Pantry turkey sausage-sweet potato egg-topped hash

If you're craving a ton of flavor, a few nice nutrients and a satisfying dish for any meal, here's an easy one to try. And for the most part, this uses what you already have on hand. Even better. 

For this hash, you'll need:

1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 of a red bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion (any kind), diced
2 cloves of garlic
4 links of breakfast turkey sausage, or two large links of regular turkey sausage, sliced
About 4 sprigs of parsley, finely chopped
3 sage leaves, finely sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
Eggs - one per serving
Mustard for serving

Method

Steam sweet potatoes in a covered bowl in the microwave with a bit of water (a few tablespoons), about 4 minutes. Drain. 

Heat large heavy-bottomed pan to medium, and drizzle in a few teaspoons of olive oil. 

Saute onions, garlic and red pepper for about 3 minutes, until they become slightly translucent. Add turkey and saute until it begins to caramelize. Add sweet potatoes, herbs and salt and pepper. If mixture is dry, add a few tablespoons of chicken broth. 

While the hash finishes cooking, fry or poach an egg for each serving. Plate hash, top with an egg, crack some nice black pepper over the top and pass around a good quality mustard. 

I recommend this locally-made one from Revival Market - it's sweet enough and crunchy from the whole mustard seeds. YUM!!

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Houston Restaurant Weeks: RDG + Bar Annie

August is beastly hot in Houston. Fortunately, there's something in H'town that makes the sizzle month bearable: Houston Restaurant Weeks! Instead of just one week, we get to enjoy amazing restaurants throughout the whole month. This year, our strategy is to seek out the restaurants with outstanding lunch menus. By focusing on lunch instead of dinner, we get to enjoy more restaurants for the same budget, and often the portions are the same as they are at dinner. 

Best of all, this benefits the Houston Food Bank since a donation goes to them with every meal. Last year set a new record, with more than $1.2 million raised. Wowza. We Houstonians sure love our restaurants. 

We hit Eleven XI first, and I must say it was nothing short of outstanding. Every morsel of food was thoughtful, soulful and artful. I even went outside my usual parameters to enjoy a petite braised pork shank atop the best coleslaw I've ever had (it tasted almost like there were both fennel and mustard seeds mixed in). Greg mooned over his grilled oysters with heirloom tomatoes, pecan pesto, Parmesan and bacon. In total, we enjoyed three courses for a mere $20 each.  

This week, we enjoyed a very pleasant meal at RDG+Bar Annie. It's been ages since we've been there, partly since we have so many great restaurants closer to home and partly since there are just too many top-notch places to hit. We both started with the pea and mint soup finished with creme fraiche. The pea flavor was super-fresh, and the mint was obvious enough to really map to what you'd imagine as the classic British summer flavor. The watercress was a little unnecessary as the garnish, and the mouth feel was a tiny bit oily (maybe some ham protein in there? or maybe olive oil?). 

Greg opted for the hanger steak, a perfect medium-rare with an amazing demi-glace. I adored the striped bass with artichoke pesto, tomato butter sauce, shaved fennel and lemon. The fish was cooked perfectly, the fennel was wonderfully thin and the tomato butter sauce was frankly decadent. It almost tasted like the younger version of a remoulade. Who wouldn't love that? 

Greg finished with chocolate bread pudding (moist, pleasantly dense, not overly rich) and I enjoyed pecan pie topped with ice cream (balanced flavor with a nice sturdy crust). 

 

All I can say is that if you're going to be a foodie, this is one of the best places to do it!

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5 stars for food's powers of connection: cookbook links history, culture, adventure and cooking

Eat It! Food Adventures with Marco Polo

I've finally posted a short review on GoodReads. It's for a book written by Gracie Cavnar, founder of the Recipe for Success Foundation in support of its mission to help change the way our children eat. 

Having read this marvelous book, I'm already hungry for more. Eat It! artfully weaves together history, sociology, cookery and an intriguing story of adventure. Those who appreciate excellent illustration will love paging through the colorful plates.

Grown-ups and younger people can learn together over this series while reconnecting in the kitchen, and the go-to nature of these time-tested recipes will make this a treasured piece of one's personal book collection. I hope this can also become part of school curricula. 

