Subject: Main Dish Recipes

• Cookbooks: Getting Cheesy

  January 25, 2007

• Turkey: The Day After

  November 24, 2006

• Aw, Hell, the King

  May 29, 2007

• Turkey: The Day After

  November 24, 2006

• Aw, Hell, the King

  May 29, 2007

• Delhi-cious

  Ashiana offers more than the same old dal

  April 1, 1999

• Hot Squash Soup

  On cold mornings, I like to turn on the oven to warm up the kitchen. I know you're not supposed to heat your house with the oven. That's why I try to stick something in there so I can claim I'm actually cooking. Roasting a couple of heads of garlic is a good idea--you can always use roasted garlic for salad dressing or something. It's easy to do. You cut off the top ends of the garlic heads, put them in an ovenproof dish, pour a spoonful of olive oil over them, then roast them until they're br

  December 4, 2008

• History of Texas Chili--Without Beans

  Chili con carne was introduced to America by the "Chili Queens," women who served food in San Antonio's Military Plaza as early as the 1860s. Chili stands were also common in Galveston and Houston; they were the taco trucks of the 1800s. Tamales with chili was the most common order--beans were often added. Laborers counted on the chili vendors for a quick meal. Adventurous eaters loved them. And the upper classes tried to chase them away or get them shut down. Chili con carne is not an impo

  December 10, 2008

• Happy New Year Grilled Oysters

  What goes better with cold Champagne than hot grilled oysters? Also known as barbecued oysters, they are made by putting a fresh shucked oyster on a gas grill and spooning in some melted butter and garlic--you can add parmesan if you like. It was Drago's in Metairie that made char-grilled oysters famous. Jimmy G's on Sam Houston Tollway in Houston does a great job with them too. Gilhooley's does them over a pecan wood fire-that gives the oysters a great smokey flavor. 12 fresh-shucked oysters 4

  December 31, 2008

• Beef and Barley Soup with Bovril

  Beef soup always tastes better with a dash of Bovril liquid beef bouillon added. So do beef stews and beef gravies. Legend has it that Bovril was invented because Napolean III needed to feed his army during the war with Prussia. So he ordered an enormous quantity of canned beef from a Scotsman named John Johnston. Evidently, the only way to fill the order was to cook the beef down into a thick brown sticky concentrate that could be easily transported and reconstituted with hot water. It was orig

  January 16, 2009

• Football Watching Food (No, Really)

  Okay, nice joke J.C., you totally had me. Although I should have known something was up since nobody makes their own corny dogs (except maybe Jay Francis). Don't look for any Super Bowl recipes from me. The spirit has gone out of our great national guacamole-eating holiday since the NFL started suing everybody for infringing on their trademark. Bars and restaurants can't have Super Bowl promotions without paying a fee to use the name. That's like Hallmark demanding a cut of your Mother's Day B

  January 30, 2009

• Back to Wok

  October 17, 1996

• Real Deal Q: Barbacoa de Borrego

  This is some awesome barbecued lamb. It's the result of a fairly complicated process--a hybrid of braising and smoking. But I figure this is the season for a challenging barbecue recipe, what with the Rodeo BBQ Championship coming up and all. I figure Houston barbecue enthusiasts are ready to show off their stuff. (I coulda been a contender!) The smoky-flavored, falling-off-the-bone tender meat this recipe yields is even better than the stellar barbacoa de borrego at Gerardo's Drive-In Groce

  February 10, 2009

• Dish

  March 26, 1998

• One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Four, Let's Have Some Tequila, Then More, More, More

  Photo by Margaret DowningThe scene last night was the wine vault at Voice in the basement of the Hotel Icon, 220 Main Street, and the occasion was a tequila cocktail pairing dinner for members of the media. Voice Chef Michael Kramer served up his usual magic with a dinner that started with a hearts of palm salad, took in a serving of crab in pasta, followed by a main course of steak covered in ground coffee, topped off by a crème brulee. But the reason we were there was the upper end tequila b

  February 25, 2009

• Down-Home Delights

  July 9, 1998

• The Meatball Debate

  photo by Robb Walsh Two Meatballs in the Italian Kitchen by Pino Luongo and Mark Straussman is a cookbook written by two Italian restaurant owners in New York. Pino is a purist from Tuscany, Mark is a populist from Queens. And the two men don't see eye to eye on meatballs. For Mark's American customers, meatballs are the crowning glory on a mound of spaghetti. The Italian Pino insists that the big meatball is out of proportion to the skinny spaghetti and that we Americans ought to learn to e

  March 26, 2009

• Busy Beaver's

  November 6, 2008

• Crash Course at Ristorante Cavour

  August 7, 2008

• Wagyu Beef

  Where to get it, how to cook it

  December 29, 2005

• Little Bitty Burger Barn

  "It's okay to be little bitty in the big city" is an apt slogan for this new burger joint, where sliders rule

  February 21, 2008

• Illegal Immigrants in the Restaurant Industry

  December 20, 2007

• I Love CFS: 25 Lovable Chicken-Fried Steaks

  June 21, 2007

• ˇViva la Margarita!

