2017 Austin-San Antonio Kitchen Notebook
An in-depth look at some of our favorite dishes and cocktails from our time on the ground in Austin-San Antonio
Pork Fat Marshmallows!
Chicon Pastry Chef Kendall Melton developed a technique that takes six hours and transforms pork fat into fluffy clouds of sweet vanilla lardo that she calls marshmallows. “It’s not something I do as a 30-minute project,” says Melton, whose first foray into fatty fluff came while opening Andrew Wiseheart’s Contigo. “We had a lot of pork fat and tried to find different things to do with it.” After rendering the fat, Melton steeps it with vanilla beans, and then as it cools slowly, she whips in an avalanche of powdered sugar. A cocoa tuile is slathered with the fluff, covered by a smear of dark chocolate ganache, topped with a scoop of graham cracker ice cream, and finished with honey-roasted peanuts, fig, and lemon. It’s crunchy, salty, bright, nutty, fruity, and lush with a slick of angelic pork fat.
Cocktail or Condiment?
The Roosevelt Room may have classic bones, but it’s also home to some of the wildest cocktail concoctions in Austin. Inspired by Missionary’s Downfall, bartender and partner Dennis Gobis mixes a frozen tiki drink that lies somewhere between piña colada and Thai peanut sauce. His Huli Pau! (cheers in Hawaiian) has a base of mint leaves, pineapple, and El Dorado five-year dark rum, to which he adds coconut cream and aloe juice. Roasted peanut oil adds earthy depth; and tarragon, anise notes. It’s blended with crushed ice to a bright green, garnished with butterfly pea powder, and served in a lei-ed hurricane glass. Huli Pau! is a sweet and savory crusher that leaves you feeling refreshed ... and itching for a plate of summer rolls.
Brisket Makes Butter Better
Smoked, spoon-tender fatty brisket: it’s a bit like meat butter. At the Granary Cue & Brew in San Antonio, Chef Tim Rattray packs brisket flavor into actual butter with pan drippings from the smoker. “It’s everything liquid smoke wishes it could be,” says Rattray. After collecting and allowing the drippings to cool, he separates the tallow and pan juices. Whipping one part of the latter to two parts European-style butter, Rattray creates a compound butter and seasons it with herb ash. Although you could slather it on your face solo, Rattray serves it (in slightly more civilized manner) in quenelle form alongside house buttermilk Pullman bread, sliced Texas-toast thick and griddled in the smoked tallow until golden brown.
Vegan Tacos Al Pastor
Tacos al pastor represents Mexican cuisine in evolution. In the 1930s, Lebanese immigrants to Mexico brought with them vertical spit cooking, and tacos al pastor were born when Middle Eastern lamb and pita morphed into locally beloved pork and tortillas. In 2017, north a bit in Austin, Chef Rick Lopez is making irresistible, vegan nabos al pastor tacos. Lopez takes lowly turnips (nabos), roasts them lightly, and picks them up in an al pastor sauce of cascabel and guajillo chiles, lime, garlic, etc. There’s also avocado at the base, plus a salsa of pineapple, onion, serrano chiles, ginger, and yuzu. “You feel like you’re eating al pastor,” says Lopez—just a progressive, vegan version tailor-made for anything goes Austin.
Government Cheese
As a schoolboy in Georgetown, Guyana, Tavel Bristol-Joseph received government-issued chocolate cookies, cheese, and milk at lunchtime. Instead of eating them separately, he formed and relished little sandwiches of cookies and processed cheese. A few decades later and a few thousand miles north, Bristol-Joseph transformed his childhood snack ritual into a warm chocolate-cheddar tart for Emmer & Rye’s fall menu. Into a crisp white Sonora wheat tart shell, the layers orange marmalade, candied pecans, and Colombian CasaLuker chocolate ganache, finished with an aerated cheddar sauce and dehydrated berry sprinkle. Even though Bristol-Joseph’s flavor memory is specific to Guyana and a public-school-lunch palate, the dish is all universal comfort and revelation. “How I create, it comes from an emotional standpoint,” says Bristol-Joseph. “If I see something that makes me feel a certain way, I want guests to feel that way, too,” he says.