I wouldn't be surprised if this series inspired more than a few young folks to dedicate their lives to the art of sourcing, preparing and eating real food.

Recipe for Success Foundation is changing the way children eat by changing how they understand, appreciate and eat their food, and by educating and mobilizing the community to provide healthier diets for children.

Gracie Cavnar in the White House garden

 

I encourage you to order your copy online today, gift it to your favorite young person and enjoy it together now, for holiday family cooking and well into the future. 100% of the proceeds go to RFS programming.

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Foodies, rejoice - Houston culinary adventures

I like adventures. Traveling, learning, trying new skills - and especially eating. It's rare for me to miss out on good food. When it comes to telling a story about food, the next best thing after being there and enjoying the food is the memory of such joy, in the form of pictures.   

Here are a few from a recent collection: Corey's visit, and then from the just-opened and much anticipated The Pass and Provisions from Pilot Light Restaurant Group. 

Grilled tuna, pineapple-cilantro salsa, grilled avocado with watermelon

Corey is an adventurous foodie, which I love, because it's like the icing on the cake to hang out with her and enjoy food so much. She was craving fresh tuna (not available in Trinidad) so this was a wonderful Saturday lunch made at our house. It was ridiculously good, the tuna was seared perfectly, and I'd never tried grilled avocado. The watermelon provides an exclamation point of color and flavor.  

Then there were the favorite foodie fixes on Corey's list, including shrimp corn dogs at Haven and diver scallops in a green pea broth at Brasserie 19. It was a quiet afternoon before the dinner rush, so we had a great visit with Executive Chef Amanda McGraw.

Haven's shrimp corn dogs, lemonade

Brasserie 19 Executive Chef Amanda McGraw

Diver scallops from Brasserie 19

Illuminated foyer at The Pass and Provisions

The Pass and Provisions is such a treat for us, as we mourned the closure of Gravitas and the ensuing empty space at the end of our street. We feel like we won BIG with the opening of this amazing space brought to our community by the Pilot Light Restaurant Group, and outstanding menu meant to be shared. 

After all, we live an entire 10 houses away from the restaurant, so you can't beat the commute. Oh, and our friend Marty custom-built many elements of this funky space, including the bar structure, finishes and furniture.  

Have I mentioned how much I love living here?

Truffled maitaki mushroom pizza, fontina

Shaved potato and thyme pizza, tallegio

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On being a localist ...

Russian Spring event at Discovery Green

Unless you've been under a rock for the past few years, you're well aware of the massive locavore movement to live, sight-see, eat, shop, play, consume, grow, breathe and what-have-you anything local. It used to be just about food sourcing. But now, anything that's grown, designed, fabricated or pulled from the ground less than 100 miles away (ideally, a leisurely bike ride away) is hip. 

A decade ago, few people knew what CSA meant. Now it's common to overhear conversation about CSA shares or half-shares and the fab mushrooms and killer zucchini delivered last week. The more progressive we seem, the more we look to the past (think of your average medieval market town!).

I've long been a fan of all things local because there's a certain pride of association with the great things we have right where we live. You might say I'm a localist (my made-up word) - an expansion of the locavore term. And we had a fantastic localist weekend in H'town. 

It started with dinner on Friday at REEF - one of our fave Gulf coast seafood spots courtesy of Bryan Caswell and Bill Floyd. It was my first experience with tile fish - I'm hooked! We all tried new things.

Zodiac heads in the Chinese astrology tradition

Saturday brought about stunning weather, and everyone was out enjoying it. We hit Hermann Park to check out the fascinating Zodiac Heads exhibit by Ai Weiwei. These monsters weigh more than 800 pounds each!

We topped off the day with visits to a few of the 100-plus galleries participating in the biennial Fotofest photography exhibit. Houston hosts the country's largest and oldest such exhibit; the theme for 2012 is Russian contemporary photography. 

Sunday delivered incredible weather again. And everyone came out again. With the temp in the 80s, it was a perfect day for playing in Discovery Green. 

And, for a stop in at the MKT Bar at Phoenicia. Love their fresh, house-made selections. 

Gelato at MKT Bar - the Apple & Blue Cheese is next to the mint chocolate

Everything we did was fewer than five miles from our home.  How cool is that?

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