  The drink that changed the way we eat

  November 16, 2006

• Top Tacos

  Mexican "tacos de trompo" are getting hard to find because the Health Department says they're illegal

  September 21, 2006

• Crispy Muc, Tender Bo

  There's a thrilling new Vietnamese restaurant on Bellaire with a menu that reads like a mystery

  September 29, 2005

• Mixing It Up

  March 10, 2005

• Canine Cuisine

  Pound-for-hound, some of the best doggone dishes around

  February 3, 2005

• Sex, Death and Oysters

  March 25, 2004

• Venison Recipes for Gourmet Environmentalists

  November 6, 2003

• The Barbecue Ward

  The no-nonsense Kozy Kitchen is the last remnant of the Nickel's once-proud barbecue tradition

  June 13, 2002

• Stirred and Shaken

  Mi Luna's sangria

  December 7, 2000

• Getting to the Soul of Houston

  Lunch with: Steve Wertheimer

  November 9, 2000

• Thanks for Nothing

  The Chronicle's annual parade of prepackaged Thanksgiving recipes needs to be canned

  November 25, 1999

• Touring Little Persia

  Houston's best undiscovered cuisine unfolds along the Hillcroft strip

  September 15, 1994

• A Day in the Life of a Personal Chef

  Photos by Katharine ShilcuttChef Jo checks her shopping list before venturing into the storeJo Gonzales is a personal chef.  Most people look puzzled when she walks the aisles of the grocery store in her bright orange embroidered chef's coat or pulls up in her SUV with its magnetic signs announcing her business name: Chef Jo's Home Cooking.  "What on earth is a personal chef?" they ask. It's a question she answers every day. Unlike a chef at a restaurant or in a commercial kitchen, a

  April 21, 2009

• The New Q: Smoke-Braising

  Photo by Robb WalshThere's no reason that you have to choose between braising and barbecuing. While working on a new backyard barbecue cookbook, I discovered that the two techniques can be combined with awesome results. Start off by smoking or grilling the meat. Next, prepare a braising liquid in the kitchen and bring it to a boil. Put an oven-proof roasting pan on your grill directly over the hot part of the fire. Carefully add the hot braising liquid to the pan on the grill and return it to a

  June 4, 2009

• Cooked Oyster Season: Big Easy Erster and Artichoke Soup

  The weather has turned warm and I have stopped eating raw oysters. But the oyster season isn't over yet. I bought a gallon of shucked oysters from Croatian oysterman Misho Ivic down in San Leon and I am cooking up a storm with them. Go buy yourself a couple of pints of shucked oysters and see for yourself. Just make sure you know what kind of oysters you are buying. Some grocery stores in Texas sell shucked Pacific oysters and some sell Gulf oysters. Pacific oysters are fine, but Gulf oysters

  May 12, 2009

• Not So Clear Cut

  June 18, 2009

• Bringing Home the Gold at the Kolache Olympics

  Photos by Jason Tinder Peppermint bark kolacheThe press conference room at Reliant Stadium was filled with a distinct aroma as the judges entered. It wasn't the scent of sweaty Texans players or their coaches' cologne; it was the sweet, doughy smell of kolaches. Plantain kolaches, Hawaiian chicken kolaches, teriyaki steak kolaches, sloppy joe kolaches... Dozens upon dozens of hot kolaches sat in trays, waiting for their moment in the spotlight. The Kolache Factory held its annual Kolache

  July 15, 2009

• Fleming's Chipotle Mac n' Cheese

  Creamed spinach, iceberg wedge salad, and macaroni and cheese are old steakhouse favorites, long served to us alongside our ribeyes. It wouldn't be Texan to say we like them more than the beef, but that creamy, cheesy pasta with the newfangled breadcrumb topping does something naughty to us. James Cole, chef-partner at the River Oaks location of Fleming's Steakhouse, adds some spice to his recipe. The recipe, after the jump.

