice cooker method would have given me the anticipated texture as well as my intended flavor.


All of the dishes really showcase the amount of spices and complex flavors that go into Indian cuisine however this Khema Palak takes the prize. I used ten different spices to put this one together. The dish is ground beef sauteed with tomatoes, onions and spinach. Very flavorful and I could swear that despite my best scrubbing, I still smell it on me. Very tasty and colorful. I made it a point to tell my readers to close their eyes and taste the components. It had a lot going on.



For dessert, Indian fruit salad cocktail. Nothing particularly Indian about it, just a bunch of fruits that would normally go into the cuisine, papaya, mango, oranges, bananas with a lime based dressing to give it a kick (and to keep it from turning brown). Originally this was intended to be served over yogurt, but I had so much fruit I decided to try to pack as much in and use the yogurt for later.




Fun lunch to put together, not as labor intensive as some of my more recent entries (very happy about that). It's getting easier to cook for twelve, I think careful planning is helping me out there. Fridge space is another issue I'm trying to tackle but it's all getting sorted out. I think the break during the holidays will be nice, I plan on using some of my queued up experiments and gadgets posts to fill in.

Blogger event tonight look for a post tomorrow. See you then!

Box Contents:

• Dal Murg
• Fried basmati rice
• Khema Palak
• Indian fruit cocktail medley

Goodbye Gourmet Magazine Bento

Wow looky there I just crossed 20k visitors thank you all for dropping by! Today's post I bring you a farewell to an institution of the food magazine world. Gourmet magazine recently announced their closure and it's a sad thing to see a publication that's 70 years old go to the wayside. There's many opinions, "They needed to change with the times", "food publications have lost to the tv networks and how they present food", and my favorite "just goes to show how no one cooks at home anymore". I digest food magazines and rip out the recipes of interest, I use these as points of view to teaching me to "make it my own", the loss of one more point of view is always sad. Gourmet actually gave me my holy grail of black forest cake recipes, something I've only found at a small bakery in Ft. Worth. Granted I was always annoyed that most of their recipes spanned multiple pages, but certainly it was no reason that I would not buy a copy when at the bookstore or on my way out for a business trip. I'll take exception to recent critics from well known chefs or food writers on how no one cooks at home these days, my friends and I cook and content providers like food network and publications like Saveur, Fine Cooking, and Everyday with Rachel Ray (just to name a few, and yes I like Rachel Ray) are print and web publications that I carefully watch and investigate to improve my cooking. My only regret on is that my hero Alton Brown hasn't built his own empire to provide me a magazine to help out the inner food geek. If consuming and creating food comes from experience then what better way than to include the wisdom and experiences of others. Ok enough soap box onto the show.









Entree Lamb Ragu served with Manchego Cheese Grits. Ragu/ragout however you want to spell it, I've learned means a hearty meat stew. The Gourmet Ragu came to me as a suggestion from April over at theHungryEngineer, in fact this suggestion and the closure of Gourmet is what inspired my bento this week. The lamb is braised for about four hours in bourbon and a host of aromatics. The use of Manchego cheese in the grits is brilliant, it's not the sharp tang of a cheddar rather a subtle salty flavor. I had to make a change to the original recipe in that the grits as made was more like a soup than a soft textured bowl of grits, so I added enough grits to match the texture I was after. I think a correct reheat of grits and a subsequent reheat of the ragu over the grits will produce what Gourmet Magazine intended.


Creamed Peas with Mint. This is a really simple recipe, the cream sauce is a simple infusion of cream and mint, I think if I were to do it again, I'd let the cream reduce a bit further so it has a better cling to the peas or use a bit cheese to thicken the sauce. A simple saute of celery, onion and frozen peas brings this dish together. This side has a simple fresh taste that really keeps the meal light and refreshing. The only improvement would be the introduction of bacon or some sort of fat to bring out some more flavors, but I feel I've been over using my homemade bacon and of course I decided to follow the Gourmet recipes as presented.



For dessert we have a Cardamom milk pudding. The pudding does indeed require the fridge time that the recipe recommends. My only change here would to move away from the arrowroot as thicker, it introduced a texture problem (despite straining), I would have opted for eggs instead of a starch. I suppose the calorie savings over eggs would probably have caused me to try it via the method suggested by the recipe but knowing how it turns out I prefer the smoother texture that I'd get from eggs. That said, the resulting pudding was very aromatic without being overwhelming.


I enjoyed making this bento although I'm still struggling with cooking for twelve. It's logistically a lot harder than cooking for six, a normal recipe is usually a serving of six. Cooking for twelve requires using all of my burners and waiting for dishes to finish before moving to the next stages or worse having multiple dutch ovens which is not something a home kitchen is equipped for (I bought another DO today). Even with meticulous planning and staged prep work I'm struggling to churn out lunch quickly I guess I'm still working out the kinks. Thanks for coming by!

Box Contents

• Lamb Ragu over Manchego Cheese Grits
• Creamed Peas with Mint
• Cardamom Milk Pudding