  July 16, 2009

• Khun Kay Thai CafĂ©'s Summer Lettuce Wrap Recipe

  When Supatra Yooto and Kay Soodjai opened the Golden room in 1982, they originally had a mostly Chinese menu. The Thai items increased as the cuisine gained popularity in Houston. When I first visited the restaurant some 20 years later, I had a whole red snapper and heard Soodjai say that the decorative wooden house they had posted outside the restaurant had been stolen again. With this long history behind them, the owners decided to start over with a fast-casual concept. The recipes are all the

  August 13, 2009

• Julia's Bistro's Plantain Crusted Snapper

  Photo by Pink Moose​We love mangoes here at Eating Our Words, and as summer comes to an end, we're panicking and glutting ourselves on them before it's too late. So we think it's perfectly reasonable to share two recipes with mango in two weeks. In fact, you're welcome. This time, we've got a Latin-fusion red snapper recipe, courtesy of Julia's Bistro. The recipe, after the jump.

  August 20, 2009

• Recipe: Bistro Don Camillo's Croque Madame

  Photo by tastybits​As it turns out, it's not just Americans who eat fatty comfort food; the French do it too. The Croque Madame, like the Croque Monsieur, is a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, but it also has an egg. This recipe comes from executive chef Ryan Hildebrand from Bistro Don Camillo, which opened a year ago and serves the food of Nice, France. The recipe, after the jump.

  September 3, 2009

• Easy Risotto: An Oxymoron?

  Photo by Robb Walsh​My friend Paul Howell makes risotto all the time. Pumpkin risotto and mushroom risotto are two of his favorites. I have always found the labor-intensive stirring and adding of liquid required for perfect risotto a little tedious. But Paul introduced me to the pressure cooker method. For my first attempt I tried a dark purple beet risotto. I doubted that the pressure cooker could produce the creamy consistency of a really great risotto, but I was pleasantly surprised.

  September 16, 2009

• Sourdough Pizza in a Bread Machine

  ​Here's another way to use up that sourdough you have to get rid of every day if you have a culture going. Thanks to reader LW, who suggested Betty Sue as the name of my new sourdough. Betty Sue is looking real good lately. Especially in this bread machine pizza recipe. Making the dough is really easy -- shaping it is the trick. My dough came out very loose and sticky, and I needed to work a lot of flour into it. Getting the dough into a pan or onto a pizza stone makes you admire those gu

  October 2, 2009

• Overripe Mango Wrestling

  Photos by Robb Walsh​Giant mangos are $11 for a box of six at the Airline Farmer's Marketing Association. But you can pick up a box of overripe mangos for a mere five bucks. I took two boxes of the nasty-looking fruit home last weekend and showed my assistants how to cut them up. The 12 mangos yielded almost five quarts of very soft flesh, which my assistants and I combined with habañero chiles, raisins, ginger, garlic and cider vinegar in a huge batch of old-fashioned English-style man

  October 6, 2009

• Crisper Drawer Cast-offs: Cauliflower Casserole

  ​I'm trying to get invited to John Seaborn Gray's house for shepherd's pie. I'm betting it tastes great. His Shameless Chef column reminded me of Andrew Schloss's cookbooks Almost From Scratch, Homemade in a Hurry and Cooking With Three Ingredients. Schloss's premise is that great chefs don't cook from scratch -- they have assistant chefs who make the master sauces, roast the peppers, and chop the veggies for them. Schloss encourages home cooks to use canned soups and prepared ingredients

  October 21, 2009

• The Shameless Chef: Sausage and Cheese Drop Biscuits

  ​Here on the Shameless Chef, we've already used pan sausage, and we've already used Bisquick. Inevitably, the decision was made to combine them. We're through the looking glass here, people. You'll need: - 1 tube of pan sausage - Bisquick - shredded cheese of your own choosing (we've used cheddar and mozzarella) - milk (but let's be honest, you can use water if you don't have milk, or if you're racist against lactose) What we're cooking up here is a big favorite at gatherings such as po

  November 3, 2009

• Chicken Soup in Less than 30 Minutes

  Photo by Jane Catherine Collins​This is not a Rachel Ray recipe, so just wipe that thought out of your mind. We can't stand Rachel Ray and have banned her show from our house. We do all like a fast meal, though. So here's our version of a 30-minute dish: chicken soup:

  November 5, 2009